iOS Continues to Hold Onto Market Share Despite Privacy Changes, New Report Finds

When Apple first announced its App Tracking Transparency (ATT) with the release of iOS 14.5, which lets users decide if they want to be tracked across the apps they visit, the mobile industry braced itself for a total upending. But a new report has found that some parts of the status quo have been slow to change. iOS’ market share of ad spend was 34% in April 2022, down just 4% from April 2021, when Apple implemented iOS 14.5, according to data form Adjust, a mobile ad-tech firm. The data is drawn from 4000 Adjust clients, who are typically running advertising campaigns with mobile outcomes in mind. Some in the industry hypothesized that Apple’s privacy moves would be Android’s gain, as Android users can still be tracked and targeted, at least until Google fully implements its privacy sandbox framework in Android, said Katie Madding, chief product officer at Adjust. To be sure, the data at first did appear to be heading in that direction. iOS market share dropped to 38% in April 2021 from 41% in January 2020, prior to Apple’s announcement of ATT at the Worldwide Developers Conference in June 2020. And while iOS market share dipped even lower to 30% from July to October 2021, it rebounded up 4% by April 2022. Advertisers have stayed loyal to iOS users because they offer unique benefits, Madding said. Is Instagram Becoming More Like TikTok, or Something Completely Different? “Apple has always been known for having users who spend more,” Madding said. “iOS users make more purchases and higher purchases. On Android you have more users but the purchases are typically lower.” The advertising industry still could be heading for a reckoning when more privacy changes are implemented—last week Google said it was pushing the deprecation of third-party cookies to 2024, giving marketers more time to prepare for this future. Indeed, Meta’s revenue has been blunted by losing the iOS changes, which have made the targeting and attribution of ads on its platform less effective. But the Adjust data shows how some of the impact to mobile advertising has been less dramatic than previously presaged. Why brands are still advertising on iOS iOS users are not only a more lucrative customer base, but they are potentially more cost effective, said Thomas Petit, an independent app development consultant. Android CPMs increased quicker relative to iOS CPMs, while iOS advertising is still effective, Petit said, noting that iOS is still more expensive overall. “It was not that profitable to shift [to Android],” Petit said, especially for subscription-based apps. Moreover, more users have opted in to being tracked than predicted. Adjust found that for certain categories of apps in the second quarter of 2022, like gaming, social and hyper casual, more than 30% of users opted in (though rates for fin tech and publisher apps hovered closer to 10%). ATT opt-in rates in the second quarter were over 30% in some countries like Vietnam and Indonesia, and around 20% in the U.S., Adjust found, compared to predictions as low as 5%. A variety of data sources seem to show that while many users initially declined to be tracked when ATT was first launched in April 2021, more users have consented over time. March 2022 data from AppsFlyer, another mobile ad-tech firm, showed 46% of users opting in. “A lot of users just want to get to the action [for] why they downloaded the app in the first place,” Madding said. Ultimately, despite the reaction to ATT in the advertising world, consumers are not necessarily viewing iPhones differently – iOS's market share of mobile operating systems stayed flat at 27% between April 2021 and June 2022, according to Statcounter. “End users are still buying iPhones,” Madding said.