Apple-Commissioned Report Says App Tracking Transparency Hasn’t Significantly Benefitted Company

Apple is unlikely to have seen a significant financial benefit from App Tracking Transparency since the privacy feature launched last year, according to Kinshuk Jerath, Professor of Business in the Marketing Division at Columbia Business School.

In an Apple-commissioned report, Jerath said claims that billions of advertising dollars moved from companies like Meta to Apple due to the introduction of App Tracking Transparency are “speculative” and “lack supporting evidence.”

Jerath provided three reasons for his opinion:

• Apple’s Search Ads business is a small part of the overall mobile advertising market
• Growth in Apple’s Search Ads business predated the introduction of App Tracking Transparency and is likely driven in part by other factors, such as continued overall growth of mobile ads and app install ads and the expansion of the Search Ads business to China in July 2021
• Apple provides a prompt during the iOS setup process that enables users to turn off Personalized Ads on their device

In October 2021, the Financial Times reported that App Tracking Transparency had resulted in a “windfall” for Apple’s advertising business. The report claimed that Apple’s share of the mobile app advertising market tripled in the six months after the feature was introduced. Apple said the feature was designed to protect users and not to advantage the company.

Apple did not provide any internal figures to support the report’s findings.