Im Abriss: Apples falsches Selbstverständnis in Bezug auf die „App-Tracking-Transparenz“
Here’s the key point: when it comes to digital advertising, particularly for the games that make up the vast majority of the app advertising industry, transaction data is all that matters. All of the data that any platform collects, whether that be Meta, Snap, Google, etc. is insignificant compared to whether or not a specific ad led to a specific purchase, not just in direct response to said ad, but also over the lifetime of the consumer’s usage of said app. That is the data that Apple cut off with ATT (by barring developers from linking it to their ad spend), and it is the same data that Apple has declared is their own first party data, and thus not subject to its ban on “tracking.”
This, needless to say, is where legitimate questions about self-preferencing come to the forefront. Developers who want to link conversion data with Facebook are banned from doing so, while they have no choice but to share that data with Apple because Apple controls app installation via the App Store; this strikes me as a clear example of the President of the Bundeskartellamt’s claim that “Apple’s rules apply to third parties, but not to Apple itself”.
Apples „Personalisierte Werbung“ lässt sich ausschalten (➝ Einstellungen ➝ Datenschutz ➝ Apple-Werbung); dass sie überhaupt eine Werbeplattform betreiben, grätscht ihnen in einige der eigenen fundamentalen Prinzipien.
Es ist sicherlich unrealistisch, dass Apple keinerlei Informationen über seine Nutzer und Nutzerinnen erfasst; sie führen im besten Fall zu relevanten und zielgerichteten Empfehlungen, die die Dienstleistungen verbessern.
Sich dabei aber auch nur im kleinstmöglichen Maße angreifbar zu machen, stellt schlicht die eigenen fundamentalen Prinzipien infrage.