Big Platforms Will Need to Get More Creative with Tracking

Without the IDFA option, advertising platforms face a need for more innovation. Advertising lives off data, and Apple’s move encourages smarter data strategies.

What’s that going to look like? We’ll have to wait and see, but one potential solution is “fingerprinting” a device, or making a device profile, a lot like marketers make buyer personas. This involves gathering ancillary data about a device’s IP addresses, location, activity periods, Bluetooth, and other features, then combining it into a profile that shows how the device is being used and what that says about the user.

Another option is to develop more ways to track “events” instead of devices. An app event could be anything from logging on for the first time to reaching the first level of a game, etc. By looking at events across the entire user base, advertisers can divide users into different groups of behavior and target ads based on what that behavior says about them.