In an era where privacy regulations are reshaping the digital advertising landscape, marketers must evolve their strategies to ensure both compliance and performance. The introduction of Apple's App Tracking Transparency (ATT) and similar initiatives has created a challenging environment, especially in the mobile industry. However, these changes also present new opportunities to engage users in a more transparent and trust-driven manner. This article explores how privacy-related changes have impacted targeting strategies, offers recommendations for effective audience targeting, and highlights the importance of clear communication and responsible data usage in today’s marketing landscape.

In what ways do you feel that privacy-related changes have impacted your targeting strategy?
In the mobile industry, privacy-related changes have mostly occurred on the iOS side. The impact of ATT on retargeting was massive when it was released, as most people initially opted out of being tracked, leaving little to no room for effective retargeting in the iOS space. Now, we’re seeing a positive trend of people accepting being tracked. The most significant change came from educating users to understand the trade-off between access to limited personal information and the offer to play at no cost.

What are your recommendations for the right targeting strategy in the new world of privacy?
On iOS, as the volume of trackable users has reduced, it is important to be extra careful when building your audiences and to define the right course of action with realistic ROI expectations. Either you will get some of your best users back on campaigns limited to a small audience, or you will get many people back using a broader retargeting strategy, but the generated income per user will be less. In the end, it’s all a matter of defining the right goal, considering that some options available on Android are not on iOS.

How can marketers ensure they follow privacy rules while still creating ads that feel personal and work well?
Marketers should not be afraid of plainly explaining how users’ data is going to be used and how important it is to keep a vibrant ecosystem. The past few months have shown that people can accept being tracked if they don’t feel tricked into giving away access to everything they do. In a world that relies heavily on advertising to provide services, it is also important to help users understand that a tailored ad is more interesting to them while being better for the services they use.

As privacy rules change, what factors should marketers consider when choosing tools for advertising to keep information safe and still reach the right customers?
Several regulators, notably in Europe and California, have implemented measures to ensure personal data is collected and retained only with consent and limited to a specific purpose. Asking tools about their compliance with these regulations is a necessary first step to avoid any trouble. The second step is to make sure to send as little personal data as possible to these tools, not simply dump all the data you have because it looks simpler. This adds a second layer of protection for your users and your company. Finally, nothing will replace reputation: ask others about how they handle privacy topics with various tools and get a sense of which companies have a track record of reliability on this topic.

How can marketers use the right technology to make ads that reach the right people without being too nosy about their personal data?
I don’t think marketers need to be extremely nosy to reach the right people, at least not when it comes to retargeting. Retargeting only requires limited information—basically, how a user interacted with your specific app or website: did they buy something or not, how much, how frequently they visit you—in order to be profitable. The information is crunched into numbers. It is certainly easier to explain that to a user when asking for consent than having to work around the fact that you want to know their names, birthdates, gender, etc. In any case, using solutions that use anonymized, probabilistic data is a good way to avoid having to ask too much from users in terms of personal data.

Why is it important for marketers to be open and honest about how they use data, and how can they communicate with users to build trust?

As I explained earlier, statistics on iOS in recent months show that when the right explanations are given, people are more willing to give personal information to marketers. I think what led to these complex anti-tracking systems we see emerging nowadays is not so much a lack of concern from most marketers, but a lack of transparency—combined with a few headline stories from unscrupulous actors. All AdTech companies I’ve worked for over the past 15 years had no way to find anything actually personal (name, email address, etc.) about the users they targeted. But without proper explanations and education, it is hard to convince people they are not being spied on.

Have you found cases where new marketing methods in the post-privacy world actually improved your performance or the way you interact with your audience?

Let’s not kid ourselves, if you cannot have any information about who you are displaying an ad to, you cannot deliver ads that perform. Overall, the new iOS mechanisms have reduced the ability to perform. On Chrome, the first tests by actors such as Criteo indicate the same. On Android, Google is working to limit the loss of real-time information while maintaining the right level of performance. We’re working with the Android Privacy Sandbox team to achieve that goal. Their objective aligns with ours: maintain equivalent performance to current levels in a more privacy-compliant manner, but it is indeed a challenge to do more with less. 

That said, we’ve been running iOS campaigns with a 360-degree approach to retargeting, leveraging deterministic IDFA campaigns, plus probabilistic targeting campaigns. For the time being, we’re seeing pretty good results especially as opt-in rates continue to rise. Overall the landscape seems to be improving for retargeting, so my general advice is for marketers to test out smaller audience segments on iOS, different ATT prompts, etc. to see what works for their app. As these users generally have a higher ARPU than Android, it’s worth trying to find the right approach to retain them.