Nielsen Digital Measurement and iOS17 or TVOS17
From Engineering Client Portal
Overview
Beginning with iOS/tvOS 17, Apple is adding several requirements for App developers around tracking, use of Identifier For Advertisers (IDFA), and certain system APIs as detailed below:
App Privacy Manifest
- App privacy manifest files must be updated before submitting apps to the App Store.
- Declare collection/use of user tracking information - app developers/third-party SDKs will be required to list domains that are used to send messages containing the user's device ID (IDFA).
- Required Reason API - Apple is requiring reasons for apps' usage of certain system APIs that retrieve information about the device or state of some system metrics.
Below is the AppSDK privacy manifest snapshot for AD flavor which showcase tracking domain used to capture the IDFA/AD ID in measurement traffic.
From Privacy accessed API perspective for all SDK flavors , it has declared
- AppSDK does use the User Defaults to cache the data, needed in kill/relaunch scenarios. The usage is as per the Apple recommendation to read/write information limited to containing app only (CA92.1).
- AppSDK does use the timestamp API to check the expiry of cached config limited to containing app only(C617.1)
- AppSDK does observe the sufficient disk space, so it can stop the Sqlite DB insertions if there is an insufficient space for the containing app only(E174.1)
App Tracking Transparency (ATT) Framework
When users select "Ask App Not to Track" from the ATT popup, the operating system will behave differently from previous iOS/tvOS versions:
- In iOS/tvOS versions lower than 17, when "Ask App Not to Track" was selected, apps were blocked from reading the device's IDFA and measurement would be transmitted with a blank device ID.
- With iOS/tvOS 17, if the user selects "Ask App Not to Track", third-party SDKs will not only be blocked from reading the IDFA, the SDKs will also be blocked from sending http(s) traffic to domains declared as "tracking domains" in the SDK's privacy manifest file. This will prevent typical measurement pings from going out and will impact volumetric measurement for your apps.
A new release of the AppSDK (v9.4) aims to address this requirement through explicit distinction of tracking versus non-tracking traffic through the use of 2 domains as described below:
- When a user has opted in (Allow Tracking), measurement data pings will continue to be sent to the vtwenty.com (tracking domain) with the available IDFA.
- When a user has opted out (Ask App Not to Track) or with an unknown status, all the measurement data pings will be sent to the nmrodam.com (non-tracking domain). These pings will not contain any IDFA tracking.
Next Steps
- Move to the latest Nielsen AppSDK release (v9.4) for builds targeting iOS 17 with Xcode 15. Upgrading to the new build of the Digital SDKs should be straightforward through your build configuration. AppSDKs remain backwards compatible and would not require any further integration changes. Please refer to the Integration guide section for further details.
- To be decided if the privacy manifest needs to be modified. For coexisting DAR pixel and Digital SDK integrations please reach out to your Nielsen Client Engineer to determine the path forward.
- Work with your Nielsen Client Engineer once implemented to ensure proper measurement.