DCR Video iOS14 Migration

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Overview

Apple recently released a new policy on consent requirements for its mobile advertising tool, Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA). With this new policy, (App Tracking Setting) users can choose whether an IDFA may be used by mobile applications. iOS 14 was released on Sept 16th.

What does this mean for measurement?

Apple added a new Framework called “The App Tracking Transparency Framework”. This is now required to control whether the Ad Framework will return the IDFA. If our app requests the IDFA, but advertisingTrackingEnabled=No, then we will get: IDFA = 00000000 -0000-0000-0000-000000000000. If a client is using our APP SDK v7 and below, running on a device with iOS14 installed, as this is a new framework, our SDK will never be able to retrieve the IDFA.

Version 8 of our App SDK will come in two versions. One that is enabled to work with the App Tracking Transparency Framework, and another version that does not use the Ad Framework. A Table outlining the various iOS versions and Nielsen AppSDK versions is located later in this document.

Transparency Framework

Apple was going to force all publishers to check if ATTrackingManager. AuthorizationStatus was equal to authorized. Now however, since they are not forcing publishers to ask the user, as long as the ATTrackingManager.AuthorizationStatus is equal to undefined, or authorized, you are allowed to grab the IDFA value. The change they made was to allow us to use undefined as a valid state. To display the App Tracking Transparency authorization request for accessing the IDFA, update your info.plist to add the NSUserTrackingUsageDescription key with a custom message describing your usage.

SDK Versions and Behavior

OS	SDK Flavor/Version	LAT/Tracking	Opt-out Status	Opt-out URL	Integration Changes
iOS/tvOS 13 and below	Appsdk < 7.2	LAT works fine	As per LAT	LAT URL	No Changes
iOS/tvOS 13 and below	Appsdk without ad framework < 7.2	NA (Not Applicable)	User choice opt-out/in	User choice opt-out/in url	No Changes
iOS/tvOS 13 and below	AppSDK 8.0	LAT works fine	As per LAT	LAT URL	No Changes
iOS/tvOS 13 or 14	Appsdk 8.0 without Ad Framework	NA (Not Applicable)	User choice opt-out/in	User choice opt-out/in url	No Changes
iOS/tvOS 14	Appsdk < 7.2	No support for new Apple tracking API	Opt-out will be marked as true	LAT URL	Yes, Clients to upgrade to SDK 8.0
iOS/tvOS 14	AppSDK 8.0	Client has implemented the Consent pop-up.	As per LAT	LAT URL	Yes, Clients to implement pop-up and app store verbiage
iOS/tvOS 14 APPLE is not enforcing App Transparency Layer (pop-up)	AppSDK 8.0	Apple not mandating consent pop-up.	As per LAT	LAT URL
iOS/tvOS 14 APPLE is enforcing App Transparency Layer (pop-up)	AppSDK 8.0	Client has not implemented the consent pop-up.	As per LAT	LAT URL	Yes, Clients to implement pop-up and app store verbiage
iOS/tvOS 14	Appsdk 8.0 without Ad Framework	Clients denied the Ad Framework SDK	User choice opt-out/in	User choice opt-out/in url	Yes, Clients implement webview to pass user choice to the sdk. No changes for AGF no ad framework clients.