In the modern world, we navigate our digital lives amidst countless pop-up ads, sponsored content, and tons of data being collected about our online behaviors. Privacy in this context often seems like a distant dream. However, with the iOS 17 update, Apple has brought a remarkable feature called “Privacy Preserving Ad Measurement” to Safari to help preserve our online privacy.
While still supporting the critical role that advertising plays in the online ecosystem. This feature is accessible on all Apple devices including your iPhone, iPad, and Mac. In this blog post, I’ll explain what the “Privacy Preserving Ad Measurement” feature does, its uses, and how to enable it on your iPhone running iOS 17.
What is Privacy Preserving Ad Measurement?
Privacy Preserving Ad Measurement is a built-in feature provided by Apple in Safari designed to balance the often competing interests of advertisers and end-users. As users, we can browse the Internet without having our privacy and behaviors tracked, recorded, and sold to advertisers.
However, advertisers need performance data to understand the effectiveness of their ads. Ad measurement serves as a compromise to maintain privacy, allowing advertisers to receive aggregate data on ad performance without violating individual user privacy.
Uses
The Privacy Preserving Ad Measurement feature is beneficial in several ways:
- Preserves user privacy: It prevents advertisers, merchants, and other third parties from uniquely identifying you.
- Limit tracking: Your interactions with ads will not be tracked across different websites or apps.
- Non-Identifying Attribution Reports: No personally identifiable information will be added to Safari’s attribution reports.
- Purchases prevent tracking: If you click on an ad or make a purchase after clicking on an ad, no one can trace it back and show you another such ad.
- Local Processing: This feature will ensure that no one can access your ad-related data on your device.
How to Enable Privacy Preserving Ad Measurement on iPhone
On your iPhone running iOS 17, you can enable the “Privacy preserving ad measurement” feature by following these steps:
Open the Settings app on your iPhone.
Scroll down and tap on “Safari”.
Under the Privacy section, you can find the “Privacy Preserving Ad Measurement” toggle and turn on the switch next to it.
Wrapping Up
As we can see, privacy-preserving ad measurement provides a much-needed balance between maintaining privacy for users and meeting the data needs of advertisers. By enabling this feature, you can contribute to ad-supported online ecosystems without compromising your privacy. If privacy is a priority for you, then enabling this feature on your iPhone running iOS 17 might be the right move for you.
FAQs
Is the Privacy Preserving Ad Measurement feature enabled by default?
Yes, this feature is enabled by default on Safari. However, if it is turned off for some reason, you can turn it on or off manually through your device’s settings.
If I disable this feature, will Safari stop showing me ads?
No, disabling this feature won’t stop ads from appearing. Instead, it will stop Safari from sharing non-personal data about your interaction with those ads.
Does this feature block cross-site tracking?
No, this feature doesn’t directly block cross-site tracking. However, Safari does have a separate setting called “Prevent cross-site tracking”, which is enabled by default and blocks third-party advertisers from tracking you across websites and apps.
