What publishers once filed under someday now has a deadline, and Apple set it.
With its latest software update, the tech firm started blocking companies that track people who browse the internet to target them with ads, cutting them off inside its Safari browser without warning. So far it affects the largest players but there’;s concern that it could span the gut of ad tech. Publishers are understandably worried. They rely on at least some of those companies to make their audiences valuable to advertisers. When one stops working in Safari, bids on their traffic drop. Some say the hit to revenue has been limited so far. Many are still working out how bad it is.
That leaves publishers looking again at a fix they’d long put off: running their own ad infrastructure through IAB Tech Lab’s Trusted Server. Right now, when someone opens a news site in the Safari browser on an iPhone or iPad, the device doesn’t just load the article. It also contacts dozens of ad tech companies directly, sharing data about the reader and asking advertisers to bid on the ad space. Safari can see those contacts and it blocks any company on Apple’s list. Trusted Server takes the device out of that loop by moving the ad process off the reader’s phone or tablet and onto servers the publisher controls. Apple can’t stop what it can’t see. Its only option would be to block the news site itself, which would break the site for every Safari user.
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