iOs 16 Update: What Is It & How Will It Affect Advertisers?

On June 6th, during their WWDC event in Cupertino, California, Apple announced its upcoming iPhone iOS 16 update. Arriving in late 2022, but released to public beta testers in July of this year, it promises a dynamic new lock screen and a range of significant new features.

According to Apple, iPhone users can personalise their lock screen to make it more personal and helpful, store family photos in a shared iCloud space, recall sent messages, schedule mail and streamline communication through new capabilities in Messages and Mail, and harness enhanced intelligence with Live Text and Visual Look Up.

And it doesn’t end there! Other exciting new features with iOS 16 include,

Enhanced Focus‍

Allows users a way to tie a Lock Screen wallpaper and widgets to a particular Focus. With Focus filters, apps will just show content relevant to the user’s Focus. 

Advanced Wallet Features‍

Split the cost of an Apple Pay purchase with Apple Pay Later, and receive detailed receipts and order tracking information in your Wallet for Apple Pay purchases.

Shareable Safari

‍Share a collection of websites with friends and family with ease.

Personalised Spatial Audio‍

Enjoy an even more precise and immersive listening experience.

Apple Map Enhancements

Plan multi-stop routes and and automatically sync routes between devices.

Door Detection

Helps users who are blind or low vision to use their iPhone to navigate the last few feet to their destination.

What Does This Mean for Advertisers? 

There was some speculation in the world of ads as to how the latest iPhone update would impact advertisers. In the run-up to this year’s WWDC, some sources shared their belief that Apple would make Private Relay — a feature that lets premium iCloud subscribers obscure their IP addresses — available to all iPhone users by default. However, this does not seem to be the case. Based on keynotes and Apple’s feature overview, there is no sign of Private Relay just yet. 

Indeed, it appears that the most significant privacy update won’t affect advertisers at all. As reported in Mashable, Apple worked with several non-profit organisations to develop a new Safety Check feature, which will allow users to quickly revoke access to their devices and data when in dangerous situations. This can be helpful for victims of domestic or intimate partner violence, as it removes all access that they’ve granted to others — users can easily sign out of iCloud on all other devices, reset privacy permissions and limit messaging to just the device in their hand. 

Unlike iOs 14, then, the impact of the new operating system on advertisers seems to be, at present, minimal. The only factors that will impact advertisers are those that already exist, namely Apple’s App Tracking Transparency feature that impacts targeted ads. 

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That being said, experts still predict more privacy clampdowns, with anticipated limits on signals for ad targeting and measurement — measures that will no doubt have a more significant impact on advertisers. 

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