Microsoft-owned social network LinkedIn has announced that it will stop collecting Identifier for Advertising (IDFA) through its iOS apps to align with Apple’s upcoming App Tracking Transparency privacy changes for iOS.
The social network says that the change will impact its LinkedIn Audience Network, however, there will be limited impact on ad performance for its advertisers.
LinkedIn shares its plans to tackle iOS 14’s privacy changes
Compared to the likes of Facebook, Twitter, and Google, LinkedIn took some time to share its plan on how to tackle Apple’s upcoming App Tracking Transparency changes, coming to iOS 14.5 this spring. As per the company, it expects minimum impact on marketing campaign performance.
We want to share an update on our plans and guidance to help you prepare for these changes. We have decided to stop our iOS apps’ collection of IDFA data for now. Although this change affects the LinkedIn Audience Network (LAN), Conversion Tracking and Matched Audiences, we expect limited impact to your campaign performance, and don’t foresee major changes required for your campaign set-up.
Although LinkedIn is putting a stop to IDFA data collection, for now, it will continue to reevaluate and might start using it again in the future. The company made sure to share its commitment to privacy in its official blog post, even though it’s been caught with a number of privacy flaws in the past which allowed hackers to steal data from user profiles. The company stated that advertisers will still be able to power their ads using LinkedIn’s first-party data, to allow targeted campaigns across the social network.
While we will regularly reevaluate our collection of IDFA, we are committed to privacy-by-design principles that deliver value to our customers and provide a trusted experience for our members. Our plan is to leverage our first-party data to help marketers reach buyer groups, which are critical for success in B2B marketing, so they can achieve better value for their campaigns across all LinkedIn placements.
