Apple Rejecting Apps Using Cookie-Tracking Methods, Signaling Push To Its Own Ad Identifier Technology Is Now Underway
Mobile app developers using a technology called “cookie tracking” (sometimes called “Safari flip-flop” or “HTML5 first party cookies") are starting to have their apps rejected …
Context & Ripple Effects
This is the second wave of Apple's identifier cleanup. A year earlier, in March 2012, Apple began rejecting apps that access device UDIDs over privacy concerns — and cookie tracking (the "Safari flip-flop" or HTML5 first-party cookie method) emerged as the obvious workaround for advertisers who still needed cross-app attribution.
With App Store review now rejecting those apps too, the escape hatch is closing on schedule: Apple wants tracking to run through its own ad identifier, where it controls both the API and the privacy rules. The move matters because Apple enforces this unilaterally through review, not through any published developer agreement yet.
First-order effects
- Developers whose apps embed cookie-tracking SDKs face outright App Store rejection, forcing immediate swaps to Apple's ad identifier or removal of third-party tracking code.
- Mobile ad networks and analytics providers built on the cookie workaround lose their primary attribution method on iOS overnight.
Second-order effects
- Ad networks must rebuild their measurement stacks around Apple's identifier, shifting power over what data is collected — and under what terms — from networks to Apple.
- Developers get squeezed between two identifiers in one year (UDID then cookies), raising integration costs and pushing smaller shops toward whichever network adapts first.
Third-order effects
- Apple is establishing a pattern of governing the mobile ad ecosystem through App Store review rather than policy documents — platform-owner control of tracking becomes the default structure, with the rules set by whoever runs the store.
The trend: Mobile advertising is consolidating around platform-controlled identifiers, as Apple replaces open tracking workarounds with its own gated technology through successive App Store rejections.