Apple's app tracking transparency pushes publishers like Zynga to acquire or build their own ad tech, creating first party walled gardens that Apple can't touch
Eric Benjamin Seufert / Mobile Dev Memo : Tweets: @carnage4life , @eric_seufert , @matthausk , @erosresmini , @eric_seufert , @skwilder , @basche42 , @benedictevans , @benedictevans , and @benedictevans Tweets: Dare Obasanjo / @carnage4life : @Techmeme @eric_seufert Problem with this analysis is that nothing stops Apple from changing the rules again. After all they block streaming games because they can't review every game but not YouTube/Netflix where they don't review every video. They can & likely will make up new anti-advertising rules Eric Seufert / @eric_seufert : As I wrote in my @MobileDevMemo column this Monday, I believe Apple had one card to play in slowing the entropy of its command of consumer attention on the iPhone via the App Store, and it played it too soon with ATT. Thoughts in a thread (1/X) https://mobiledevmemo.com/... Matthus Krzykowski / @matthausk : This vertical ad network + game dev + x play will surely be one of the main talking points a few weeks from now when Applovin IPOs for +30B https://twitter.com/... Eros / @erosresmini : Not really a change IMO. This has been the case since the early days of the mobile app ecosystem. Makes more sense to cross promote for free than pay an ad network. I do agree with the point that mobile ad networks will become content companies over time to survive. https://twitter.com/... Eric Seufert / @eric_seufert : 2/ More background: https://mobiledevmemo.com/... @skwilder : @Techmeme @eric_seufert Should be interesting to see how this all unfolds Ben Basche / @basche42 : I mean Apple could touch them. Ban certain types of data collection on iOS period https://twitter.com/... Benedict Evans / @benedictevans : It also, of course, strengthens big players. Search ads and Instagram can manage without cross-site tracking. The NY Times can build first party data (or try to). Privacy conflicts with competition, exhibit 1 of ∞ Benedict Evans / @benedictevans : The war on cookies and tracking means the user targeting can only happen inside sealed boxes - Search, Intagram, TikTok - rather than the browser. So, Apple displaces all privacy questions to places where it has no control. Benedict Evans / @benedictevans : It might be interesting to compare privacy with music streaming. When music and movies went from DRM files you owned, and couldn't move, to streaming, 99% of the lock-in disappeared and that model of content lost all strategic value for tech platforms https://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
The road here started with Apple making its Identifier for Advertisers opt-in under iOS 14, which broke the third-party tracking that mobile advertisers relied on. Eric Seufert's argument is what comes next: rather than accept degraded targeting, large publishers like Zynga acquire or build ad networks of their own, moving measurement and monetization behind logins and owned inventory where ATT doesn't reach.
The stakes are sharpened by Apple's parallel moves on the other side of the table — it stands to collect more commission if developers pivot to paid apps and subscriptions, per the FT analysis in related coverage, while also pushing App Store ads onto the Today tab and product pages. As Stratechery's review notes, this is how a Google-Meta duopoly becomes a market where Amazon and Apple are major forces.
First-order effects
- Publishers like Zynga face an immediate build-or-buy decision on ad tech, because ATT strips the cross-app signal their user-acquisition economics were priced on.
- Meta and other demand-side intermediaries lose iOS signal at scale, pushing spend toward whoever owns the audience relationship — the publisher itself or Apple's own ad inventory.
Second-order effects
- Apple can answer publisher walled gardens by growing its own supply — the expanded App Store ad placements put its network in front of every developer's customers — though as Dare Obasanjo counters, nothing stops Apple from rewriting the rules again since it already applies them inconsistently across apps it reviews.
- The shift redraws competitive lines in digital advertising, contributing to the move away from a Google-Meta duopoly toward Amazon and Apple as major ad forces.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, mobile advertising consolidates around owners of first-party data, with mid-sized publishers who can't fund their own ad stacks becoming dependent on either big-publisher networks or Apple's.
- It feeds the paradox Benedict Evans identifies: privacy rules designed to check platform power end up entrenching the biggest platforms, because only they and the largest publishers can absorb the compliance cost.
The trend: Mobile advertising is reorganizing around first-party data ownership, with the gatekeeper that writes the privacy rules increasingly competing inside the market those rules reshape.