Ad-supported and subscription-only newsletters both have ways to understand audiences without the tracking pixels blocked by Apple's Mail Privacy Protection
How Mail Protection Privacy will force the email economy to adapt — Today, let's talk about one of Apple's many announcements …
PlatformerCasey Newton
Context & Ripple Effects
Apple's Mail Privacy Protection was already framed in related coverage as a threat to publishers, including solo Substack operators, because it disrupts a standard way of observing email engagement. This article matters because it focuses on how both ad-funded and paid newsletters adjust their audience understanding rather than treating blocked pixels as the end of measurement.
The move fits Apple's earlier effort to build privacy-preserving ad attribution without relying on conventional tracking. It also places newsletter measurement within Apple's broader shift toward limiting tracking in its products.
First-order effects
Ad-supported and subscription-only newsletter operators must replace pixel-derived audience signals with other methods of understanding reader behavior after Apple blocks those pixels in Mail.
Publishers identified in the related coverage, including solo Substack newsletters, lose a familiar engagement signal at the same time they are assessing the impact of Apple's notification and Mail changes.
Second-order effects
Ad-supported newsletters need audience evidence that does not depend on Mail pixels when explaining their readership to advertisers, while subscription publishers must assess engagement without the same signal.
Newsletter platforms and publishers are pushed toward measurement practices that remain usable under Apple's privacy controls rather than optimizing around a single email-tracking mechanism.
Third-order effects
Apple's approach points toward an email economy in which publisher analytics are designed around privacy-constrained signals, echoing its earlier privacy-preserving attribution work.
The trend: Apple's privacy controls are shifting digital publishing from passive cross-service tracking toward audience measurement built to function with fewer observable signals.
How Apple's mail changes work - effectively it will report 100% open rates. A huge pain for a lot of business that aren't violating anyone's privacy. https://twitter.com/...
A bigger publisher can probably take the hit of 20,000 subscribers sitting around, they'll be paying for tens of millions of sends a month. For a smaller publisher, this significant percentage of “maybe iPhone/maybe unengaged” will quickly eat into your send budget.
Apple: We are going to block publishers from getting any data for their newsletter analytics. Also Apple: But if the same publishers instead published via Apple News, we will give them all kinds of data ... https://twitter.com/...
Do Apple truly believe in privacy? Nope... not one bit. They only care about it when it comes to ‘other people’. So Apple has announced it will block IP, location and open rates for newsletters. But at the same time, this is what they say about Apple Podcasts: https://twitter.com…
“This is what the big fish like Apple never seem to be able to internalize. That they need a rich ecosystem of small fish to push new ideas forward. That if they eat or starve us all, they might get the whole pond to themselves, but it'll be an awfully stale one.” https://twitter…
Facebook: We are going to launch a newsletter service. Apple: Hehehe, we are going to block all the analytics for that, so that publishers can only get analytics if they use Apple News instead https://twitter.com/...
That said: while I think these privacy features are mostly really good for the average person, it also bears watching just how good they are for Apple's business https://www.platformer.news/ ... https://twitter.com/...
@CaseyNewton For those already developed with audiences this is just going to shrink their epeen number, yes. For those with no audience it might stop them from ever succeeding. https://twitter.com/...
Worse though it means that you can no longer prune or unsubscribe readers that haven't opened your newsletter in a long time. iPhone readers who don't click through will look identical, and they are suddenly going to be a big percentage of your audience (where @heyhey isn't).
Okay I got mad enough about Apple's Mail Privacy Protection to write it up. It's bad news: big email marketing biz Litmus expects Apple Mail on iPhone to be almost 50% of opens. That's ~50% of your data gone. Worse though, it hurts small pubs the most. https://tk.gg/...
Apple: We are going to block newsletter open rate because nobody should be able to know what you read. Also Apple: We will track everything you listen to so that we can use that to give you personalized recommendations. https://twitter.com/...
Every time Apple talks about privacy, and my twitter feed fills up with people saying 'hahaha! We hate advertising!", I think of this chart. Advertising is a big business and it pays for a lot of important stuff, and it's a good idea to try to understand it. https://twitter.com/.…
“There's also simply no way users are going to willingly accept the premise of spy pixels if Apple presents the privacy dangers as clearly and as honestly as we've done in HEY.” https://world.hey.com/...
here's a video from Apple explaining in-detail how their upcoming “Mail Privacy Protection” feature works tl;dr - email open rates & tracking data will continue their descent into irrelevancy https://twitter.com/...
New from me —> I break down the biggest news for publishers out of Apple's #WWDC21 updates to iOS and macOS. They're pretty substantial and important! Like, Apple just unilaterally murdered your email newsletter's open rate. MURDERED IT https://www.niemanlab.org/...
Apple has tried to improve notification triage before. But it's now going significantly further — and in a way that is risky for news outlets that rely on those push notifications for traffic. https://www.niemanlab.org/...
Apple is removing creators' primary tool for maintaining a clean list. This puts creators at an unfair disadvantage to get their work in front of their biggest fans. Inbox providers ask senders to keep their list clean, but then take away the metrics needed to actually do that
Will my iPhone's algorithms decide that a breaking news story from Bloomberg is “urgent,” “important,” or “time-sensitive”? How about something more feature-y pushed by The Atlantic, or a game score notification from ESPN? https://www.niemanlab.org/...
A packed set of Apple announcements could have big impacts on news publishers And a big problem for newsletter publishers 😳 https://www.niemanlab.org/...
Apple may have blown a hole in the growing email newsletter industry by making it easier for users to block tracking which lets publishers know if messages are being read or opened in its latest OS update https://www.niemanlab.org/...