Updated October 7th, 2021
By Will Hemond, Director of Product Management
Apple recently released iOS 15, and in addition to the cool new features you may see on your Apple devices, the release has a greater impact from a recruitment advertising perspective. Your programmatic recruitment partner should be prepared for it, but just as important: you should understand the implications of what may happen if they’re not.
What’s the gist of iOS 15?
As part of the iOS 15 release, Apple introduced Private Relay, a privacy-centric feature. This new technology masks devices’ IP addresses, further limiting the accuracy by which advertisers measure user behavior online, especially on browsers where third-party cookies are not supported.
Launched in beta, the feature is ‘off’ by default and we’re noticing iOS users are slow to opt in (to date, only 5.7% of Appcast’s candidate traffic is using iOS 15 and 3% of those are enabling Private Relay). Right now, the impact is small but this could change at any time, especially if Apple changes the settings so Private Relay is defaulted to “on”.
This is important because ultimately, IP masking (Private Relay) will eliminate the ability to record and accurately attribute job applications submitted using the Safari browser. And if your programmatic recruitment partner still relies on third-party cookies, which have been blocked by Safari for some time, run!
What does this mean for your recruitment advertising budgets?
It means you will potentially lose your ability to attribute applies back to their source. To put this into perspective, let’s say 30% of your job seeker traffic comes to your job ads via an Apple-supported device or browser.
Before the release, you set your budget to generate 10 applies. Once received, those 10 applies flowed through your ATS and were all attributable to a source in your programmatic platform.
After the release, you set the same budget to generate 10 applies, and while those 10 applies still flow through your ATS, only 7 are attributable to a source in your programmatic platform as a result of IP masking, causing your programmatic optimizations/ROI to deteriorate.
But it doesn’t need to be like this.
What is Appcast doing to ensure job ads keep working?
At Appcast, we are passionate about ensuring that our clients have the data, insights, and support they need to make the best decisions possible on their job ads and their budget. In keeping with this mission, we have been working tirelessly to prepare for this update, developing first-in-class attribution solutions to ensure our clients can continue to advertise jobs and hire great talent without disruption.
We eliminated the reliance on IP addresses, and other browser-tracking identifying attributes, and instead use first-party data solutions and proprietary integrations with applicant tracking systems.
We fully support browser movements toward a privacy-first web experience, and are excited to introduce our first-in-class attribution solutions! With Appcast as your programmatic advertising solution, you don’t have to worry your job ads are working, that’s our job! Want to learn more? Talk with our experts about how Appcast is embracing the privacy-first web.
