The Impact of Apple's App Tracking Transparency on App Monetization

On Tuesday October 4, from 12:15 – 13:30 O’clock, Reinhold Kesler (UZH) will present his research in our Seminar Series. Title and abstract of the talk can be found below.

The Seminar will be held in Seminar Room RuW 1.201 as well as broadcasted via Zoom with the following link:

https://uni-frankfurt.zoom.us/j/97914923495?pwd=dXJWd0ZTNjVDYitJV1FNWWxaamc0QT09

Meeting-ID: 979 1492 3495
Passcode: 234038

Titel: The Impact of Apple's App Tracking Transparency on App Monetization

Abstract: Recent years have been characterized by privacy regulations amid concerns of exploitative data collection and use, thereby also setting boundaries to the data economy that fuels today's ad-funded Internet. An example is Apple's App Tracking Transparency (ATT), which necessitates explicit consent for tracking users outside of an app and potentially undermines revenues from advertisements. This paper studies, whether and how app developers turn to payments as an alternative revenue source in response to a more privacy-preserving environment. Specifically, we use rich web-scraped data to compare the monetization of more than 580 thousand apps on Apple before and after the privacy change and across platforms with apps on Google in a difference-in-difference setting. The results suggest that ATT brings back paid apps and reinforces the industry trend towards in-app payments. Although the impact is small, it is more pronounced for apps relying on Apple as a platform and for apps that employ user tracking targeted by the privacy change.

Working paper: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4090786

More information on Reinhold Kesler can be found here:https://www.business.uzh.ch/en/research/professorships/entrepreneurship/team/kesler0.html