The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has used its 2023 leadership meeting on Marco Island, Florida, to accuse Apple of “cynicism and hypocrisy” over its treatment of advertisers.
CEO David Cohen said the trade group was ready to confront Apple over its App Tracking Transparency. According to AdAge, Cohen has accused Apple of using double standards.
At the conference, Cohen said Apple’s privacy policies represented a growing threat.
He said, “While there are no shortage of extremists attacking our industry from the outside, there are some attacking it from the inside out. Most notably, Apple exemplifies the cynicism and hypocrisy that underpins the prevailing extremist view.”
Speaking to AdAge, Cohen said that Apple is not interested in a “fair fight” and that it had ignored the industry. He said, “It can’t be that ‘personalization’ in the Apple ecosystem equals ‘tracking’ outside of it. We were imploring them to not use this kind of language around tracking…the very binary ‘turn on,’ ‘turn off’ [choices].”
He continued, “Apple said, ‘Thank you for the feedback,’ and they did what they did. [They] have not been back to the industry table again. So, we want to call it out for its hypocrisy, and we want to invite them back to the table.”
Apple has not responded to Cohen’s remarks, but it has previously argued that its privacy features are not intended to boost its own business at the expense of others.
However, Apple’s ad business has grown significantly while others have fallen.
