Apple’s latest commercial focuses on privacy and assures iPhone and iPad users that their data won’t be collected in secret and sold to the highest bidder.
Apple is doubling down on its privacy push, with a new commercial highlighting just how much of our personal information is being sold among data brokers, and how iOS and macOS technologies aim to tame that. The new spot, which will be broadcast in 24 countries in summer 2022, takes a tongue-in-cheek look at a data auction, as well as highlights how different settings on iPhone can be used to stymie that collection. It follows Apple’s previous efforts to underscore quite how valuable things like browsing data, email and messaging activity, and shopping history are in the age of the internet economy. Its “A Day in the Life of Your Data” report, updated in April 2021, aimed to pull back the curtain on how “data is pieced together, shared, aggregated, and used in real-time auctions, fueling a $227 billion-a-year industry” about which many are still blissfully unaware. That came as Apple was implementing App Tracking Transparency, forcing developers for iOS to request outright permission to track users’ activity across other companies’ apps and sites. While it didn’t demand an actual change in behavior — companies like Facebook and Google were still allowed to track and use ad network providers that rely on aggregated user data — it made that process more obvious to iPhone and iPad owners themselves. Since then, we’ve seen a number of other options added, some of which this new commercial — called, simply, “Data Auction” — calls out.
