On Monday, the Central Association of the German Advertising Industry (ZAW) filed a complaint against Apple with the German Federal Antimonopoly Office. In the complaint, ZAW says Apple's new App Tracking Transparency policy will cause significant harm to advertisers and violate antitrust regulations. ZAW in this case represents the interests of nine smaller German associations of advertisers, which, in turn, represent Facebook, the largest German media concern Axel Springer and other companies.
Recall that Apple's new rules, according to which users can decide whether to transfer data to advertisers, are criticized by many companies. We are talking about the so-called identifier for advertisers (IDFA) – a unique identification number assigned to Apple gadgets and helping, for example, in delivering contextual advertising to users. Users will now choose whether they are willing to give third parties access to IDFA.
In its complaint, ZAW calls Apple's actions a violation of antitrust rules, in his opinion, this step could lead to a decrease in developers' revenues by 60%. “With these unilateral measures, Apple is effectively excluding all competitors from processing commercially sensitive data from the Apple ecosystem. However, at the same time, the company excludes its own (advertising) services from the planned changes and collects significant amounts of user data itself, ”ZAW said. Last year, a similar complaint was filed in France, but the French antitrust authority found no irregularities in Apple's actions.
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