Blog : Mobile Advertising

What is IDFA? Can Apple Disrupt the Advertising Industry? And Why is Facebook Afraid of the IDFA changes?


Why does Mark Zuckerberg want to inflict pain on Apple? 

Apple’s making some significant changes to IDFA, the utility that app developers use to get information about who someone is. Understandably, some consumers take issue with being tracked. But IDFA is essential to the way that a lot of advertising works.

Advertisers aren’t going to be able to target audiences as effectively once Apple initiates its changes; they’ll have to ask customers to provide access. 

So, Apple could really disrupt Facebook, because Facebook isn’t really in the social media industry; it’s in the advertising industry. Facebook makes most of its money through ads and the less effective ads are, the less money it will make. But Facebook is not the only company that will be disrupted it will ripple through the whole advertising industry. We reached out to Ankit Minocha at Shop2App to get his thoughts on if he thinks IDFA trend will disrupt the advertising industry, and he stated “It certainly will, what this is doing is putting all players, small or big, on a level field. Because there’s a big unanswered question of what percentage of people are going to opt-out of that data privacy pop-ups, it’s hard to say how extensive this change is going to be.”

Advertisers will have until mid-Spring 2021 to adjust to these changes. With location sharing being more opt-in, the effectiveness of ads can go down considerably. Even if ads are able to target audiences they may not be able to track their success.

Google in response to the pressure from Apple has announced similar changes, as reported by Wired that they will be phasing out third-party cookies from its Chrome browser by 2022. These IDFA and Cookie changes are both beneficial for the end user’s privacy, bit it radically changes the way advertisers and apps have historically worked.

Ultimately, the fact is that users are becoming more concerned about security and more wary about sharing data. Users are increasingly eschewing services like Google in favor of Duck Duck Go, to improve their own security and anonymity online. This represents significant disruption in how advertisers will function.

The success of our agency is built upon the success and growth of our clients. Contact Colure’s Mobile App Development Team to discuss your next project or to be interviewed and featured in our next series of “Project Venus”.

Bluetooth Low-Energy (BLE) Beacons Are Making Mobile Apps Smarter


Advertisements today can be overwhelming to consumers. Especially in the last decade as advertising has come to focus on online consumerism, customers are constantly bombarded with popups for the latest and greatest products. The negative response to this shift in marketing has led to a need for innovative and unique technologies that avoid overwhelming consumers while still reaching an audience. Indoor location technologies, such as Bluetooth Low-Energy (BLE) Beacons, is one of these innovative designs.

What are BLE Beacons?

Bluetooth Beacons are wireless devices that draw attention to a specific location, within a finite space. A clear example of a beacon is a lighthouse: its light draws attention from offshore ships, letting the ships know their distance from the lighthouse and the shore. Bluetooth Beacons do the same thing in a virtual environment, allowing brick-and-mortar businesses to send out signals to mobile devices in the immediate area.

Bluetooth Low-Energy Beacons, also known as Bluetooth 4.0, are just as their name suggests. They do the same thing in practice while maintaining low energy consumption.

How do BLE Beacons work?

The wireless device draws attention to its location by periodically putting out a radio signal. This radio signal consists of a small packet of data, usually advertisements. A beacon at a sports store, for example, might periodically send signals for current deals on hiking boots. Compatible mobile devices within close proximity to the beacon (usually about 100 meters) would then receive those advertisements, triggering applications to prompt responses like push messages or actions.

Why use a BLE Beacon?

Bluetooth Beacons, in general, allow businesses to deliver highly contextualized and personalized advertisements to their customers. Unlike other indoor location technologies such as GPS and NFC, Beacons are hyper-localized and specified for indoor environments. This means that the customer isn’t going to get advertisements for every store in the mall, but they also don’t need to be standing directly next to a product to receive an advertisement.

BLE Beacons also cost 60-80% cheaper than classic Bluetooth Beacons (although classic Bluetooth is recommended for more complex applications). Their low-energy consumption allows them to last much longer than the classic Bluetooth Beacon. The BLE Beacon stays in sleep mode unless it is actively configuring a connection, so it can last up to 3 years on one coin-cell sized battery.

Who benefits from using BLE Beacons?

Both Classic Bluetooth and BLE Beacons can be beneficial to a company. Classic Bluetooth can handle larger amounts of data, but BLE Beacons are ideal for transmitting advertisements to applications that periodically use small amounts of data. This, in addition to their low-energy consumption and cheaper cost, means that small businesses may benefit from using a BLE model over classic Bluetooth location technology.

The value of in-store retail sales influenced by beacon technology increased by $40 million between 2015 and 2016. The benefit of being able to personalize advertisements to customers continues to appeal to businesses, and it’s expected that 4.5 million beacons will be active by 2018.