In the era of Google’s new Advertising ID

Google released in Google Pay Services v4 a new id, the Advertising ID, to be used for advertising and analytics purposes. Developers or analytics and ad networks should use this identifier to track a device as stated in Google Play Developer Program Policy beginning by 1st of August. This id is resettable and enables the option to a user to opt-out from interest-based advertising.

The release of Advertising ID follows the release of Apple’s IDFA similar concept, which is now forced when releasing in AppStore. The enforcement of using a unique identifier on mobile across networks that can be used for analytics and advertising purposes it’s a good thing and eventually will bring higher revenue to developers and more relevant interest-based ads to the users. Moreover, it brings back the control to the user when it comes to advertising and interest-based ads. Mobile users can now reset or even opt-out whenever they want, something that was quite difficult the previous years.

What should developers know about Advertising ID?

• According to Google Play Developer Program Policy, all apps and updates released in Google Play beginning by 1st of August should use this identifier for advertising purposes. Same things apply to the libraries that apps use.
• The use of Advertising Identifier either by the app or by a library that the app uses, should be disclosed to app’s users through a privacy policy notification.
• The access of the status of the identifier should be verified each time to verify the Opt out of Interest-based Advertising option.
• The Identifier should not be associated with any personal related information nor with any previously resettable identifier without prior user consent.

To sum things up, we do not know how strictly will Google try to enforce the use of Advertising Identifier by 1st of August, however developers should act pro-actively to make proper use of this identifier according to the Google’s policy terms and choose wisely their partners for advertising or analytics to ensure the proper use of this identifier by them too, before using them within their apps.

Pollfish released a couple of weeks ago a new version (v3) of its Android SDK to ensure the alignment with these new policies and terms. You can download and integrate the new Pollfish Android SDK here.