Mobile Dev Memo Podcast Season 5, Episode 16: Quantifying the impact of ATT (with Daniel McCarthy)
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Apr 15, 2025 In this discussion, Daniel McCarthy, an Associate Professor of Marketing at the University of Maryland, shares insights from his recent research on the impact of Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT). He highlights how ATT has disproportionately affected small businesses, leading to significant declines in advertising effectiveness and revenue. The conversation dives into the challenges of adapting marketing strategies in the wake of privacy regulations and clarifies common misconceptions about ATT’s true effects on e-commerce performance.
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Origin Story of ATT Paper
- The ATT paper originated from a collaboration sparked at a conference, involving combining two complementary data sets and research papers.
- They merged revenue impact data with advertising spend data to provide a comprehensive view of ATT's effect on e-commerce firms.
ATT's Disproportionate Impact
- ATT reduced the effectiveness of meta conversion-optimized ads by about 37% and caused a 38% relative drop in revenues for more exposed firms.
- Small businesses were hit harder, with a 68% relative revenue reduction due to their higher reliance on meta advertising.
Robust Approach Controls Confounding
- The study used fixed effects regression to control for firm and time differences, comparing conversion-optimized ads to click-optimized ads within the same firm before and after ATT.
- This robust approach isolated ATT's specific effect amid disruptions like COVID-related changes in online buying behavior.