Privacy vs. Blocking: The Real Story Behind Consumer Choice

There’s a big difference between consumers opting out of tracking (which would be every consumers right) and Big Tech outright blocking measurement for their own gain. Yet, the lines keep getting blurred.

Take Apple’s Private Relay, a feature that allows users to effectively be routed through a VPN while browsing in Safari, making you invisible across the web. It sounds like a major privacy shift, but in reality? After nearly 4 years of Apple pushing it, we see only ~16% of Apple related bid requests routed through Private Relay, meaning most users aren't opting-in. Perhaps due to widespread complaints of Private Relay interfering with the user's experience. I personally experienced an issue with getting onto Netflix while testing Private Relay, as Netflix couldn't verify my location properly.

Now, compare that to a marketer simply adding a pixel on their own website to share their first-party data with their preferred measurement or DSP providers. Apple’s broader privacy policy automatically block nearly 2/3rds of pixel-based measurement hits (and upwards of 85% for some marketers), regardless of whether the consumer has explicitly opted out. That’s not consumer choice, that’s a platform-driven decision that limits visibility into what’s actually driving business outcomes for all marketers alike. Benefiting Big Tech in the name of “privacy”, forcing marketers to integrate and further leverage Big Tech's products.

So what can you do about it?

✅ Leverage 1st-party data: Build direct customer relationships and own your data.

✅ Adopt clean rooms: Securely match and analyze data without relying on big tech.

✅ Use server-side pixels: Bypass browser-based restrictions to improve measurement accuracy.

The future of measurement isn’t about waiting for Big Tech’s next move, it’s about taking control of your own data strategy.

#Marketing #AdTech #Privacy #FirstPartyData #PrivateRelay #Measurement #AdTechAIFiles