With the introduction of the all new Apple iPhone OS 4.0, one of the biggest and foremost technology companies in the world, Apple Inc. has finally set its foot into the highly lucrative and at the same time intensely competitive mobile advertising market with its very own iAd platform. However, like Google and Yahoo!, Apple Inc. has also decided to provide the users with an option of opting out of the targeted advertisement program, but has kept the location tracking feature as a default, meaning that, you can opt from being targeted by advertisers, but Apple would still know which location you reside in.
Even if the users opt out of the targeted advertising program on iAd, still they will be served advertisements on the pages they visit, just not the relevant ones. Now, Apple and its advertising partners use cookies to understand the user pattern and based on those figures, decide the number of times an advertisement is to be served, serve only those ads that relate to users’ interests and also to analyze the success of the advertising campaign. However, if the users do not wish to be served targeted ads, then they can simply opt out of the program by visiting Apple website. Furthermore, Apple has also declared that, the opt out feature will only be applicable to its home grown advertising network and will not be affecting the third party advertisers such as Medialets or Millenial Media.
