The udid behind the mobile internet ad

As early as 2011, when Apple announced it was not in favour of continuing to use Udid, Apple officially announced that it would deny access to apps applications and updates to iOS devices Udid from May 1, 2013. The purpose of disabling udid is to protect the privacy of users, but this will cause a lot of trouble for mobile ad and related data monitoring companies, because it will not be able to accurately identify an independent user and its corresponding behavior, but also can not achieve reliable targeted advertising and reach user statistics, According to the mobile advertising provider MoPub billions of records on its system analysis found that after the disabled Udid apps developer revenue reduced by 24%. What is Udid Udid? Udid's full name is the unique Device Identifier Data, the globally unique identifier for iOS devices, which consists of 40 characters of letters and numbers. (see Figure 1) Apple released the Udid in August 2011, and the original Udid was originally intended to be the only device recognition. In recent years, with the rapid development of mobile Internet, because Udid is unique to every equipment in the world, it becomes an important tool for research and analysis of user behavior by mobile network advertising company, advertising data monitoring company, consulting analysis organization and apps developer. Fig. 1 UDID schematic diagram from the practical application see UDID has the following main uses: First of all, this technology can be used for statistics and analysis, and currently almost all iOS platform based advertising and behavioral statistics software rely on this ID for user differentiation. Second, the technology will also be used for user ID identification, the UDID as a user ID to uniquely identify the user, eliminating the cumbersome registration process. Account with the user's device binding, such as doing some restrictions on the operation of the application, only on their own device to run the application. So Udid for iOS application developers, is a very important indicator data, before this mobile internet advertising on the iOS device is precisely through the UDID to achieve accurate analysis and delivery, so that its ads more targeted, and data monitoring company's SDK, API is based on this key data acquisition. Now, if you submit a apps application or update that contains UDID capture statements, the developer submission system in Apple will simply reject the request (see Figure 2) unless you delete the corresponding code. Fig. 2 system reject information diagram Apple's move to shut down the only device-identifying information, based on concerns about user privacy, is not unfounded. A user has reported that the iphone and ipad will store information about where users have been, and even incidents in which South Korean iphone users have accused Apple of illegally collecting personal location information. Indeed, it is easy to do this technically, when users use the navigation class, social application location function, some tool class application, must open the positioning service, so as long as the reading of location data and udid information can fully grasp the user'sSuch privacy information, if there is a malicious disclosure, it is possible to the user's personal and property security poses a threat. Of course, in addition to the location of other privacy information is similar to the hidden dangers, such as mobile internet advertising companies through Udid to collect users to use app application behavior, understand what kind of app application is more popular with users, understand the ads by which users click Exposure, these behaviors include a lot of user privacy. It is more threatening than the cookie generated when using the browser, because Udid not only can not be emptied or deleted, nor can the user decide to turn on or off, and Udid is bound by the user's private devices, many applications will access the user's address book, Then through Udid and Address book information can draw a detailed relational network diagram, and when the Udid corresponds to multiple app applications, the aggregated information can be used for user portrait and preference records, so as to achieve a variety of very targeted marketing and information transmission, but also bring deeper hidden dangers. The Udid alternative is undeniable that Apple's ban on Udid, which has a greater impact on the mobile internet advertising industry, has sparked a collective concern among iOS app developers and advertisers. Because advertisers and developers often use UDID to track advertising effects, advertisers pay according to the data tracked by the developers, and the billing method is usually based on CPM: (cost/impression) x1000, advertising shows 1000 times the money spent to settle. So Apple's disabling udid is not conducive to the current mobile internet advertising in the business model and strategy is still on the road to explore the worse, so many mobile network advertising companies to join together to find udid alternatives. At present, there are several alternatives available: Apple's official alternative, open source solution Openudid, open source Secureudid and MAC address. 1. Apple's official alternative to introduce Apple's alternative, we can first take a look at the implementation code that gets udid before Apple disables Udid. Figure 3 Udid get code schematic after Apple disables UDID, it is recommended to use the code implementation in Figure 4 to apply, generate a unique identification string, after testing found that this method if two consecutive calls, get the identity of the string is not the same, This means that it will generate a different identification string for each application, and that the same application generates an identity string that is not the same when it is reinstalled after the first installation and the deletion, which in fact does not achieve the same effect as the original Udid. Figure 4 Alternative code implementation Diagram 2, open Source Solution Openudid Open Source Solution Openudid is to use the system pasteboard as intermediate storage for app invocation. However, this scenario also finds a problem after testing, although Openudid provides the same identifier as the original Udid, and multiple applications use the first application-generated labelKnow the code, so it seems to have reached the expected effect, but you put the application of the Openudid solution removed, reinstall, then with the original generated unique identification code is not the same, can not hold accurate and continuous binding terminal. 3, open source Secureudid This scheme is similar to the Openudid scheme, but the way to get the identification code is different, but the problem is the same. 4, MAC address at present this scheme is the alternative to most companies, including some data SDK also changed to collect Mac. But the problem remains, first of all, iOS devices in the wireless card, Bluetooth and other modules have their own MAC address, in different settings, to capture the MAC address may not be stable or even get. Second, according to Apple's official statement, IOS7 and subsequent versions will turn off MAC address acquisition, only to get 0X2FFFFFFFF's fake address, so, as the IOS7 official version is about to be released, basically cut the statistics and tracking user behavior of the posterior. There's no way to find a solution like Udid to track devices, this is a tricky issue for mobile internet advertising, so games and apps that rely on mobile ads for revenue will be hit hard and are not as direct and accurate as they used to be in advertising strategies, resulting in a drop in efficiency, The negative impact of low resource utilization, the use of alternatives can also achieve accurate advertising, but not as effective, which means that developers and mobile advertisers to find suitable alternative technology solutions and more adaptable business model.