What is Mail Privacy Protection?

On September 20, 2021, Apple released iOS 15 and its Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) feature. The main repercussion of this release was the caching and preloading of an email’s remote images and pixels before a user opens the email. As a result, emails coming through the Apple Mail client appear as opened, causing impression counts to appear inflated. This also had a direct impact on the calculation of CPM, CTR and other impression-based metrics.

According to Apple, MPP “stops senders from using invisible pixels to collect information about the user. The new feature helps users prevent senders from knowing when they open an email, and masks their IP address so it can’t be linked to other online activity or used to determine their location.”

So what does this mean for email advertising campaigns? We are anticipating a few impacts that will occur over time:

Reporting

Impressions, and metrics that are based on impressions, will not represent true email opens.

• Impressions will be inflated because Apple will pre-load all email images before the user opens the email themselves.
• Since more impressions will be recorded, CTR and CPM will decrease as a result.
  
• Post-view conversions will also increase, as all received emails will be eligible for being counted as a PVC.

As part of iOS 15, Apple set up a proxy for all inbound mail traffic, which means you won’t be able to understand whether the user is on a phone, tablet, or desktop device. It will be labeled as Apple MPPProxy

• Reporting on device type (phone, desktop, or tablet) will be unavailable for Apple users.

Targeting

Because MPP allows a user to mask their IP address, geo-targeting will not be as precise. 

• Geo-targeting Apple users will be limited to the country and state. DMA and ZIP code targeting will likely not be available.

Because Apple is using a proxy server, targeting based on device type will also be unavailable.

• You will not be able to target Apple users based on whether they are using a phone, tablet, or a desktop device.