Apple's WWDC privacy changes seen as 'slight positive' for Meta, Snap
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The privacy changes that Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) introduced as part of last week's World Wide Developers Conference to its various operating systems are seen as a "slight positive" for the advertising industry, notably Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) and Snap (NYSE:SNAP), according to investment firm Piper Sandler.
Analyst Thomas Champion, who rates shares of Meta (META) and Snap (SNAP) neutral with a $220 and $18 price target, respectively, noted that Apple (AAPL) made a number of changes to its SKAdNetwork and it's possible that Apple took advertiser feedback into account. 
"Investors' fears temporarily subsided post-WWDC because things didn't look worse," Champion wrote in a note to clients, adding that no major changes were introduced, such as App Tracking Transparency or Private Relay. 
Additionally, there was no push to ban fingerprinting, which could impact identifying a user based on their IP address or other location signals and though fingerprinting is technically not allowed under ATT, Champion posited that "it's possible Apple has turned a blind eye to fingerprinting given ATT's disruption to digital advertising and the poor feedback on SKAN."
As part of the new SKAdNetwork, or SKAN, advertisers will get three different postbacks at pre-determined intervals, compared to one anonymized postback on a 24-hour basis currently. This will give them more data points on how users interact with apps after they install them.
Additionally, the new version of SKAN will support attributions for web-to-app intervals, which Champion called a "clear positive and provides visibility into an area that advertisers currently are unable to track."
At this point, it's unclear when the new version of SKAN will be implemented, but Champion believes it "may represent a shift in tone toward being more accommodative for advertisers, not less."
On Tuesday, Meta Platforms (META) started to roll out new parental supervision features supported in Instagram and in its virtual-reality tools.