Overview
Our platform can no longer distinguish iPads as tablets in the same way as before. This document explains the reasons behind this change and how it impacts your ability to target iPads in your advertising campaigns.
Apple made a change to how iPads identify themselves online. In the past, iPads were easily recognized as tablets, allowing for precise targeting in advertising campaigns. However, due to a change in the user agent (UA) string—a piece of information that websites and platforms use to identify devices—iPads are now often identified as desktop devices (specifically as Macs) instead of tablets.
Understanding the User Agent (UA) String
The user agent string is a piece of text that your device sends to websites and online platforms, which includes details about the device, operating system, and browser. This information can be used to target specific devices, like tablets or smartphones.
Here’s an example of how the UA string for iPads has changed:
Old iPad UA String (Identified as a Tablet):
Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; CPU OS 14_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/14.0 Mobile/15A372 Safari/604.1
New iPad UA String (Identified as a Desktop/Mac):
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/14.0 Safari/604.1
As you can see, the new UA string for iPads closely resembles that of a Mac, making it difficult for our platform to distinguish iPads from desktop devices.
Why This Matters for Targeting
Due to this change, our platform can no longer reliably identify iPads as tablets. As a result, when you attempt to target tablets and iOS as the operating system, iPads may not be included in your campaign. This change was made by Apple to provide a more consistent browsing experience across their devices, but it has had the side effect of making device-specific targeting less accurate.
What This Means for Your Campaigns
- Broader Device Targeting: If iPads are a crucial part of your target audience, you will need to broadening your device targeting to include both desktops and tablets and target MacOS and iOS as the operating system. This will help ensure that your ads are more likely to reach iPad users but also means you will run on Macs as well.
- Ongoing Updates: Our team is continuously monitoring these changes and exploring potential solutions. However, due to the nature of the technical change by Apple, there may be limitations to how accurately we can target iPads in the future.
Need More Help?
If you have any questions or need assistance with optimizing your campaigns under these new conditions, our support team is here to help. Please reach out, and we’ll work with you to ensure your advertising strategy remains effective.