With Apple finally acting on its long stated goal of deprecating UDIDs as a method of tracking users, this week has seen many of the key players in the mobile advertising and monetisation space rolling out their responses to the situation.

We caught up with Jussi Laakkonen of cross promotion platform Applifier for his views.

Pocket Gamer: Why do you think Apple has deprecated UDIDs?

Jussi Laakkonen: Clearly the high level motivation for the UDID deprecation are privacy concerns and the pressure directed at Apple from US legislators.

UDID is a problematic identifier as it's permanent and unique, where as cookies can be cleared and hidden by the user e.g. for anonymous web browsing.

What impact do you think the deprecation of UDIDs will have?

Specifically for the application install market on iOS, this deprecation is a major issue as it makes it impossible to know if an app promotion converted into an install. This is problem, because Apple doesn't support tracking installs through the App Store.

On Android, this problem doesn't exist as the Android Market supports tracking installs through the Market, and the developer and ad networks can use this to identify what promotion created each install and thus get transparency and accountability for advertising spend.

What plans do you have to work around the issue?

For us the work around is quite simple. Applifier's cross-promotion network works on a "send a user, get a user" model, so instead of installs the user exchange will now work on "send a click to the App Store, get a click to your app on the App Store", which doesn't require use of UDIDs.

Do you think there will be an industry-wise solution everyone can agree on?

Given the very large repercussions for this change, I believe that a trusted, privacy compliant solution will be found.

There will be competition on who gets to provide the "industry standard", and that competition will be good for making sure the best solution wins.

Thanks to Jussi for his time.