Like most mobile advertising companies, mediation and monetisation platform inneractive has had to update its SDK to deal with Apple deprecating UDIDs.

And like many of them (but not all), it's chosen the most similar available replacement - MAC addresses - that are hashed to ensure user anonymity.

However, according to Itay Gadot, VP of marketing, it's unlikely to be a long term solution.

"This is a temporary solution which Apple will ban in 3-6 months. There is no real difference between the UDID and the MAC address in its eyes," he says.

More trackers

Instead, he expects a new type of companies to emerge to fill the gap.

"We'll also be integrating the widest support of device fingerprinting providers," he says, adding that over time, device-recognition aggregators will come to the fore.

As for the likelihood that a single industry-wide standard will emerge, he's unconvinced.

"It's hard to believe all publishers, ad networks, mediation and media buyers to agree on the same solution," he argues.

Developers down

His most strident views about the UDIDs deprecation concern the impact on content developers, however.

"It causes frustration and fragmentation in the market. There is no agreed, solid solution to track downloads, performance and data on a device level," he points out.

"The first ones to be hit are the developers - their revenue will drop and it will be harder for them to promote their apps.

"While the big publishers can probably manage this short-term crisis, the smaller and medium sized developers will not fulfill their full revenue potential."

[source: inneractive]