Updated: The final answer has been updated to clarify Jim's position with respect to OpenUDID.

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 spoke to Jim Payne, CEO of mobile ad optimisation and mediation platform MoPub for his views.

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

Jim Payne: UDID is derived from the physical hardware device.

There are privacy concerns that arise from identifiers that are tied to hardware and cannot be reset or rotated in software.

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

The impact could be dramatic.

If advertisers and publishers don't agree on an alternative and Apple is very aggressive about removing UDID-based apps from the App Store, all performance dollars that are tied to app installs and conversions are at risk.

What plans do you have to work around the issue?

We are launching a modification to our MoPub client library (SDK) that will allow publishers to decide easily between passing UDID (if accepted by Apple), [Appsfire's] OpenUDID (as a fallback position) or a locally generated UDID that is app-specific, to enable frequency capping.

The latter two approaches do not necessarily provide for conversion tracking, although OpenUDID could if it is widely adopted.

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

We expect that Apple will need to address this in the platform - there is too much revenue at stake to the developer ecosystem not to provide something that enables tracking while still preserving user privacy.

OpenUDID takes advantage of the iOS platform's clipboard - the only means of sharing data between apps - to operate.

Because this is an unintended use of the clipboard, it's possible that this approach will be deemed unworkable in the future and it is at risk to tampering.

That said, it is our favoured approach currently because it respects and preserves a user's privacy while allowing conversion tracking to function.

At the end of the day, it is in everyone's best interest to have the solution come from the OS and platform so that publishers can stop worrying about closing the conversion loop and get back to creating great content.

Thanks to Jim for his time.