‘Vespri’ by Trevor Żahra translated by Clare Vassallo

With the newly launched operating system iOS 14 for iphone and ipad, Apple will be asking users for consent to track their personal use of the Facebook app through the ATT framework (App Tracking Transparency).

What do you do when you’re stuck in traffic? Fiddle with the car radio? Listen to the banter of DJs or … study the driver of the car next to you until you get obsessed with her and end up following her around in the streets?

This is exactly what happens in a short story in Vespri, Trevor Żahra’s award-winning short story collection, when traffic goes to the narrator’s head; he starts chasing a Nissan Terrano with the number plate JES 010, driven by a platinum blonde girl.

Żahra’s short stories depict a delightful conglomeration of characters and situations from everyday life, touching upon different themes such as sex, music and death. Each character comes to life when an odd curiosity, a harmless observation or a weak trait is spun into a tale. And that is why in Vespri we explore a blind marriage, a letter posted to a tombstone and playing on a piano, which has no sound.

The collection is a play on the senses: you can smell the whiff of suntan lotion in Ambra Solare, listen to the musical sound of Spanish in Mħabba fi Żmien ilKolera, the sense of touch in Ħamsin Sfumatura, the emptiness in Pitiross and the visual imagery in Inviżibbli and Xagħar Aħmar.

Vespri was such a joy to read and such a critical and popular success that it earned the author his umpteenth National Book award. Now, a few years later, it has been translated into English and is available as Vespers to make Żahra’s writing accessible to English-language readers.

Clare Vassallo’s beautiful translation is sensitive to the original, preserving the flow, the music and the magic of Żahra’s inimitable writing. Vassallo skilfully captured Żahra’s tongue-in-cheek play with words and the almost breathtaking pace of his writing that make this book another remarkable reading experience.

Now anyone who prefers reading in English, whether by choice or because they don’t understand Maltese can enjoy some of Malta’s best literary talent. ‘Vespers’ is available from all bookshops or online directly from www.merlinpublishers.com with free postage to Malta and Gozo.

These changes will affect the way advertisers optimise and target campaigns based on conversion events (such as retargeting campaigns) and advertise mobile apps. In addition, this will result in limitations on ads personalisation and performance reporting for both app and web conversion events.

Why the new Apple update?

Privacy is one of Apple’s core values. As its’ manifesto explains, “Privacy is a fundamental human right... Your devices are important to so many parts of your life. What you share from those experiences, and who you share it with, should be up to you. We design Apple products to protect your privacy and give you control over your information…” So Apple’s take is that the new update will provide more transparency and user control because it will restrict third parties from tracking user information across apps and websites.

Facebook’s reaction

Facebook is trying to leverage awareness on this topic and convince users to accept their datatracking requirements. In fact, in a recent announcement, Facebook has explained that the new Apple’s privacy policy “will have a harmful impact on many small businesses that are struggling to stay afloat and on the free internet that we all rely on more than ever. Apple’s policy will make it much harder for small businesses to reach their target audience, which will limit their growth and their ability to compete with big companies.”

How will the new update affect Facebook advertising?

According to different studies, the changes with iOS 14 will affect app-install advertisers in the first trimester 2021 and non-app install advertisers around the second or third quarter of 2021, due to significant changes data tracking and performance. Apple’s new privacy policy update will cause the following impacts:

• Limitations on ads optimised for conversion events.

• Limitations on measuring the performance of iOS 14 app install campaigns.

• Limitations on reporting for some web conversion events.

• Delay reporting, estimating results, attribution conversion windows across Ads Manager, ads reporting and the Ads Insights API.

• Targeting limitations.

• Dynamic ads limitations.

• Likely, these changes will also affect the performance of organic posts. In fact, each user’s feed is based on the preferences expressed by everyone in apps or websites when browsing Facebook, Instagram or Messenger.

Facebook’s recommendations

Facebook is recommending a series of actions that businesses should take in order to run effective campaigns. The following are already available:

• Update your Facebook’s SDK for iOS 14 version 8.1 to help personalise ads delivered to iOS 14 users (just for App advertisers).

• Facebook will limit to eight preferred web conversion events (per domain) for campaign optimisation. Initially, it will automatically configure the conversion events that are the most relevant to your business based on conversion activity.

• Verify your website’s domain to help avoid any future disruption of your website campaigns.

• Create separate iOS 14 app install campaigns due to reporting limitations from Apple’s SKAdNetwork API. Each app is limited to nine iOS 14 campaigns at once. Each campaign is limited to five ad sets of the same optimisation type (just for App advertisers).

Personal data and GDPR

Compliance with the European

Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) should be a top priority for any business. GDPR aims to “lay down rules relating to the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and rules relating to the free movement of personal data” and impacts the way we all do business.

Transparency, control and security over personal data should always be accessible to users. For this reason, it is crucial to be aware of any changes and updates and to ensure any implementation meets all the requirements – for example:

• Consent notice is displayed when users access your website or app.

• Affirmative call to action is placed on the consent notice.

• Provide list of third parties which will have access to the user data.

• Explain how third parties use their personal data.

“Privacy is a fundamental human right... Your devices are important to so many parts of your life. What you share from those experiences, and who you share it with, should be up to you. We design Apple products to protect your privacy and give you control over your information…”

To analyse the results of these changes it will be necessary to wait for a few months; and will depend on how many Apple’s users will opt out of iOS14.

Marketers have faced different challenges in the last years, especially during the pandemic, which have affected the way they used to work. This is yet another challenge that will test creativity, resiliency and transformation.