12K+ Google Play Store Apps With Open Programmatic Advertising Enabled Have No Detected Privacy Policies: Pixalate Report

by ExchangeWire PressBox on 31st Oct 2024 in News

Pixalate, the global market-leading ad fraud protection, privacy, and compliance analytics platform, today (October 31st, 2024) released the September 2024 Open Programmatic Ads and No Detected Privacy Policy Benchmarks Report for the Google Play Store, part of Pixalate’s Privacy Violation Risks in Mobile Apps series.

The report reveals new findings on the number of Google Play Store hosted mobile apps enabled for open programmatic advertising (i.e., apps with an app-ads.txt file) but have no detected privacy policies, according to Pixalate’s data. Pixalate also released an Apple App Store version of the report.

A privacy policy, also known as a 'privacy statement' or 'notice,' is an essential document often required to be disclosed under multiple global privacy laws and regulations, including the GDPR, CCPA, and more. It outlines how users’ personal data is handled by organisations and discloses individuals’ data privacy rights.

Key Findings

Over 12,000 Google Play Store apps with ads (an app-ads.txt file) failed to provide a detectable privacy policy.
Mobile apps without detected privacy policies accumulated over 1.4 billion estimated user downloads.
An estimated 49.2 million Monthly Active Users (MAUs) interact with Play Store apps with ads but no detected privacy policies.

Pixalate’s data science team analysed over 587,000 mobile apps available for download across the Google Play Store in September 2024 to compile this research.

Download the Reports