Apple has started a summer-long digital marketing campaign in Saudi Arabia built around a single, relatable moment: handing your iPhone to someone else and hoping they don't scroll too far. The campaign, running across four ads, puts the spotlight on Locked and Hidden Apps, a feature that lets users gate any app behind Face ID, Touch ID, or a passcode.
The feature addresses a familiar anxiety: showing a photo to a friend or relative while quietly hoping they don't wander into messages, banking apps, or anything else meant to stay private. Once an app is locked, its content stops surfacing anywhere else on the phone, including search results, notifications, Siri suggestions, and call history. Users who want an extra layer of privacy can hide an app completely, tucking it into a dedicated Hidden Apps folder that opens only with biometrics or a passcode.
Apple said the push into Saudi Arabia reflects rising regional interest, with local users increasingly asking about this specific feature, separate from the brand's ongoing Safari billboard campaign in Dubai.
Apple has outlined the campaign according to the following four basic principles: data minimization, information processing on-device and not server-side, user visibility and control, and security being built in from the ground up as a foundation. Face ID technology is crucial for the campaign because the odds of unlocking the device with another person's face are less than one in a million. At the same time, facial data cannot be recorded as an image and is accessible neither to apps nor to Apple.
Check out the latest campaign here
The campaign also touches on Safari's tracker-blocking tools, which use on-device machine learning to identify and block cross-site trackers, some of which appear by the hundreds on a single webpage. Its private browsing mode adds fingerprinting protection to further obscure device identity, a contrast Apple draws against Chrome's incognito mode, which doesn't block trackers.
On the messaging side, Apple points to end-to-end encryption dating back to 2011, now paired with post-quantum cryptography, along with spam filtering and call screening that route unknown senders and unidentified callers into separate categories before they reach the user directly.
Also Read: Apple’s Hide My Email Flaw Can Expose Your Real Inbox, Researchers Warn
Apple is now using the marketing campaign to fight one of the concerns of the user, namely that their iPhone listens to conversations to offer personalized advertisements. According to Apple, the app cannot access the microphone without permission. In addition, a light indicator shows when the microphone is in use. Instead, Apple cites cross-app tracking as a solution to the uncanny advertisements, an issue solved by App Tracking Transparency, which allows blocking all tracking requests with a single setting button.
Apple's recent marketing campaign is yet another example of how the company continues to prioritize privacy through built-in privacy and security features in response to growing consumer demand.