We enjoyed a great discussion on our webinar “Under The Hood of ATT: Lessons so far and best practices for the future“. We were joined by some of the brightest minds on App Tracking Transparency (ATT) and SKAdNetwork (SKAN):
- Alex Bauer, Head of Product Marketing & Market Strategy at mobile measurement and deep linking platform, Branch
- Paul Bowen, General Manager at the UA automation platform powered by LTV, Algolift by Vungle.
- Peggy Anne Salz, Mobile Analyst of VentureBeat and Mobile Groove and writer for Forbes and HarvardBiz.
- Thomas Petit, an independent mind working as a mobile growth consultant for some of the world’s leading subscription apps.
- Our own CEO & founder Shumel Lais also shared from our experience building unified performance views of SKAdNetwork data for some of the leading consumer mobile apps.
To get all the insights by watching the session on demand simply fill out the form at the bottom of this post. Alternatively, read on to get a high-level summary.
The iOS 14.6 tipping point is coming
Alex started by sharing the latest iOS 14.6 adoption numbers from Branch. The headline? Adoption is now growing fast, breaking 30% this week. Whilst most iOS users hadn’t seen the notification to upgrade until last week, that’s now changed. Up until now it’s been hard to understand the true impact of ATT, but we’re about to find out.
Attributable installs: “where the rubber meets the road”
Alex also talked us through the latest on ATT opt-in rates. Telling us that whilst most numbers put out there are nice numbers, they’re essentially one sided vanity metrics. Where the rubber really meets the road is when you look at two-sided attributable installs. He reveals all in this clip.
Whilst attributable installs sit at 7% of pre-iOS 14.5 levels the shocking / not so shocking number he shared was that attributable installs from Apple Search Ads have actually increased to 120% post-iOS 14.5!
In general, the panel basically agreed that what these numbers tell us is that ATT isn’t really worth expending too much energy on, unless you monetise heavily through ads. Even then the incremental gains will be small. Paul went further, telling us that “the IDFA is effectively dead”
However, most advertisers aren’t feeling this at the moment, because their MMP is falling back on fingerprinting. Not for long though, as we’ll cover in a minute.
Whilst media spend isn’t shifting yet, it’s coming
Shumel shared the latest data from us here at Appsumer on media spend shifts across OS’s and channels.
The reality is there’s no significant shifts yet, other than:
- Smaller spenders shifting more budget to Android, perhaps because they have less resources to build the effective measurement needed.
- Google’s iOS spend has reduced, however, it’s just moving to Android as their overall share of wallet remains consistent.
Thomas shared that what he’s seeing is many advertisers trying to squeeze as much as possible out of iOS before the IDFA disappears completely. Because iOS 14.5+ adoption hasn’t reached scale yet and fingerprinting hasn’t been cracked down on, things appear stable. There will be a tipping point and it will come in the next month.
Thomas also warned us of relying too heavily on Self Attributing Networks (SANs) modelled data. Whilst there’s a place for this “fake data”, it can’t be relied on solely.
SKAN is the long-term answer, fingerprinting is not
Paul gave us a good overview on the early challenges of SKAN data.
With reconciliation between publisher and MMP interfaces being a big challenge, Thomas highlighted that we now have multiple signals running in parallel, not a single source of truth. You identify trends from each different source and then validate across them.
However, the panel were all in agreement that Apple starting to share raw postbacks in iOS 15 is a big win for advertisers! For smaller advertisers, however, the challenge is how to leverage this data with limited resources. That’s where MMPs and other third-party BI and modelling solutions will likely have a role to play.
In the wake of Apple’s WWDC announcements, fingerprinting was a hot topic. With Alex and Paul summarising it here
The panel were all in agreement that fingerprinting is a short-term workaround to a long-term challenge. Apple clamping down is a question of “when” rather than “if”. “When” appears to be at the latest with the release of iOS 15 around September time. Shumel summarised that advertisers need to stop resisting SKAN in favour of short-term workarounds and focus on it now.
Wrapping-up
What’s clear is that we’re in for a rollercoaster ride over the coming month, so Thomas shared his holiday plans to run away from it all!
To get prepared for the month ahead, watch on-demand by filling out the form below and get all the insights and tips from the expert panel.
