Last updated: 29/01/21
This post is part of a series of posts called “How key mobile media channels are responding to iOS14 and SKAdnetwork: Everything you need to know in one place”. In this post we explore in detail how Snap Ads campaigns will be impacted by Apple’s decision to make IDFA access opt-in for users. You can get detail for the other top iOS Self Attributing Networks (SANs) using the links below:
What is Snapchat Ads iOS share of wallet?
To start, let’s look at how significant iOS spend is for Snapchat Ads. We recently looked at ad spend by Operating System (OS) in a benchmark report of our customers. For Snapchat what we found was that 66% of their spend comes on iOS versus 34% on Android, so their advertisers do favour iOS.
In terms of overall share of wallet they have a solid 6%, making them the fourth biggest SAN on iOS behind Facebook, Apple Search Ads and Google UAC.
For more information on iOS share of wallet, download our quarterly benchmark report.
What is Snapchat Ads doing about IDFA losses?
Snapchat has been publicly pretty quiet on how it’s reacting to changes so far. The two things they’ve shared publicly are on their help centre here and here. What can we surmise from these two posts?:
- Snapchat currently has SKAdNetwork support in beta and they will “share more about SkAdNetwork setup and campaign management for Snapchat’s Ads Manager soon“. So they will support SKAdNetwork and nothing suggests they won’t share this data with MMPs.
- If you look at Snapchat’s App Privacy disclosures they highlight device IDs and their help centre they also suggest advertisers need to use ATT, which would suggest that they are likely to use the ATT prompt to try and collect IDFAs. However, they say “we will share more about ATT and Snapchat soon“, so we’re still speculating at this point.
With Snapchat Ads using SKAdnetwork (SKAN) in a similar vein to Facebook and Twitter there will likely be some limitations on campaign structure, real-time data and view-through attribution akin to what Facebook and Twitter have announced. However, we’re still speculating at this point.
What does it mean for your Snapchat Ads campaigns?
It’s hard to fully prepare without an understanding of how Snapchat are reacting to iOS14, however, here’s a couple of things to start thinking about:
- Measurement: Snapchat will use SKAN, the details of how are uncertain, however, we’d assume they will pass this data back to MMPs in a similar vein to Facebook. This will introduce limitations around delayed data and reporting granularity for Snapchat campaigns. Time is tight, so you may be racing to get this sorted for your Snapchat Ads campaigns before the ATT deadline.
- Campaign structure: Expect similar campaign, ad set and ad limitations on Snapchat Ads to those for Twitter and Facebook due to SKAdNetwork limitations. For Facebook this is 9 specific iOS campaigns with 5 ad sets under each. If you have well developed Snapchat ad campaigns this may require some consolidation and a resulting loss in granular targeting capabilities. For now break out separate draft campaigns for iOS and start building to similar constraints to those on Facebook.
- Fluctuating performance: Much like the other social channels we’ve covered, you will likely lose view-through attribution for Snapchat ads. This means that when Apple implements these changes the perceived performance of Snapchat will drop because their impact is better further up the funnel. However, probabilistic modelling will be able to help you regain some visibility and give credit back to channels like Snapchat. Equally, we’d expect Snapchat’s algorithms, like others, to require a learning period after these changes. Performance will fluctuate in the short-term and this means that if you can move campaign budget to Android in the short-term to hit performance metrics then do.
Concluding thoughts
It’s hard to estimate what the impact of these iOS14 changes will be on Snapchat campaigns without much information. However, we would assume that many of the same constraints you will face with Facebook and Twitter campaigns are going to be relevant for Snapchat campaigns.
It’s also likely to create more data complexity when you’re trying to understand full-funnel performance across channels and operating systems. Here at Appsumer this kind of data complexity is what we thrive on. We’re building the most complete SKAdNetwork Reporting & Modelling solution to deliver you transparency on different metrics and a full performance view despite SKAdNetwork’s limitations. You can read more on that here or get in touch to discuss specific solutions for your challenges.
For now, give us a shout if you have any questions and check back here as we update this resource when more announcements are made in the coming month.
P.S. Don’t forget you can get more detail that we’ve put together by media channel using these links:
