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KEY HIGHLIGHTS

💅 Custom product pages is not the same as ASO or A/B testing

🍕 How to slice and dice your data for different product pages

⚖️ Will privacy thresholds help or hamper this new feature

FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW

iOS 15: How custom product pages *could* dramatically impact UA strategy(with examples)

Among the big changes that are coming with iOS 15 are custom product pages – which offer the ability to customize app store pages for different audiences.

Note that this is very different from product page optimization(or app store AB testing), which is also going to be offered within iTunes starting iOS 15, which we might talk about in a different episode.

What are custom product pages?

You can set up up to 35 different app store pages in iTunes. Each app store page can have different screenshots, promotional texts and app previews. 

What is cool is that each of these is going to be targetable by a different custom URL, which you can use for different sources of traffic – which in some ways is reminiscent of tracker URLs of MMPs(except of course that unlike tracker URLs, you are sending users to different landing pages). What’s also cool is that you can send traffic from customized ad creatives for separate audiences to each landing page.

What might be some of the use cases of these custom app store pages? You could pair, for instance:

1. If you’re operating in multiple cities, you could send users from New York and Boston to different city-specific pages. Ad campaigns for New York send users to New York themed ads, and go to the New York page – ad campaigns for Boston send users to the Boston page.
2. You could promote different services, products or genres in different custom pages. For instance, if your fiction app has romance stories and thrillers, you could highlight both via different custom product pages(and have ads for romance stories and thrillers lead to these separately).
3. You could also target different types of user personas via different app store pages. For instance, a strategy game that has 2 personas – builders and battlers could have custom landing pages for each persona. An ad that highlights building can lead to a landing page for builders, an ad that emphasizes fighting/battling can lead to a landing page for battlers.
4. You could target different demographic profiles via different custom product pages. For instance, you could have separate landing pages for men vs. women, or for younger vs. older users(if say you’re a fitness app – or a dating app).

All of these possibilities are exciting – however the only question mark that remains is around how Apple might use the privacy threshold for conversion values in these cases. Apple’s documentation does say that you can:

• Monitor the success of each custom product page by viewing impressions, downloads, conversion rate, and more in App Analytics.
• Measure retention data and average proceeds per paying user for each custom product page, so you can see how it performs over time.

This isnt still 100% clear around whether you’ll see aggregated data that is accurate and not obfuscated by privacy thresholds. For instance, if you run a campaign to a custom product page for New York – it becomes easier for you to separate out all New York users as a cohort and track their performance, which can be helpful for marketers, but seems to go against the grain of everything the privacy threshold is designed for. 

The privacy threshold is already being a problem for many folks we work with on iOS 14.5+ – and it’s unclear as to how the reporting and privacy thresholds will work out if you have 35 custom product pages, and you’re sending a trickle of traffic to each of these.

With that caveat though, the custom product pages are definitely a big step forward – and we’re definitely excited to explore the possibilities that unfold with it.

A REQUEST BEFORE YOU GO

I have a very important favor to ask, which as those of you who know me know I don’t do often. If you get any pleasure or inspiration from this episode, could you PLEASE leave a review on your favorite podcasting platform – be it iTunes, Overcast, Spotify or wherever you get your podcast fix. This podcast is very much a labor of love – and each episode takes many many hours to put together. When you write a review, it will not only be a great deal of encouragement to us, but it will also support getting the word out about the Mobile User Acquisition Show.

Constructive criticism and suggestions for improvement are welcome, whether on podcasting platforms – or by email to shamanth at rocketshiphq.com. We read all reviews & I want to make this podcast better.

Thank you – and I look forward to seeing you with the next episode!