Note: We’re excited to announce the second edition of our live workshop series, Mobile Growth Lab, to help marketers, leaders and execs prep for a post-IDFA world! 

In the first edition, we helped over 40 attendees: 

• See the map
• Prepare the groundwork
• Move forward
• Find acceleration 

We’ll cover all that (updated for the reality of the post-IDFA world) and many requested topics like web-based flows, creative strategy, conversion values, prep for iOS 15, and more. 

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KEY HIGHLIGHTS

💎 How attribution for SANs have worked until now – with and without SKAdNetwork.

❇️ SANs grade their own homework right now.

🌪️ What changes with iOS 15.

🎀 Why this change matters for advertisers.

⛅ The one exception to this change.

FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW

One of the bigger changes that is coming with iOS 15 is happening mainly under the hood – and this is very significant because this will mean there will be no SANs starting iOS 15 (well, no SANs except one – I’ll explain that caveat in a bit), and that has far reaching implications for advertisers.

As background, until this point, whenever a self-attributing network (SAN) like Facebook, Google, Snap or Apple drives an install, it does not share the postback with an MMP – both pre and post SKAdNetwork. Here are the mechanics of how SANs have worked thus far:

• When a user clicks on a SAN ad, installs the app and completes a post install event, the SAN records the impression and click data associated with the user.
• For non-SKAdNetwork traffic (Android and non-SKAdNetwork traffic in iOS), the MMP records the in-app event data – and sends this device level data to the SAN. If the SAN has impression and click data that corresponds to the device ID of a user that’s had an impression or click in the SAN, then the SAN ‘claims’ the installer and reports this claim to the MMP.
• The MMP deduplicates this ‘claim’ – so if two different networks ‘claim’ the user, the MMP gives credit to only the network with the last click. (But of course the SAN will still report all the installs and events they claim – they get to grade their own homework).
• This setup of course has changed with SKAdNetwork since there are no user level post install events. For SKAdNetwork traffic, the SAN records the click and impression data; and then receives the postback for installs and conversion values (because it’s a registered ad network under SKAdNetwork).
• The SAN then reports on both actual SKAdNetwork data as well as ‘modeled’ values for post-install events. MMPs (and advertisers through them) receive the SKAdNetwork data in aggregate form – but do not receive individual postbacks for installs and conversion values under SKAdNetwork.

Hopefully you can see the challenges with this approach – primarily that you basically have to take the SANs’ word for whether their traffic has resulted in a converting user or not. Oftentimes, as with view through installs, there is a grey area around whether a network caused an install or not – and oftentimes SANs have been known to bulk up their install and conversion counts by including view through installs.

And of course, modeled data for SKAdNetwork is, well, modeled – and not objectively accurate. Plus if a network isnt held accountable for the accuracy of the aggregate SKAdNetwork data that they send, you have no idea as to what they’re doing under the hood.

In fact, one SAN we know was intentionally replacing the ‘null’ conversion values in SKAdNetwork by zeros – and this very fact suggests that more nefarious actors could do worse if they wanted to.

Well, all of that is set to change with iOS 15. With iOS 15, advertisers – or MMPs acting on their behalf, can receive raw postbacks for SKAdNetwork data. While of course SANs can still claim installs or conversions as their own, MMPs and advertisers can now objectively validate if these claims are accurate or not.

As a result, marketers are going to be able to do an apples-to-apples comparison between networks, which right now they havent been able to do because the bigger SANs (Facebook and Google) have tended to report modeled data – which arent directly comparable because they have had different models.

Besides, the bigger SANs have tended to run ‘under the hood’ campaigns due to which they trigger different privacy thresholds compared to networks that run campaigns directly as per SKAdNetwork campaigns. Consequently it’s been hard to ascertain the true number of conversions generated by a campaign right now, since a number of conversions are getting obfuscated – that’s set to change as you know exactly how many conversions were generated by an SKAdNetwork campaign, and compare these across channels.

With iOS 15, even if Facebook and Google run ‘under the hood’ campaigns, internal teams will be able to look at how these campaigns are structured – and more importantly, use this campaign level data to do an apples-to-apples comparison between sources.

The one exception to all of this, is Apple Search Ads, which will not run via SKAdNetwork, and will be tracked via Apple’s Ad Services API – which will continue to be a self-attributing network. That’s a different conversation altogether – but iOS 15 solves this problem for all other sources.

Ultimately this will make measurement much less hairy and much less problematic – and that is definitely something we’re looking forward to as advertisers.

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!