Author: John Koetsier

Vungle has now bought four companies in nine months. And, as we hear from LUMA, there have been more billion-dollar adtech acquisitions in the first quarter of 2021 than in the previous several years combined.

So what’s going on in adtech and marketing?

Obviously we’re in a period of massive change and upheaval. The third-party cookie may have lived to fight another day, but the IDFA apocalypse happened and it’s not coming back at scale. There’s new levels of competition and regulation, and that’s causing huge swings in market behavior that frankly, we haven’t seen in a decade or more. Accruing as much first-party-data as possible that isn’t subject to platform rule changes or regulatory oversight is more and more critical.

How does that all connect with Vungle buying JefFuel? And with all the other mergers and acquisitions in adtech and martech, like Digital Turbine buying Fyber?

To find out, I had a conversation with Vungle’s SVP of Revenue Scott Silverman on Growth Masterminds, Singular’s podcast for mobile marketing insight.

Vungle’s adtech acquisition strategy

Silverman says Vungle’s strategy is to buy companies that help adapt their business to a changing marketplace while building core functionalities that app developers need from game design and development to marketing and monetization.

The goal: one company that can increasingly meet all their needs. In other words, an integrated tech platform for development, growth, even retention.

Adding JetFuel, he says, is also about helping developers and marketers compete in an increasingly challenging ecosystem.

“How can we help them acquire users where those users live?” says Silverman. “The market is becoming increasingly complex. And so consolidating in that environment helps solve some of these tough problems.”

It’s certainly good timing, because influencer marketing is probably the fastest growing advertising segment right now.

 

Influencer marketing is (still) exploding

People are on social media in their billions, as we know. And in a lot of cases they’re blind to traditional ads: one of the reasons why rewarded ads are so popular is that they demand at least some attention. But influencers are pros at capturing attention, and what they offer, when done well, isn’t perceived as an ad.

Influencers capture the lion’s share of the attention of those billions on social, and now JetFuel owns a network for 15,000 of them with 4 billion Instagram followers, 1.5 billion TikTok followers, and 100 million daily Snapchat views.

That’s significant scale.

And scale is good, Silverman says.

“I think that having some level of scale helps give marketers confidence that the partners they’re working with are invested and capable of solving the tough problems that they have.”

It’s good timing.

Influencer marketing is still exploding, according to Influencer Marketing Hub, which says that while the category accounted for just $1.7 billion in 2016, it hit almost $10 billion last year. In full calendar 2021, influencer marketing is projected to grow to $13.8 billion. That’s impressive, and platforms like JetFuel — which hit our 2021 Singular ROI Index for superior returns on ad spend — makes it easy. Where influencer marketing used to be a one-off business per influencer, platforms like JetFuel make it programmatic.

 

Surround sound marketing and the Rule of 7

This kind of reach — and programmatic access to it — plays into what a Clorox direct-to-consumer marketing executive recently told me about “surround sound marketing.”

“I am a firm believer that creating a ‘surround sound’ for consumers is helpful,” says Vivan Chang, VP Growth at Clorox DTC. “[You are] leveraging influencers, brand partnerships, on top of the  traditional social and Google and affiliates, really having a lot of different places that have similar but maybe slightly different messaging for a consumer.”

That’s interesting for mobile-first companies to consider.

 

As mobile has become both pervasive and normal, mobile-first and mobile-only companies are starting to think of themselves less as apps and more as brands. And in an increasingly less granular, less trackable, and less deterministic marketing world, they’re starting to explore advertising avenues that previously they might have turned their noses up at. In other words, they’re looking at more traditional marketing channels … which are decidedly non-traditional for mobile gaming and fintech and retail app companies.

The surround sound idea is simple: be where people are, and ensure they encounter your brand on the web, on mobile, in apps, on social media, and in outdoor and in-venue options.

The old-school rule of thumb for marketing was the Rule of 7: people needed to see your brand and your message seven times before taking action. The exact number is of course debatable and in fact incredibly dependent on individual people. And there’s no magic to it: someone who doesn’t need what you’re offering is unlikely to bite.

But surround sound marketing including web and even potentially offline and non-digital channels are increasingly important to mobile brands.

The interesting thing about influencer marketing?

It’s increasingly cross-platform and cross-channel … a row and not a column. An influencer might have his or her strength on YouTube or TikTok or Instagram, but as the creator economy matures and influencers see others get canceled or negatively impacted by algorithm changes, most are working hard to develop one-on-one platform independent connections to their fans. That might be email, web, a creator coin (yes, they exist), an app, or a minimally-curated platform like OnlyFans (not just adult content!) or Substack.

And that means that fans see messaging from influencers in multiple places.

 

Content fortresses, picks and shovels, and slightly different strategies

It’s interesting to compare Vungle’s strategy to Digital Turbine, which recently bought Fyber as well as AdColony. (Interestingly, many of the acquired and acquiring companies are perennial winners on Singular’s ROI Index. Correlation isn’t causation … but there could be a connection there …)

There are two strategies that adtech and martech leaders are using separately or together, as they wish and are able, in the current rush to acquire, merge, expand, and dominate. (Or just survive.)

• Build a verticalized tech stack to better enable the flow of demand
• Build a content platform that enables the supply of demand

The first strategy is about the tools and the tech: creating, packaging, and offering the “picks and shovels of the gold rush” that Silverman talks about to app developers and marketers. The second strategy is about creating what Eric Seufert calls a content fortress, an entirely first-party way to both create and satisfy demand.

Digital Turbine wants to build a one-stop shop like Vungle: a “fully verticalized and fully integrated advertising stack,” as Digital Turbine’s EVP of corporate development and strategy Matt Tubergen told me. Interestingly, Digital Turbine with AdColony, Fyber, and Mobile Posse has focused on the advertising side, where Vungle has focused on the tools — the “picks and shovels” — that mobile brands need to be successful. But Digital Turbine is also trying to build a platform that embodies demand, thanks to the 600 million Android devices it ships on straight from the OEM: a content fortress.

That’s supremely valuable because it puts you in the position of being able to create the supply that you then fill with demand. Ultimately, it taps into what makes the SANs so effective at hoovering up huge percentages of advertising budgets … owning both sides of the coin. It’s a new kind of (sometimes verticalized) walled garden.

Vungle hasn’t necessarily gone there yet.

JetFuel is clearly access to billions of potential impressions over dozens of platforms. Algolift assists in user acquisition. GameRefinery helps developers and product managers refine games and improve monetization. And TreSensa is a creative production and optimization tool for marketers.

It will be interesting to see if Vungle starts acquiring companies on the content and demand side as well. Because that’s certainly possible.

Vungle was purchased for $750 million in 2019 by Blackstone, an investment company with $649 billion dollars in assets under management. It’s not shy about making acquisitions — Blackstone currently has 95 portfolio companies — and has another $39 billion in available capital to invest.

In other words … there are very smart and well-funded people behind the scenes that are likely to pull the trigger on more investments and acquisitions as the adtech and martech markets consolidate and existing players jockey to provide as much value as possible: to make themselves as indispensable as they can to their customers. And to survive the already-here and still-coming data squeeze.

“We’ve been super-active just in the last nine months,” Silverman told me. “There’s no plan to slow that down.”

“If we find something that we think is going to be the right fit for our company, our culture and our vision, we’ll continue the trajectory.”

 

Subscribe to Growth Masterminds

Did you even know that Singular has a podcast? Probably not … we’re pretty shy about it. Here’s an idea: subscribe to us chatting with the smartest marketing people we can find. (And maybe ping me if you want to be a guest!)

Subscribe on …

• Apple podcasts
• Spotify
• Google podcasts
• Other podcasting platforms

 

 

Mobile ad spend is in a chaotic state right now.

Android is increasingly growing mobile app install ad spend over iOS as iOS 14.5 adoption hits mainstream. Meanwhile ATT adoption is slowly increasing as the late majority updates their phones and tablets, and ad networks that took the IDFA apocalypse seriously and prepared well in advance for the massive changes that iOS 14.5 and SKAdNetwork brought are growing market share significantly.

We’ve been reporting regularly on the changes iOS 14.5 and SKAdNetwork have been driving in the mobile industry. Check the recent stories in the series if you haven’t seen them already:

• iOS 14.5 is driving ad spend to Android
• iOS 14.5: ATT permission, spend trends, and install volume
• IDFA opt-in and iOS 14.5 adoption

 

Android vs iOS ad spend trend continues

As we reported last week, the changes and uncertainties of iOS 14.5 and SKAdNetwork have driven ad spend to Android, causing spend on iOS to drop. That trend is continuing into late June.

 

 

In the last two weeks of June, that trendline just extended. iOS has lost another percent of total ad spend to Android from June 14 to early July. The pace of change has declined, so it’s not hard to imagine this trend stopping and even reversing somewhat over the next month as mobile growth experts get their SKAdNetwork feet under their legs and reinvest in iOS.

Mobile spend is somewhat chaotic at the moment — there’s even panic in the space, according to some industry analysts — leading to fairly erratic choices that might not be 100% data driven.

 

iOS 14.5 adoption: now at mainstream

iOS 14.5 is now basically mainstream, as nearly three quarters of Apple mobile devices are updated to 14.5 or later.

And that means that most of the impact that iOS 14.5 and subsequent iOS releases will have on the industry is already happening now. While we’re not yet at the 90% level, almost 70% of people globally have updated their iOS devices to iOS 14.5 or higher.

(I’m currently on iOS 14.7 on the iOS beta program.)

 

 

The U.S, Germany, and Japan are all above that level, China, Russia, and South Africa are lagging a little. Some of that lag is likely due to older devices that cannot update to the latest operating system; others due to people who are specifically ignoring updates.

(One note: if you happen to notice that at just over 43% China appears to have barely progressed from the just under 42% we last reported, you’re not nuts. Since this data is based on the OS version reported during an app install, it’s possible that even in sample sizes of millions of installs per country we could get a segment that isn’t 100% representative. It’s definitely directionally close, but if early adopters don’t regularly add more apps, the data could under-report them.)

 

App Tracking Transparency opt-in rates: slightly up

ATT acceptance rates are slightly higher in the past few weeks. Last time we reported, on June 23, App Tracking Transparency acceptance rates were at 23.64% globally, on average. This past week’s data indicates that ATT opt-in is now at 26% globally.

We’re now seeing the late majority and even laggards update their devices, so it’s not surprising to see that they might have slightly different preferences and habits. Ultimately, however, these levels are nowhere near where mobile marketers would like them to be if the IDFA was going to keep its primary position as a tracker and identifier for measurement purposes.

 

 

There are definitely some countries where optimizing at least some of your mobile marketing performance via IDFA is still very much an option. With 30% and up opt-in rates in South Africa, France, Korea, and over 40% in Brazil, this data can still be useful.

The U.S., Germany, and Canada, however, are in the 20% club. Given that you need IDFA opt-in from both the app advertising your app and your own app to enable full measurability, 5-10% of your installs might have IDFA. That’s nothing to sneeze at or ignore … it can be at least one indicator for optimization.

But clearly it is no longer definitive. The IDFA is now one of multiple signals in a more complex data environment that mobile growth marketers need to take into account in order to understand performance and optimize for future growth.

 

Ad networks with growth in SKAdNetwork

SKAdNetwork has been good for some ad networks that worked hard to prepare for the IDFA apocalypse. Among the gainers: Vungle, Liftoff, Applovin, IronSource, and Unity. Some platforms were also up, including Twitter and TikTok.

While some of that might be due to chaos in the space and spend flailing around looking for a place to land, there’s a clear correlation between ad networks that spent time and effort and money preparing for iOS 14.5 — and publicizing the fact — and those who are gaining.

One company SKAdNetwork was good for?

Apple.

Apple Search Ads saw a huge bump immediately following the launch of iOS 14.5. Its percentage of app install ad spend almost doubled week over week. But … it’s a mistake to attribute all of this to iOS 14.5, however, as Apple also released a new placement at the top of search results at nearly the same time, and advertisers probably wanted to give this a try. In about a month, however, that growth reversed itself somewhat, and in the most recent week ASA is up about 20% after adding almost two percentage points of global spend.

One thing we know: SKAdNetwork isn’t good news for all smaller players.

It is interesting and important to note that the flight to mid-tier networks didn’t — at least yet — include third-tier players: the smaller ad networks with less of a footprint and fewer clients. While we’ve often seen at Singular they produce good ROI, they’re simply not as well known or understood. And in some cases they may lack the capacity to soak up additional billions of requested ad placements in literally days or weeks.

 

More data coming soon: connect to get it direct

We are releasing data regularly on the impact of iOS 14.5. Sign up for updates to our blog here (scroll down to subscribe.) Then make sure you drag the email to your priority in-box to ensure you see it regularly.

And, if you need next-generation marketing measurement support, book some time with Singular. We’ll listen, learn, and suggest some options that are working well for others.

The good news is that nothing’s changing about the actual user functionality of deep links.

The bad news is that in iOS 14.5 and iOS 15, there are significant changes to how marketers can use them and what marketers get out of them. And while Android 12 is adding significant new privacy features to Google’s mobile operating system, they don’t appear to include anything around deep linking … yet.

Deep links, as mobile marketers know, allow one-click access to specific resources or sections deep within an app.

They also allow one-link access to a brand’s information and offers, whether they’re online or in an app, and can also enable directed in-app experiences for people who have not yet even downloaded your app, via deferred deep links.

On Android, that’s achieved via Android App Links, and on iOS deep links operate via the Universal Links framework. Both are supported and “just work” when developers and marketers use Singular Links.

 

Deep links are old …

Deep links have been around since 2006 in a web sense. There, they simply refer to linking directly to a page or resource inside a website rather than the home page itself. But deep linking as a mobile technology to enable direct access to a specific in-app location started in an incredibly kludgy and hard-to-use way as early as 2008 in “iPhone OS 2,” as Apple’s mobile operating system used to be called.

Google popularized the technology in 2012 when it added deep linking to Google+.

(Remember Google+, Google’s abortive attempt at a social networking Facebook competitor?)

Over the years they’ve undergone significant changes. But most of the complexity of how developers need to associate web resources with app resources, how to create links, and how to measure their use and effectiveness is buried under a simple link creation interface in the Singular dashboard. One change in iOS 14: app-website associations are no longer managed by apps on devices, but by server functionality in Apple’s CDN.

 

Nothing’s changed for users

Marketers use deep links to get existing app users from a push notification, an email, an in-app message, or even a website to an offer, resource, information, level, or functionality within an app. Marketers also use deferred deep links to provide a custom experience to brand-new users who haven’t yet installed their apps.

If, for example, McDonald’s offers a 10% discount for mobile ordering, McDonald’s would probably like to have new mobile customers land right on a thanks-for-installing-here’s-your-10%-off-coupon page right after getting the McDonald’s app from Google Play or the iOS App Store.

That still works and works just fine. At least, from a user perspective.

Marketing measurement, however, is a different story.

 

Deep links and marketing measurement in iOS 14.5 and iOS 15

While the user experience part works just fine, measurement on iOS now relies on knowledge of a user’s in-app choices that the link origination point has no means of knowing.

“Generally, deep link measurement is as dead as IDFA-based measurement,” says Singular’s Jonathan Chen. “You can’t attribute unless you have consent.”

But, of course, the IDFA is not quite dead. And deep linking measurement is not quite dead either. Someone could have your app and upon completion of the deep link and entry into the app experience, you can check on ATT (App Tracking Transparency) permission. If they’ve granted it, you can attribute that user action, measure it, and record it.

But as we know … most won’t.

And those that do might be really deferred. Imagine a deferred deep link scenario for a new user or customer who does get your app, but you are only asking for the IDFA via ATT opt-in on second or fifth open, or maybe after a different event or level of engagement.

Of course, deferred deep links have their own core problem: they depend on attribution which is unknowable because it hasn’t been set yet. In the classic model, marketers knew that a device with an IDFA of 123456 saw an ad, clicked on a link, installed an app, and is now opening an app. The deferred functionality can then tell the app where to direct the new user or customer.

In other words, getting them to the 10% discount page for mobile ordering.

You don’t have that IDFA anymore in most cases, making deferred deep links hard to implement. At least for very specific use cases. The 10% discount page for new mobile users might be a blanket offer to everyone: easy to implement. A $50 off to a specific customer for a specific reason via a specific offer … not so much.

There may be a work-around, however.

iOS has a universal clipboard so that iPhone owners can copy something in one app and paste it in another (and, in fact, copy on a Mac and paste on an iPhone, or vice-versa). This is very useful for long strings of text. But it’s also dangerous, in some ways, for passwords or other sensitive information that users might copy, because other apps that are active can see what is on the universal clipboard.

So if an originating app or website or email could paste something on the clipboard and a newly downloaded app could access the clipboard … and if it all happened fairly quickly and if the user hadn’t already done something else somewhere else and copied something else … there could be a way of connecting a stimulus with an action.

The failure rate could be high with this methodology, and the longer the gap between the click, the install, and the eventual app open the higher it will get, but some use cases are quick, so it could work. Inviting someone to a private chat channel in a messaging or social app, for instance, might be something someone acts on immediately. But some use cases require certainty, like vouchers, rewards, and customer-specific discounts, and in all scenarios you’d need a backup methodology in case it fails.

(Welcome to the blast from the past: “enter this code” for your discount.)

Plus, there are likely privacy and Apple guideline risks here. It’s not hard to imagine how this could be used to break privacy rules and track devices/users even if they have not consented via ATT.

So this requires serious thought and consideration before implementing, and apps had better be able to defend what they do and how they do it to Apple during the App Store review process.

 

Deep links and Android 12

Android 12 is the next major leap for Google’s mobile operating system, and it will bring more personalization, more privacy, and better performance to the most popular operating system on the planet.

In terms of privacy, Android 12 will add notifications about apps using permissions — think Apple’s privacy nutrition labels — as well as visual notifications via device light-ups when the mic and/or camera are on. Android 12 also will introduce a very interesting new feature: a “private compute core” that functions as a sort of firewalled edge computing capability for potentially sensitive personal data like transcriptions.

The privacy features in Android 12 don’t include a Google version of App Tracking Transparency, however. But some versions of ATT will likely come to Android in some way at some point (the specificity in this sentence is shocking, I know). FLoC is delayed and third-party cookie deprecation is delayed.

But they have not been taken off the table.

 

Privacy-safe marketers may need a blast from the past

Deep links are still great functionality to make your apps work well and your users or customers happy. They won’t be panaceas for marketing measurement, however.

And in some cases, they never were.

Self-attributing networks like Facebook, Google, Snap, and Twitter never allowed measurement links for mobile campaigns, meaning that deep links and deferred deep links had to be set up separately per platform, if at all. Wrapped links — like those on Twitter that always start with t.co, or links from a URL shortener like bit.ly — also don’t work.

Fortunately, there’s a technology that has worked for decades: the coupon code.

The technological solution still works, and there’s likely more than can be done here. But the backup plan is as old as the very first newspapers.

iOS ad spend is now down 32% from its peak in 2021.

In early February, mobile advertisers that have both an Android and iOS app split their buying almost evenly between Android and iOS. Between February 2 to 7, marketers spent 56.16% of their budgets on Android app install campaigns and 43.84% on iOS.

But last week, from June 14 to June 20, the split was 70.29% to 29.71%.

That’s a massive difference in just four months.

 

Digging into the data: iOS vs Android ad spend since iOS 14.5

There are some explanations to make and a few caveats to mention here.

The chart above is a representative sample of Singular’s global ad spend data totalling more than $1.5 billion from February to June 20. All of the sample spend is from customers who have both an Android and iOS app.

Is this all due to iOS 14.5?

Probably.

But is the iOS ad spend situation as bad as the numbers look?

Probably not quite, no.

But it is significant. We haven’t seen this kind of Android vs iOS shift in recent years, so this appears to be a real event that’s actually reflecting a shift by mobile app install ad buyers globally. However, it’s very important to note that part of this apparently massive iOS to Android shift is likely due to artificially inflated iOS spend in the weeks and months before Apple released iOS 14.5. As we know, iOS 14.5 took away a guaranteed advertising identifier while making marketing measurement harder and user data more scarce. So part of the big numbers in iOS ad spend in February and March was likely pre-buying: purchasing ad inventory in the last days of the free IDFA before Apple’s iOS 14.5 came and made the identifier for advertisers an advertiser ask and a user opt-in.

So some of this massive decrease is likely illusory.

But not all of it.

Case in point: the mobile ad spend numbers after April 26 tell a similar story.

April 26, of course, is when Apple released iOS 14.5. In almost every week since then, the percentage of total ad spend that advertisers directed to iOS has dropped, while Android keeps rising. The week before iOS 14.5 dropped, iOS ad spend was 37% of total spend on Android and iOS combined. The week after, it was 32%, and except for a minor bump in the week of May 17, the downward trajectory has continued until last week, ending (for now) on June 20 at 29.71%.

It’s not just the percentage of iOS ad spend as a proportion of all mobile app install ad spend that’s dropping.

It’s also the actual spend totals.

If we normalize February 1-7’s ad spend as 100%, June 14 is 59.8% of that. If we agree that the early February data is an outlier and prefer to look at February 15, the June 14-20 data is still 26 percentage points lower: 86% of early February’s spend to basically 60%.

Correlation isn’t causation, right?

But … there’s something else that has been happening at the same time.

iOS 14.5 adoption hit the turbo button

Right after May 30, Apple flipped a switch and started informing iOS users that there was an upgrade available. Adoption rates, which had been slow, immediately picked up. By June 17, the latest data I have, 52% of global iPhone owners have updated their devices to iOS 14.5.

Germany leads the pack with almost two thirds having updated their devices, while South Africa is just shy of two fifths. After a slow start, Chinese users have rapidly accelerated their updates.

If there’s a causal relationship between availability of ad identifiers and ad spend focus, the ad spend percentage between Android and iOS is likely to continue to change in Android’s favor. If this is a temporary phenomenon until advertisers rejig their growth stacks for SKAdNetwork and non-fingerprinting probabilistic measures of advertising effectiveness, the iOS ad spend percentage could rebound.

Time, as they say, will tell.

And … App Tracking Transparency opt-in rates?

ATT rates haven’t really changed through the iOS 14.5 adoption curve.

On May 21, when iOS 14.5 adoption was under 20% globally, ATT-restricted devices were at 19% and opt-in rates were at 19.4%. On June 4, that was only up to 24.3% globally, and opt-in rates were up a hair to 19.7%.

As of last week, we’re at 23.64%. Note: that means 23.64% of the time when iOS apps requested App Tracking Transparency authorization, they get it. More than three quarters of the time, however, they do not. As many others have written about, thanks to the dual-opt-in necessity of marketing measurement in iOS 14.5 (advertised app and ad-displaying app) these numbers mean that unless your app is an extreme outlier, the IDFA is essentially useless for what it once was: the definitive provider of attribution truth.

(One caveat here: even if your dual opt-in rate is only 10% or so, if you find that your ATT opt-in users are representative of your ATT opt-out users, you might be able to cautiously make some optimization inferences.)

Interestingly, some countries are significant outliers here:

 

While the global rate is edging up as late adopters start to update their iPhones and iPads, regional differences are much more significant. In Brazil, almost 40% of people opt-in to tracking; in the USA, where Apple has advertised heavily about its privacy enhancements, the rate is significantly lower: 16.8%.

Subscribe for insights by mail

We’ll be updating these numbers soon, and adding more insights on different aspects of SKAdNetwork. If you don’t want to miss any, you may want to sign up for Singular’s content email newsletter.

Scroll down on the blog home page to find the “Stay up to date” sign-up spot. Then, when you get the first email, drag it into your priority mailbox to tell Gmail or whatever email app you use that it’s important.

We don’t spam. We do aim to provide a significant amount of insight and value. And we’re honored to be one of your sources of vital marketing ecosystem information.

 

 

Fintech is hot. Glowing, burning, incandescently hot.

In the first quarter of 2021, fintech startups raised $22.8 billion, 50% more than all of 2020. The sector is growing 20% annually, according to ResearchAndMarkets. And no wonder: the use of cash has dropped more than 42% in the U.S. since 2019, and COVID shutdowns and lockdowns have 80% of us thinking we can bank without a building. 

COVID normalized digital banking and Singular fintech customers like Khatabook in Southeast Asia are growing exponentially as a result.

A massive 72% increase in fintech app use means more startups are piling in. As of February 2021, there are more than 26,000 fintech startups, says iTechArt. That’s double the number in 2019 with most of the funding going to top sectors like mobile wallets, payments, insurance, and digital banking. 

And it might continue to grow, because the fintech investment market size is expected to grow at an annual average of 53% until 2027, according to Orion Market Reports.

In other words, this is a category worth paying attention to.

In this special fintech report by Singular, we’re going to:

• overview the mobile fintech ecosystem
• list some of the top players
• identify the major categories
• highlight what’s driving most customer and user penetration right now on mobile
• list the top 50 fintech apps on both iOS and Android
• shine a light on what big tech — Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Facebook — are doing in fintech.

 

Origins of fintech (it’s older than you think)

Believe it or not, fintech is … kind of old. In fact, if we define financial technology as digital or electronic means of dealing with money, fintech has its roots over a hundred years ago.

In 1918, the U.S. Federal Reserve built the Fedwire Funds Service, which still exists today. Using Morse code on public telegraph circuits, the Fed ensured that the U.S. dollar was worth the same amount in Pittsburgh as in Poughkeepsie, in Seattle as in San Antonio, and that interbank transfers could happen without time-consuming and risky transfers of cash or gold.

In 1995, Wells Fargo — yes, the same company that operated the Pony Express in 1861 — made the first online checking account available.

 

And on May 22, 2010, a day that will forever be remembered as Bitcoin Pizza Day, Laszlo Hanyecz became the first person to spend cryptocurrency to purchase a physical item: Papa John’s pizza. Hanyecz spent 10,000 bitcoin for the pizza, worth approximately $350 million today. (I hope it tasted great.)

When we think of fintech today, however, we think of new tech that manages, sends, invests, stores, and maximizes our money.

 

Categories and sub-verticals within fintech

There are likely as many different categorizations of fintech as people thinking about the category, but here’s an overview that simplifies the diversity in fintech as much as possible.

Note:

The banking category is mostly reserved for traditional banks who are rapidly expanding into all areas of fintech. While I could have merged the neobanks category with banking, I kept it separate to highlight the fact that you have a dichotomy between traditional banks with massive brands and new banking startups that may not do everything a traditional bank does, but were generally born online or even born mobile.

Fintech categories	Examples & top players
Banking	Bank of America, Chase, Wells Fargo, Credit One, Navy Federal, US Bancorp, Citigroup
Budgeting	Mint, PocketGuard, Goodbudget, Honeydue, Personal Capital, YNAB, Everydollar, Intuit, Apple Pay
Buy now, pay later (BNPL)	Afterpay, Perpay, PayPal Pay in 4, Klarna, Affirm, Sezzle
B2B services	Stripe, Kabbage, Clearco (was Clearbanc), Lending Club, Square, Zelle, Novo
Credit history & monitoring	Credit Karma, Experian, Credit Sesame, MyFICO,
Cryptocurrency, decentralized finance (DeFi)	Coinbase, Binance, Crypto.com, Trust, Voyager, River, eToro, Webull, Gemini, BlockFi
Education	World of Money, Zogo, Investmate, Penny, Bankaroo, FamZoo, iAllowance, NerdWallet
Insurance	Geico, Progressive, Lemonade, Allstate, State Farm, Jerry.ai, Esurance, Metromile
Investment	Robinhood, Stash, Webull, Acorns, Public, SoFi, eTrade, Ameritrade, Zack’s Trade, JP Morgan
Loans	Brigit, MoneyLion, Dave, Earnin, Albert, NIRA, MoneyTap, EarlySalary, Buddy, Cleo, Varo
Neobanks	N26, Chime, SoFi, Monso, Dave, Current, Tinkoff, MoneyLion, Starling Bank
Payments	Apple Pay, Google Pay, Walmart Pay, PayPal, Venmo, Fresh EBT, Cash App, Zelle, Greenlight
Tax	TurboTax, TaxAct, H&R Block, Credit Karma, TaxSlayer
Transfers/sending money	Western Union, WorldRemit, Azimo, Venmo, PayPal, TransferWise, MoneyGram, Cash App, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Xoom, Facebook Messenger, Walmart Pay

 

The top 100 fintech apps on the App Store & Google Play

To get a good sense of what’s winning in mobile fintech I looked at the apps that are winning right now on the App Store and Google Play.: the top 50 on both iOS and Android, based on number of downloads/installs over the past 90 days.

The most interesting findings?

• Out of the 100 total apps on both the Android and iOS top apps list, 78 are duplicates, meaning that 39 out of the 50 iOS apps are also top 50 apps on Android, and vice versa
• Payments is the single biggest mobile fintech category in terms of app install activity:
  • iOS: 4 out of 5 of the top iOS fintech apps are payments apps
  • Android: 5 out of the top 6 apps on Android are payments apps
• 65% of the companies that have top-100 fintech apps are startups: young disruptive companies
  • Just 15% of the brands that have top-100 fintech apps are traditional banks
• Just 4 categories make up 73% of the fintech app ecosystem top 100 apps
  • Banking
  • Payments
  • Crypto
  • Investing
• There is only 1 government app in the fintech top 100: Fresh EBT, which is a food stamps app
• Android has almost twice as many neobanks as iOS, possibly because Android has a large number of inexpensive devices in addition to higher-end devices, and unbanked people who are more likely to use a neobank’s services are also more likely to own a relatively cheap phone
• One of the most interesting payment services, Apple Pay, doesn’t even show up on the list because it’s a default in iOS … not a separate app (more on Apple Pay later)

Here are the top 50 apps on each platform by downloads over the past three months, according to App Annie. (Note: data pulled June 18, 2021.)

App rank	Top 50 iOS apps	Top 50 Android apps
1	Cash App	Google Pay
2	Venmo	Cash App
3	PayPal	PayPal
4	Zelle	Venmo
5	Capital One Mobile	Crypto.com
6	Chase Mobile	Zelle
7	Crypto.com	Credit Karma
8	Robinhood	Capital One Mobile
9	Credit Karma	Chime
10	Bank of America Mobile Banking	Coinbase
11	Coinbase	Robinhood
12	Chime	Stash
13	Wells Fargo Mobile	Webull
14	Experian Credit Report	Experian Credit Report
15	GEICO Mobile – Car Insurance	Fresh EBT
16	Progressive	IRS2Go
17	Fresh EBT	Binance US
18	IRS2Go	Chase Mobile
19	Truebill	Wells Fargo Mobile
20	Credit One Bank	Progressive
21	Discover Mobile	Bank of America Mobile Banking
22	Webull	Western Union
23	Coinbase Pro	Current
24	Google Pay	GEICO Mobile – Car Insurance
25	Citi Mobile	Dave
26	Acorns	Credit One Bank
27	Greenlight Debit Card	Trust
28	Amex	Acorns
29	Current	Truebill
30	State Farm	Voyager
31	Western Union	Albert
32	Navy Federal	Discover Mobile
33	Public	Drive Safe & Save
34	Step	Citi Mobile
35	Stash	Step
36	Dave	Aspiration Spend, Save, Invest
37	Mint	Varo Bank
38	Allstate	State Farm
39	Fidelity	Root Car Insurance
40	Trust	MoneyLion
41	River	Green Dot
42	Self	Go2bank
43	US Bank	Public
44	Green Dot	Binance
45	PNC	Mint
46	Binance	Brigit
47	Binance US	Greenlight Debit Card
48	myWisely	Netspend
49	Coinbase Wallet	Coinbase Pro
50	Earnin	Credit Sesame

 

If we look at them by category, we get a better sense of what’s happening in the mobile fintech ecosystem. 

 

Banking is by far the biggest sector by number of apps, whether by neobank or traditional bank. And while payments is the largest sub-vertical in the very upper echelon of fintech apps — the ones with the most installs — it’s second in the top 100. Crypto is high, as is investing, but afterwards the categories begin to thin out a little.

Payment apps are interesting for a lot of different reasons. First, they’re daily use or at least potentially daily use apps. As such, they’re the perfect app to make a tiny fraction of each transaction and still be able to bring in a lot of revenue. In addition, simple because they are daily use apps, they can be used as a thin edge of a wedge to add on additional features over time, or launch complementary services thanks to your brand being top of mind for users/customers when it comes to money.

It’s a very powerful position to be in fintech, and that’s why Google and Apple are competing fiercely in the space.

From 2020 to 2024, Worldpay estimates that credit card share of e-commerce sales in North America will drop from 23% to 21%, while digital wallets and payment apps will increase from 45% to 52%.

Of course, there is a thin line between payment apps and transfer apps. When apps have a name like WorldRemit, it’s pretty clear what the main function of the app is. But it’s just as possible to use Venmo or Google Pay to send money, depending on where you want to send it and how much cost and hassle you’re willing to put up with.

Here’s the data, so you can see how it breaks down by category:

 

Top 100 fintech apps by category
	iOS	Android
Banking	15	16
Budgeting	4	3
Credit history	2	3
Crypto	8	7
Insurance	4	5
Investing	6	5
Loans	1	1
Payments	8	8
Tax	1	1
Transfers	1	1

 

It’s also interesting to look at the top 100 fintech apps by type of company that publishes them: startups, enterprises, governments, or other.

Again, please note that there’s some license here in how I categorized them. PayPal is hardly a startup anymore in any real sense, but I categorized PayPal as a startup because, while rather aged for that status, it’s clearly not the same as a Bank of America or Citigroup. Also, I separated neobanks and banks because they’re just different types of entities … even though they are likely converging more and more together and I combined them above in the banking sector.

 

 

Again, here’s the raw data by iOS and Android so you can drill down. Clearly, neobanks are more common on Android than iOS, but everything else is fairly close between the platforms … as you’d expect when 78 of the top 100 fintech apps on iOS and Android are duplicates.

 

Top 100 fintech apps by type of company
	iOS	Android
Bank	9	6
DeFi	8	6
Enterprise	10	8
Government	1	1
Neobank	6	11
Startup	16	18

 

Big Tech and fintech: Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Facebook

I mentioned earlier that Apple Pay didn’t even show up on the list of the top 50 payments apps on either platform because it’s a default in iOS. In fact, my new iPad Pro tells me every day that device set-up is incomplete because I haven’t set up Apple Pay yet by loading in my credit cards.

What’s interesting about Apple Pay is that it is deep integrated into both Apple’s mobile operating system and desktop. Plus, Apple has the innovative Apple Card — which is still U.S.-only — but offers no fees, ground-breaking family budgeting features, cash back, and useful data on spending patterns.

 

 

In addition, Apple Pay has simply huge existing reach and even more massive growth potential:

• 507 million users as of 2020
• 48% of iPhone users reportedly have used Apple Pay
• 18.3% say they’ll use it exclusively when possible
• Apple Pay could make up 10% of credit card payments by 2025

According to eMarketer, Apple Pay is three times the size of Google Pay. The last time Apple CEO Tim Cook provided numbers on Apple Pay, he said that Apple had all-time record revenues from payment services, with over three billion transactions in Q4 2019. You can bet it’s far more than that now. Cook also said Apple Pay has more transactions than PayPal and was growing four times faster.

“Apple Pay … has become one of the top three most widely used mobile payment services in Canada, Ireland, Italy, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Spain, UK, and the US.”

– Jonny Evans, Computerworld

But the other big tech companies aren’t laying down and conceding the market.

Google Pay (or, as Google is styling it recently: G Pay) is tops on the Android side and also has a significant presence on iOS, ranking 24th there. In addition, Google has a much larger global userbase to convert to its financial apps. It is true that on Android Google has a more challenging time than Apple to integrate Google Pay into the operating system because partners can adjust Android as they wish, but Google can likely do more here as well.

 

 

Google is also working with retail partners like Albertsons to integrate their operations with Google Pay. And there are enough Google fans on iOS who choose Google’s payment service over Apple’s that Google Pay is a top-25 app in the fintech category of the App Store.

In addition, Google has significant capabilities, installed base, and advantages in voice-based commerce on Google Home and in the Google app on both Android and iOS, suggesting that as customers get more and more used to asking Alexa, Siri, or Google to order more toilet paper or rent a movie, Google will do well here.

The rest of big tech is busy in fintech as well.

Facebook is working closely with Shopify, and while Facebook’s digital currency Libra (now Diem) has lost some of its luster, there’s still opportunity to achieve something interesting there because Facebook owns access to literally billions of the most desirable consumers on the planet. With massive investment flooding into cryptocurrency and digital assets right now as well, we can’t count Libra/Diem out just because its stablecoin aspirations seem stymied or delayed at the moment. In fact, we’ll probably see a limited launch of Diem this year, and it might not only be for purchasing on-platform digital goods.

As you’d expect, Microsoft is working more on the business side of fintech, while Amazon has offered Amazon Pay since 2007 and has acquired fintech companies enabling both online and offline purchases. And, of course, Amazon is one of the biggest e-commerce companies outside of China.

 

The fintech 2021 challenge: keep, grow, compete

COVID normalized digital banking, and the result was massive growth in fintech app usage, especially in the payments and banking categories.

The challenge for 2021 is to keep those new users while continuing to expand both customer base and solution set. In some sense there’s a race to the middle between banks and neobanks. Traditional banks need to continue to get more digital and mobile. Neobanks in many cases need to offer more services and capabilities to amortize the cost of customer acquisition over more revenue-generating events … and to avoid losing customers to one-stop-and-you’re-done fintech competitors.

Which is why, according to CB Insights, fintech mergers and acquisitions (and IPOs) reached an all-time high in the first quarter of 2021:

 

 

American Express, for example, bought Kabbage, a B2B fintech startup, last year, and this year is integrating it into short-term credit products for businesses. SPACs are the new IPOs, in some sense, and MoneyLion, eToro, SoFi, and Bakkt all signed agreements to go public via special purpose acquisition vehicles in the first quarter of 2021. And startups like Robinhood, Klarna, Paradigm, and Stripe all raised hundreds of millions, with Robinhood taking in a staggering $2.4 billion of new investment.

LATAM has significant activity here, with Brazil-based Loft and Nubank both raising mega-rounds as well.

The challenge for fintechs today is to continue to grow in this hyper-competitive market that has been flooded with new cash. Finding the most optimal means of customer acquisition will be a huge competitive advantage, as well-funded rivals are almost guaranteed to be spraying money around like it’s the dot-com boom all over again. And with 26,000 fintech startups globally, this is not going to be an easy sector to win in.

 

Growth marketers and fintech

Growth marketers have a significant challenge in fintech. Your rivals literally have billions of dollars in new investment. Most of your top competitors have grown significantly through lockdown and quarantine periods.

What’s the best path forward?

Making sure every dollar of spend provides ROI. Optimizing ROAS across new, innovative channels and platforms. Killing poorly-performing partners quickly. Getting the best and the quickest insight into growth opportunities.

It won’t be easy.

 

Singular can help

If you’re a fintech startup and are looking for marketing intelligence that can drive growth, and marketing measurement that provides the best insights for ROI optimization, book some time with Singular.

Grab a slot here, and let’s chat. We’ll listen more than we talk, understand your business and your needs, and share what we can do to help.

You’ve heard that Google’s making a big step towards mobile privacy by zeroing out the GAID, or Android advertising ID, for people who opt-out of ad personalization on Android. What you haven’t heard is how utterly minuscule the percentage of people that this impacts actually is.

So we checked.

And based on a recent sample of Singular data consisting of more than 176 million Android smartphones globally, only 2.08% of Android users have tunneled down into Settings -> Privacy -> Advanced -> Ads and actually turned Ads Personalization off. Most countries are in the 1-2% range, but one country is a massive outlier.

Keep reading to see the data for 12 major nations …

 

Google Advertising ID: what it is and what it’s used for

The Google advertising ID or Android advertising ID identifies an Android device for advertisers. Ad networks can do rate limiting based on the GAID. They can do retargeting. Marketing measurement companies like Singular can do attribution, which helps advertisers understand how successful campaigns and partners are. And advertisers can track how valuable new users or customers that they’ve acquired from various campaigns, creatives, or sources are, giving them important information for future marketing optimization.

But when you can follow an IDFA on an iOS device or a GAID on an Android device around the world by seeing where it pops up in mobile ad auctions, you can also do some shady things.

In the past, Google has essentially relied on the honor system: if an Android owner opts out of ads personalization, the advertising identifier was still available if an adtech vendor asked for it.

There’s a reason for what, on the surface, seems like an odd decision: the GAID is also used for analytics, fraud detection, and attribution. In other words, non-advertising situations. But it’s a little odd to use an advertising identifier for non-advertising purposes … and it’s even more Boy Scout to think that there are no bad actors out there who will use what’s available regardless of the guidelines and rules.

So now Google is doing what Apple has did on iOS versions pre 14.5 when people turned Limit Ad Tracking on: zeroing out the Android advertising identifier if people turn Ads Personalization off. (Note how those actions move in opposing directions but essentially do the exact same thing.)

 

But, very few people opt out of Ads Personalization on Android

While zeroing out the Google advertising ID is a nice gesture from Google and will increase privacy for those who care, the reality is that almost no one opts out of Android ads personalization. Literally, 98% of people globally have kept the default Android setting to personalize ads.

A couple caveats on the below data: it does not include server-to-server traffic, where Singular doesn’t see the GAID, and there are some devices where the Ads Personalization on-off setting isn’t available. Also, this particular sampling of data doesn’t include a lot of China-based data, so the massively higher opt-out rate in China isn’t impacting the global percentage very much.

 

 

Clearly, the Ads Personalization setting in Android is almost irrelevant, except in China.

Why China is such a massive outlier here I cannot say with certainty (ping me if you can) but I assume is likely due to some version(s) of Android from one or more Chinese manufacturers that ship with different defaults. Anyone can get Android source code from the Android Open Source Project and then fork it for their unique take or skin on Android, which is why Xiaomi has MIUI, Vivo has Funtouch OS, and Oppo has ColorOS.

Essentially, opting out from ads personalization on Android is a rounding error.

But it wasn’t always this way.

 

‘Limit Ad Tracking’ on Android used to be higher

I first studied Limit Ad Tracking on iOS and ads personalization on Android in 2016 as the Mobile Economist for TUNE, a former mobile measurement partner. (A lifetime ago!) Ad Age’s Kate Kaye picked up the story.

At that time, LAT was already falling. Across all mobile devices from both major platforms, limit ad tracking was down about 5% in a year:

Use of the limit-ad-tracking setting fell to 16.7% of devices in February from 22% in August 2015, according to Tune, which observed 1.3 billion mobile app installs by about 150 million people over seven months, from August 2015 to February 2016.

This is the first example of data measuring the use of the limit-ad-tracking feature, said Jules Polonetsky, ‎CEO of the Future of Privacy Forum. Limit ad tracking, he continued, “despite being this central privacy control, really doesn’t get a lot of debate or discussion.”

That year, the number of Android users who had turned ads personalization off was more than double the number of iOS users who had turned Limit Ad Tracking on. (Yes, I know the opposite direction here is confusing; both actions essentially do the same thing.)

But in 2020, when I studied the same numbers for Singular, things had changed dramatically:

[In 2016] 11.4% of iOS users had turned LAT on, limiting the data that they provided to advertisers. On Android, 25.3% of Americans had switched off ads personalization, which accomplishes the same purpose.

But in 2020, we’re seeing significant changes in opposite directions. Now, ads personalization on Android is down to just 2.3% and Limit Ad Tracking on iOS is up to 31.5% — a massive swing in opposite directions on both major mobile platforms.

Here’s the data from early 2o20 in a chart:

 

Apple starting banging the privacy drum

Between 2016 and 2020, Apple started banging the privacy drum. Which of course is even louder now with iOS 14.5, SKAdNetwork, privacy-safe marketing measurement, a completely opt-in approach to ad measurement and tracking, a new App Privacy report in iOS 15, and Infinity War style TV ads with nosy people popping out of existence.

Not shockingly, we see that reflected in the data on app tracking opt-in rates:

(Check back on the Singular blog next week, by the way: we’ll be updating that report.)

 

The upshot for Android

The upshot for Android is pretty simple: Google’s change won’t impact much. It’s the right call, and some would argue overdue, and it signals a new Google approach to privacy along with FloC and other initiatives.

But for now: Android-focused growth marketers are essentially going to be doing business as usual.

Also, there’s good news: Google will be replacing the GAID with an alternative solution for use cases that are not ad personalization related. And it’s coming soon:

In July, we will provide an alternate solution to support essential use cases such as analytics and fraud prevention.

That’s good news for marketers, and it’s something that Apple might want to take a look at and consider. There are places that SKAdNetwork simply doesn’t work or offer a solution, and the industry needs privacy-safe replacements for what has been taken away.

 

Need to chat? We have a sofa

If you’re looking for experts to chat about next-generation marketing measurement in a confusing and ever-changing era of increased privacy and shifting technologies, we’re here to help. We’ll listen, learn, maybe offer a few condolences, and then share how Singular can help you with your unique challenges and requirements.

Growth is still possible. We can help.

Book some time, and we’ll chat. Sofas are optional.

For everyone else in mobile marketing, the end of mobile advertising as we knew it happened just weeks ago when Apple finally released iOS 14.5. But kids-focused mobile app publishers had their privacy apocalypse way before: almost 18 months ago. Growth, measurement, and monetization in the kids category changed massively in early 2020, when Apple restricted access to the IDFA and other device and personal data in kids categories.

And back then, there was no SKAdNetwork to take the place of the IDFA.

Losing the IDFA in the iOS 14 privacy apocalypse and adapting to regular SKAdNetwork changes and updates has most mobile marketers living in a constantly changing Inception-style world.

But not publishers of kids’ apps.

 

SKAdNetwork: huge for kids’ apps

Because for kids apps makers, iOS 14.5 is a wonderful thing. These days are happy days. And the marketing measurement data they’re now getting — that every other marketer thinks is barely a trickle — seems like a flood to data-starved kids advertisers. And that could unleash a whole new round of investment and innovation in the children’s sections of the App Store.

 

Watch the interview with Kidoz co-CEO Eldad Ben Tora:

(Subscribe to Singular’s YouTube channel to get updates when we publish.)

 

User acquisition for kids apps slowed dramatically in January 2020 as publishers were left blind, says the co-CEO of Kidoz, the world’s largest kid-focused mobile ad network. Targeting moved to contextual, measurement meant that you got an install from somewhere by someone, but not much more. And post-install engagement and conversion data was totally nonexistent.

Now that’s all changing.

“IDFA was taken and they were … left blind,” says Eldad Ben Tora, co-CEO of Kidoz. “Many app publishers that wanted to do user acquisition stopped for about a period of a year … now [SKAdNetwork] lets publishers in an aggregated way, in a way that doesn’t harm or risk kids’ privacy, to understand the value of each source and to attribute revenue to this source.”

The result, Ben Tora says?

Smart user acquisition in the kid space is actually growing for the first time in 18 months. Publishers badly need growth … and now it’s possible in a safe and optimizable manner.

 

Safe attribution for kids with Singular

Which means it’s good time for Singular’s privacy-compliant child-safe attribution product, which abides by the strictest COPPA (Child Online Privacy Protection Rule) and GDPR guidelines, and is a member of the PRIVO Kids Privacy Assured Program.

“Singular specifically looked at the kids market and they understood that the need for kid-friendly attribution exists, and kid-friendly attribution wasn’t really addressed by the other players,” says Ben Tora. “No-one said: ‘we provide safe attribution for kids,’ and I’m very happy that Singular said so.”

The result, Ben Tora says, is good, usable marketing measurement: impressions, clicks, installs, and revenue … all while maintaining full user and device privacy.

Listen to the interview on Growth Masterminds, Singular’s podcast:

Today that’s more important than ever because advertisers are losing their access to kids. Kids make up more than 30% of all internet users and 40% of all new users (unsurprisingly), so they’re a critical demographic … maybe even the biggest market out there, Ben Tora says.

But how they access media is changing.

 

 

“[Advertisers] pretty much lost their number one channel, which used to be TV,” he told me. “If they do watch TV, they watch Netflix and other streaming services.”

In fact, connected streaming media is now a majority of TV time for kids and young people, according to MarketingCharts and Nielsen:

 

 

Better monetization for kids apps now

So there’s been a disconnect in the market: kids have switched from big devices on walls to small ones in hands, and advertisers have not been able to reach them effectively on those small devices. Meanwhile, kids app publishers had a different but related problem.

“We saw the frustration from advertisers on one side,” says Ben Tora. “They say ‘I want to reach kids, but I can’t really understand how,’ and we saw the publishers on the other side saying, ‘well, we have tons of kids using us, but we can’t really monetize.’ And we said okay, let’s just match those two together.”

Now with iOS 14.5 and SKAdNetwork, measuring monetization is possible. There isn’t the wealth of information that IDFA traditionally provided, no … but there’s also not a total gap. Publishers can see the revenue attached to new user acquisition, at least in the first few days, and that helps them make optimization decisions.

“So I think monetization is easier today,” says Ben Tora. “And the good side is that the budgets that are coming in from … the Lego’s and the Disney’s of the world are finally coming to mobile.”

Privacy regulations and measurement challenges actually kept significant kids’ brand budgets on TV, he adds, suggesting that they are now making the switch to where their audience is primarily moving.

“I’m a big believer in safe ads for kids and monetizing [your app with ads] and allowing your content to be free,” he says. “Because if you put up a paywall, then you’re actually saying to 90-95% of your user base: you can only enjoy a fraction of my app. And by opening it up through ads, you’re actually making it more accessible.”

Which is actually a good thing on the Android side as well, because Google sees that your engagement and retention is higher, and it gives app publishers higher Google Play store rankings.

 

Parents or kids: who makes the app install calls?

I had to ask Ben Tora one key question: who makes install decisions for kids? Is it the kids themselves, or the parents?

“I think the advertisers tend to understand that eventually kids decide,” he said. “The kids, they know what they want. They tell us what they want … if the parent is the one that decides on downloading the app, the usage will decrease immediately because he didn’t take the kid into account. So I think that now kid-focused advertising is becoming the norm.”

Bad news for parents? We’re not in charge anymore.

Good news for advertisers? They can safely reach the true decision makers in the family.

 

Learn more about kid-safe marketing measurement

Interested in learning more about Singular’s kid-safe marketing measurement and mobile attribution? Book some time with one of our experts. We’d love to chat about what you’re doing, what you need, and how we might be able to help.

And, subscribe to Growth Masterminds on your platform of choice:

• Apple Podcasts
• Google Podcasts
• Spotify
• Other

 

 

 

Apple has announced significant new privacy and attribution features in a massive update of developer news at WWDC.

One that’s critical for app developers, publishers, and marketers: App Privacy Reports in iOS 15. Others that are extremely interesting is a new way of aggregating postbacks in SKAdNetwork, plus new privacy updates in Safari and Mail, Apple’s native Mac apps for browsing and emailing.

But perhaps the most significant is SKAdNetwork postback aggregation, which has the ability to dramatically impact how SANs (self-attributing networks) operate.

 

SKAdNetwork postback aggregation in iOS 15

One thing that always seemed odd to me about SKAdNetwork: postbacks were only sent to ad networks, which would then have to find a way to get it to advertisers. Most are reputable, and many use 307 temporary redirects to get the postbacks immediately to Singular as independent third-party verification and aggregation … but it still seemed weird.

Why not send postbacks to advertisers, who can then check their media sources’ homework?

Starting in iOS 15, that’s exactly what Apple’s doing.

“Starting in iOS 15, devices can send a copy of the winning install-validation postback to the developer of the advertised app,” Apple says. “Developers opt-in to receive the postback by specifying a server endpoint in their app’s Info.plist.”

App publishers and marketers can now configure a single catch-all collection point to receive “a copy” of all SKAdNetwork postbacks for your app. In other words, your ad network is still getting a postback, but you’re getting one too. Superficially, that’s great: you can check your ad networks’ and media partners’ numbers. Singular, for instance, can be the aggregation point, interpret your conversion models, aggregate all your postbacks from all your partners and all your apps, and you can see everything all in one place.

But there’s something even more significant happening here.

Getting postback copies directly from Apple allows marketers to get more direct data than ever before on the results that SANs generate.

Self-attributing networks, of course, have always held tightly to their data, and rightly so. They have deep reservoirs of data about who does what with regards to ads on their platforms, and there are significant privacy implications for sharing that data. Now, while still anonymous, advertisers can directly check SANs’ homework for the very first time. SKAdNetwork is anonymized data, but it is also deterministic data. Once privacy thresholds are met, you’ll be able to see what happened from which partner for which app, regardless of who the partner was: small indie mobile ad network, or Facebook, or Google.

One important note: advertisers will get raw SKAdNetwork postbacks in iOS 15.

That means the conversion payload still needs to be decoded and enriched with data from the relevant ad networks and then displayed effectively so that marketers know both what they achieved and what to optimize in future campaigns.

(Singular, of course, does this already, and will continue to do it in iOS 15.)

 

App Privacy Reports

Apple has long had a privacy report in its Safari browser on desktop Macs that tells you what trackers are trying to follow you around websites, and how many trackers each site has. Tom’s Guide, by the way, has no less than 81 — at least how Apple defines trackers — while The Wall Street Journal has 76, and Bloomberg has 65.

But soon iOS 15 will bring this kind of transparency to apps in an App Privacy Report:

“With App Privacy Report, users can see how often each app has used the permission they’ve previously granted to access their location, photos, camera, microphone, and contacts during the past seven days,” Apple says. “Users can also find out with whom their data may be shared by seeing all the third-party domains an app is contacting.”

In other words: there’s no more room to hide.

In iOS 14, app publishers had to provide a “nutrition label” privacy report when updating their apps. In iOS 15, people are going to get the opportunity to see for themselves if the nutrition label is accurate.

While most people may never dig down into their phone’s settings to check their App Privacy Reports, I guarantee you that some will. And if they don’t like what they see, uninstalls will follow. In addition, journalists will be trolling these reports for anything that looks fishy.

 

And more on privacy in Apple’s ecosystem

Apple’s Mail app on iOS 15 and Mac OS Monterey will block tracking pixels, stopping companies and people from knowing if the recipient of their emails opened it, and masking their locations. Safari’s ITP, Intelligent Tracking Prevention is growing new muscles and will be blocking IP addresses from trackers, making fingerprinting harder if not impossible.

In addition, Siri will be processing data on-device, and iCloud+ will come with a built-in VPN — as long as people use Safari and Mail — meaning that web traffic and email will essentially be invisible to marketers.

(Singular’s privacy-safe web-to-app measurement functionality will continue to work regularly given it is leveraging URL parameters, which Singular is using to tell marketers where an install came from and what campaign it’s part of. We don’t use any invisible pixels or other email tracking. Plus, of course, it’s all first-party data, not shared with anyone else.)

 

Change is the new normal

For mobile marketers who are just settling into SKAdNetwork now: yes, more change is coming. This is the industry we’re in, and change is not just the new normal, it’s our normal.

For now, however, take a deep breath.

iOS 15 was just announced. It won’t launch until the fall, probably in September. We have time to prepare, and we’ll use it. If you’d like to have a quick chat with a Singular expert about SKAdNetwork, privacy-safe attribution, and maybe even iOS 15, book some time here.

 

We’ve had a month with iOS 14.5. Time enough for at least some initial insights from mobile marketers and growth leaders about how it’s going, what’s working, and what’s still a complete minefield. (One of our recent guests used a slightly different term.)

We asked some of the best for their early reviews:

• Jayne Peressini, Senior director, marketing & growth, EA
• Paulo Esteves, Director of UA, Gameloft
• Eran Friedman, CTO and co-founder, Singular
• Phil Crosby, CPO and co-founder, Liftoff

Jayne and Paulo oversee millions in user acquisition and growth spend for global leading games and brands. Check out their thoughts, plans, and strategies in the full on-demand webinar here.

But we also had some questions during the live webinar that we could not answer in the time allocated. Here are those questions, along with answers.

 

iOS 14.5 aftermath: your questions answered

1. Can you explain more on “SKAN and MMP”?

SKAN is SKAdNetwork, Apple’s framework for privacy-safe deterministic attribution. MMP is an acronym for Mobile Measurement Partners, companies like Singular that have special access to major platforms like Facebook, Snap, Pinterest, Twitter, TikTok, and more to provide third-party measurement services.

2. Can you talk about the percentage of users who even allow apps to ask for consent?

We actually just published some data on that last week. A global average of 83% of people allow individual apps to ask for tracking permission.

(See that data, country-specific ATT and iOS 14.5 numbers, and much more information.)

We’re updating this at least every couple of weeks. Re-check the Singular blog regularly for new information.

 

3. Any feedback on PCM (private click measurement)? What kind of data is sent and when?

Private Click Measurement reports the kind of engagement (for example, a click), the source site and source ID, an “attribution” value for the website that wants to attribute incoming clicks, and some trigger data: a four-bit value that encodes up to 16 triggering events. PC also supports an eight-bit Campaign ID (values of 0-255).

Similarly to SKAdNetwork, the website postback/pixel is sent after a random timer of 24 to 48 hours.

This is currently app to web, not web to app. The Webkit team behind PCM says it’s interested in web to app, but hasn’t found a solution yet.

4. 19.4% of all iOS users have both seen and allowed tracking permission … what do you think users factor when giving consent?

In our latest data that’s now very slightly up to 19.7%. We’ll continue to monitor this over the next weeks and months.

In terms of user feelings and motivations, we have survey data on that here. Briefly:

• Men are more likely to allow tracking than women
• Younger and older people are less likely; middle-aged most likely
• Knowing and trusting the company asking for tracking permission is the most critical component of the decision

Also, however, education is key. People simply do not know what “tracking” for marketing measurement means, with many equating it to marketers knowing everything that they do online.

 

5. What does SKAdNetwork traffic look like? Have costs been impacted?

We’re between 60-80% SKAN-ready in terms of traffic, depending on who you talk to. We’re seeing a lot of fluctuation in CPMs as networks adjust to new methods of targeting, but there’s definitely been some spiking here and there.

 

6. We’re a B2C subscription app using app install campaigns. We currently measure our CAC:LTV ratio, with CAC being cost per paid subscriber. This will be pretty impossible for us as our 7-day free trial means we can’t set ‘trial convert’ as a conversion value. Has anyone navigated conversion events too far down the funnel for tracking via conversions? If so, what have you tried … what’s your strategy for alternative CPAs?

This is a really tough one.

Given that Apple is not going to change SKAdNetwork for this use case anytime soon, there are a number of options:

• Shorten your trial period (which, of course, has implications for people who test your subscription plan and for conversion rates while using it. Some of those implications could be positive, though.
• Choose channels that allow longer than 24-hour conversion periods so you’re not limited to one day of free trial.
• Find good proxies for conversion to paid. The best time to test this was 12 months ago; the next best time is now. But … go back to your data over the past year(s) and look for indicators that correlate with successful conversion to paid. Then test marketing optimization based on those indicators.
• Abandon deterministic measurement entirely and move to an incrementality model that takes in all your aggregated campaign and marketing output data and correlates it with trial launches and trial-to-paid conversions.

Not all of those options are easy or pleasant. My personal suggestion: find something in and around option three while working on long-term solutions in option four.

7. Can you speak to the percentage of inventory you’re seeing that is Do Not Track on iOS?

Our latest data on that is about 17.5%. See more details, including by country, here.

 

8. What is the privacy threshold right now?

No one outside of Apple knows the exact privacy thresholds. What we can say with confidence is that in late May, Apple significantly changed privacy thresholds so more data is available.

Check our full story here.

Short version: if you have campaigns with low numbers of installs — around 20-30 — you went from seeing maybe 10% of postbacks with conversion values to 80-90%.

9. Between SKAN data vs IDFA opt-in, which one is more accurate/reliable?

Tough question. This is dynamic and likely to change as time passes since on the one hand SKAN supports all iOS users regardless of their consent, but on the other hand not all publishers are SKAN-ready yet, and most of them don’t support view-through yet since it was just added in iOS14.5.

But as time goes by, SKAN is likely to become the more accurate source of truth as the number of Opt-In IDFA users decreases and SKAN’s coverage increases.

It’s important to note that SKAN postbacks go to ad networks, which then redirect them to MMPs like Singular. Singular aggregates all that data from all your partners in one place, checking it for accuracy and fraud.

Realistically, we know that SKAdNetwork underreports data, particularly for organic installs. Conversions may take longer than a week and never get reported. Web to app flows aren’t supported. Privacy thresholds will block some conversion data. Other limitations in SKAdNetwork may allow more installs to never become visible.

Ultimately, what you need from your mobile measurement partner is what Singular is doing: bringing together SKAdNetwork data, IDFA data from earlier iOS versions, and IDFA data from 14.5+ versions where people agree to tracking, and all your data from marketing campaigns … and build a comprehensive picture of inputs and outputs, paid and organic efforts as well as results, and provide an intelligent framework for optimization and allocation decisions.

 

10. How are you checking install amounts and conversion values reported by SKAdNetwork? Basically, what do you compare against what?

The key is to collect conversion postbacks from all the networks you are working with. The collection process is done differently for each network. Some networks share the raw postbacks, while other networks, like Facebook, only share them in aggregate via an API.

That’s why an SKAdNetwork aggregation solution like Singular is needed. Singular collects all the postbacks and then decodes conversion values back to meaningful events or revenue metrics, which enables performance analytics, comparing performance across channels and campaigns, and of course optimization.

11. Why not just assign one creative to one campaign in order to isolate the creative you’re looking to test? It’s probably more work but might replicate what you used to do.

That’s totally an option, and it’s one that some people are using.

But it comes with a significant downside: killing the ability of the network to run creative selection based on creative performance metrics like engagement and CVR. This means you as a marketer will run significantly longer cycles and do more work to figure out which creative works best. And of course, it’s harder on networks like Facebook, which only allow you to use nine of SKAdNetwork’s available campaigns.

(One of the reasons Facebook wants so many is to do creative optimization.)

Note:

Using tools like Singular’s Creative Analytics you will still be able to analyze the upper funnel performance per creative, like impressions and CVR, but you won’t be able to utilize SKAN for ROAS. For analyzing creative ROAS, you would need to run campaigns with a single creative or rely on cases where user-level data is provided like Android and iOS users who provide double ATT consent (on both the publisher and advertiser app).

 

12. Do we see any data on which apps/categories/developers see the higher opt-in rates?

Option rates generally seem to be in the 15-25% range, with the most common rate around 20%. We’re seeing some variation in verticals, but much of it is likely due to different rates of asking for ATT between verticals.

We’ll see more data on this over time.

 

13. For conversion values, is it better to track fewer/earlier funnel conversion events (so you can get SKAN back faster) versus deeper events that may take longer to get back?

Pretty much all of the data I’m seeing from top marketers suggests absolutely yes. Rovio is working on a three-day conversion cycle, and many others are defaulting to D1, thanks to how some of the major platforms require it.

Check Jayne’s and Paulo’s full answers in the webinar.

14. How accurately are you receiving purchase conversions?

We haven’t run the data on this yet, but plan to. Two sources of leakage are privacy thresholds and conversions that occur after the SKAdNetwork postback.

Ultimately, to find that leakage, you’ll have to isolate campaigns, check the data you’re getting, compare it to actual results in your app from measured cohorts over time, and assign a multiplier.

15. How do you know which conversion settings are better?

Singular offers a way to toggle between conversion models: revenue, conversions, engagement, or funnel. You can also model conversions without code changes in your app: speak to a Singular representative about how.

16. How will these updates affect buying traffic based on CPA on iOS?

Put simply: they make it harder. There’s less data, delivered slower and at a lower granularity. They don’t make it impossible, but you’re going to have to work with SKAdNetwork and Singular to get the most out of the data you do get.

17. What is the future of Apple Ads as a channel?

That’s more for Apple to say than Singular. What we can say is that it’s been an extremely high-quality source for app installs in the past, and that is only likely to be more true in an SKAdNetwork reality.

Apple Search Ads, of course, does not use SKAN. Apple views data it collects on iPhone and iPad owners as first-party data, and therefore not something that is shared across companies and apps, and needing to be obfuscated via SKAdNetwork.

That gives Apple very precise targeting capabilities … and makes ASA-sourced installs generally very high quality.

 

18. Question for Jayne: What type of influencers are you looking at to push your titles? And how do you measure performance with influencers?

From Jayne Peressini: We look at influencers as an ecosystem. Top influencers are handled by our partnership and competitive gaming teams while mid and long-tail influencers are something we manage. It’s performance based just like the other channels we buy on. And similar to other channels, we look at trying to reduce overlap of influencers and their communities so we get as much reach and scale as possible. We measure on unique reach + ROAS.

Looking for more insight on iOS 14.5 and SKAdNetwork?

Singular was the first marketing measurement company to support SKAdNetwork, and we have the most comprehensive solution for growth professionals looking to boost their apps. Book some time with us today, and we’ll learn what your goals are, and outline how Singular can help you achieve them.