Author: John Koetsier

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.

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.

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.

About 10 days ago, we shared data on IDFA opt-in, ATT visibility and acceptance ratios, and iOS 14.5 adoption rates.

On May 21:

• iOS 14.5 adoption was just under 20% globally
• ATT restricted devices that will never see an App Tracking Transparency prompt were at 19%
• ATT see-and-opt-in devices were at 19.4%
• iOS ad-spend was down almost 25%

As we mentioned then, our goal was to regularly share data about this massive change so mobile marketers can get an industry-wide context for the app and company-specific numbers they are seeing.

Of course, as of May 27, there are some new wrinkles.

Apple has already released iOS 14.6, so we’re measuring both of those operating system versions, and we’ll add more as they come. In addition, we’re starting to see the emerging impact of SKAdNetwork’s inability to always correctly distinguish between organic and paid traffic. Also, we’ve added Brazil and Mexico to the data to get a better understanding of the LATAM impact of iOS 14.5.

Let’s jump into the data …

iOS 14.5 adoption rates: historically slow

iOS 14.5 and 14.6 adoption is historically slow for Apple mobile operating system releases. As of the end of May, only 21.6% of the devices that are installing apps in our key countries have upgraded. (That number is 24.3% globally, including data from other countries.)

On average, each country or region is up two to four percentage points over an additional two weeks of iOS 14.5 (and 14.6) being in the wild, on a 15-20% increase. The one difference: China went from very low adoption (under 8%) to near global average, for nearly 150% growth.

Big picture, however: this is incredibly slow adoption.

At this same point in time since release, iOS 14.4.2 was at nearly 70% adoption. 14.4 was over 70%, and 14.4.1 was on a nearly vertical curve to the same range when replaced by the next available version.

Why?

One theory is that Apple knows the ecosystem changes are going to be massive, and it’s slow-rolling the release to dampen the effect and spread it out over time so the industry has time to react, change, and adapt.

Maybe.

But Apple has had other mobile OS versions as well that it has released extremely slowly: 14.2 and 14.2.1. The speed at which Apple suggests a system upgrade to iPhone owners could potentially be impacted by an internal perceived stability of the OS, or Apple wanting more time to refine certain features. Which could make sense, given that 14.6 is already available (and live on my phone).

App Tracking Transparency visibility

As mobile marketers know, ATT isn’t even available to call for a certain percentage of devices: those with the global ad privacy setting off, or devices set up for children. That number matters, because it’s automatically outside the universe of possibility for advertising measurability via IDFA.

The four possibilities for App Tracking Transparency status are:

1. Restricted (marketers can’t ask for tracking permission)
2. Denied (marketers can ask and did, and users rejected permission)
3. Accepted (marketers can ask and did, and users said OK)
4. Not asked (marketers can ask but have not yet)

Except where otherwise noted, all of the data below is based on the first three categories: where marketers at least attempted to ask for ATT authorization.

Brazil and South Africa may be among the world’s least privacy-sensitive populations, given they’re both near 85% ATT potential visibility. Japan, Russia, and Canada are most privacy-conscious, with Japan the lowest of all.

The global average is 82.6%.

On the face of it, that’s actually pretty high. More than four out of five people globally who use iOS and have already upgraded to 14.5 or 14.6 can be asked for tracking permission. Importantly however, the only direction that number is likely to move is down: migration is likely to be to more privacy, not less, and something that feels important enough to dig around in your phone’s settings is probably going to be an urge to lock down rather than one to open up.

ATT denied and authorized percentages

Global restricted rates — those who will never see an App Tracking Transparency prompt — are 17.44%. That’s down slightly from the 19% of devices in the previous dataset, which might mean that early adopters are more likely to be privacy conscious. (Or more technical and aware of where the global setting to turn ATT off is.) But it’s too early to be definitive on that.

As of late May, ATT see-and-allow rates are very slightly up to a global average of 19.7% from 19.4%. Here’s the restricted, denied, and granted data in one table:

Ad spend on Android versus iOS: lower but stabilizing

Two weeks ago we noted that ad spend on iOS was down almost 25% while Android ad spend was up. That trend has basically solidified, at least for the current period, with iOS spend still down to 32.3% of total from February’s 39.6%.

It’s down just a hair more from the previous period, which was at 32.7%, but that’s very minor, and might now be representing a floor from which iOS ad spend will rebound, or at least stabilize.

It’s incredibly important to note, however, that we’re very early on in the transition to the new era of privacy on iOS. 75% of devices have yet to upgrade. If the slow-down in iOS spend is due to degraded measurability, it could get worse. If it’s due rather to slow adoption by all industry ecosystem players, it could rebound.

There are a few options to consider, including:

• Ad spend is dropping out of iOS to nowhere
• Ad spend is migrating from iOS to Android
• Ad spend is migrating out of traditional app-to-app mobile marketing channels

If we look at total ad spend in our sample size for a clue, we see that in the last month total ad spend is down about 7% from February levels, and about 5% from immediately previous weeks. That’s interesting, but not definitive as there have always been seasonal shifts in ad spend — high in the end of year/beginning of year holiday season, lower in summer — and we don’t have enough data yet to prove a pattern.

(Also because there was some run-up in the pre-iOS 14.5 months as marketers got their last kicks at the IDFA can.)

Ultimately, it’s something that will bear attention in future data analyses.

Percentage of installs on iOS versus Android since iOS 14.5

One thing we did not check last time was whether the percentage of overall installs might be shifting from iOS to Android since iOS 14.5 dropped. After all, more ad spend should indicate more activity on Android, presumably.

Ultimately, we see a slight but sustained increase in Android installs versus iOS as a percentage of all installs. And, of course, a concurrent, sustained decrease in iOS installs.

In February of 2021, iOS installs were 23-25% of all app installs Singular measured (prior data was a representative sample: this data is on all installs). Allowing for a slight reversion to near those numbers in early March, that percentage has slowly decreased to 21.9%.

Android’s concurrent rise, of course, has been from 74.6% to 78.1%.

It’s not a huge change, but it’s definitely significant. And it’s on a measured volume of installs in the billions, across the entire planet, so it’s unlikely to be a purely local phenomenon or glitch in the data. If this stabilizes or continues, it has impacts on where marketers focus their efforts, at least in traditional app install channels. As mentioned previously, with traditional digital user acquisition channels losing some degree of measurability, marketers may be looking to older (or newer) channels for at least some of their iOS growth.

Summing up: what we think we know, and what’s still challenging

We’re clearly seeing decreases in iOS ad spend and app install activity. What we don’t know is if those will continue, ameliorate, or get worse as the vast majority of iPhone and iPad owners upgrade over the next weeks and months.

Adoption is still very slow, and 14.5 is an unusual point release for Apple: not many are accompanied by global ad campaigns.

We also know and are starting to see that measuring organic versus paid installs is going to be more interesting. (By interesting, read: challenging.) Depending on privacy thresholds, actual conversions, as opposed to measured conversions (think: action taken in three days while your postback fires after one day, or purchases made five weeks later), web to app, flows that SKAdNetwork doesn’t know exist, and other shortcomings in SKAN, attribution on iOS is getting more difficult, and some things are getting missed.

Including separating out obviously organic from obviously paid acquisition.

There are solutions for this, and ways to work around it, but the reality remains.

Finally: help us help you

If you’re looking for help to keep the mobile growth ball rolling in privacy-safe environments including SKAdNetwork on iOS — and Android starting later this year, which is losing the GAID if people opt out of interest-based advertising or ads personalization.

Book a time and let’s chat.

If you’ve experienced App Clips on iOS or Instant Apps on Android, you already know part of the power of cloud gaming.

1. Click a link.
2. Play a game.

That’s it. Nothing else to do. No long circuitous route from app to ad to app marketplace to your mobile device home screen to finding an icon somewhere on your app screens to tapping it and finally playing a game.

(And no Apple or Google rules about what you can or can’t do.)

Now.gg is a new cloud gaming startup launched by the team behind Bluestacks, which has 500 million gamers and is a Singular ROI Index honoree. Bluestacks is a mobile-games-on-the-web service, providing a place to play Android games on desktop computers. But Now.gg will allow any game developer to publish games for instant access on the cloud wherever they wish … and market them with a simple link.

No download required. And a million-plus Android games work on the platform with a few minor tweaks.

If cloud gaming is the future, Now.gg might be the platform that ungates mobile games from the iOS App Store and Android’s Google Play. Then again, Google Play and the App Store are fantastic places for many gaming publishers to monetize, and Now.gg can seamlessly transition cloud players to mobile app installers and long-term dedicated game players.

Watch the interview with Now.gg’s Ben Armstrong:

(Subscribe to Singular’s YouTube channel to get notified when we post new videos)

Cloud gaming is the new gold rush

There is no shortage of companies rushing to cash in on cloud gaming. Google Stadia, Facebook Gaming, Amazon Luna, and Microsoft xCloud are just some of the big tech companies that are attacking the space and competing with PlayStation, GeForce, NVIDIA, Steam, and literally dozens of cloud gaming startups.

The promise is spectacular: play now, play anywhere, play on any device.

Where that promise has yet to be fully proven is great game-play, every time, without hiccups. Naturally, it’s getting better as bandwidth improves, 5G continues to roll out, and platforms get better. Some players, like Facebook, started with simple games that don’t require wide internet pipes for satisfying gaming.

Now.gg, however, sees cloud gaming as a different kind of opportunity: the ability to level the playing field on how powerful a mobile device you need to play a certain game.

“When we all started out as teenagers, maybe we didn’t have the best phones because that’s what mom and dad’s allowance got us,” says Ben Armstrong, a vice president at Now.gg. “But then as we find more and more games that we like to play and our phone quality increases … now we’ve got all this storage that is taken up with pictures and videos … so then we’re faced with, okay, do I delete all my pictures or do I play this game?”

In fact 40% of today’s mobile phones can’t handle the highest-end games and a full 60%, Now.gg says, are either low or mid-range phones that lack sufficient compute, storage, or both for performance-intensive games.

Cloud eliminates those challenges, of course. Load when needed, click away when finished. And, all the intensive compute operations happen on cloud-based servers, leaving the phone to simply display the action and receive gamers’ inputs.

Which brings up the biggest issue with cloud gaming, of course: latency.

“We have a global network of servers that enable you if you’re in South Korea to have a server that’s close to you in South Korea,” Armstrong says. “If you’re in Brazil, there’s a server close to you in Brazil. And that really helps out the latency.”

Listen to this story on Singular’s Growth Masterminds podcast

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or other platforms …

Cloud gaming changes mobile user acquisition for marketers

If the technology works as advertised, opening up cloud gaming for virtually every mobile game that matters is a game-changer for mobile marketers. And it has the potential to revolutionize how game publishers pursue user acquisition.

By now, mobile games user acquisition for iOS and Android is pretty much a known quantity. Where to buy ads, how to measure results, and what to do to optimize performance are not mysteries: while nothing about it is precisely easy, there are clear paths that winners have blazed to success. (Of course, there are always changes, and Apple’s iOS 14 and SKAdNetwork on iOS have changed the paradigm for iPhone and iPad games to a certain extent.)

But buying ads on mobile apps and directing traffic to Google Play and the App Store are significantly different propositions than marketing a web-based asset. In fact, marketing a web-based asset opens up a lot of opportunity for games marketers.

There are at least eight major game-changers when moving from mobile user acquisition to marketing a cloud-based game: some positive, and some negative.

1) No attention tax

Cloud games start instantly. That’s a major change to traditional mobile games, which require a certain amount of delayed gratification skills from users. As I mentioned off the top, downloading and installing a mobile game on either platform takes time, multiple steps, and multiple changes of context.

There’s a reason D1 retention for mobile games isn’t 100%: some apps never get opened.

Important note:

Of course, you could have similar issues with cloud gaming. If you have a huge game that requires significant local resources, that exacts a different kind of attention tax.

2) Cheaper traffic from a wider variety of sources

Installs are costly. It’s not easy to get people to take the step of installing software packages on their devices. Far harder, in fact, than getting them to visit a website (see #3 below). Therefore, costs are high: especially when there’s a lot of change on the iOS side of the ecosystem.

Web traffic is a lot cheaper, and there’s tens of millions of places that you can get it from.

3) Lower psychological cost

Related to that: clicking a link has low psychological cost than installing software. A web browser that is built for accessing multiple locations feels safer than apps, which are known to have a certain degree of malware, adware, and spyware.

That means getting someone to try your game can be easier. Click a link, play for a few seconds, and then you can make a decision about whether you like a game and want to play it frequently.

4) Increased viewability and measurability

Web advertising measurability has its own challenges, but also has well-known and established methods of measurement (that Singular supports), which help marketers make marketing optimization decisions.

5) Cross-platform applicability

Cloud gaming is incredibly versatile. While not all platforms work this way, cloud gaming should make devices almost irrelevant. In testing Now.gg games, for instance, I played a game on an iPhone 11 Pro, a ZTE Axon Android phone, and Mac Os.

Phone … desktop … everything just works. That’s greater market addressability and more flexibility for where your users/customers can play.

Important note:

If play anywhere matters to you, consider your user interface: how will it work on each of the major platforms and devices?

6) Influencer marketing becomes more actionable and trackable

Watch, click, play … and maybe even play along.

Influencer marketing for mobile user acquisition has been getting more measurable, but it’s always suffered from context displacement: leaving the environment where the influencer is … influencing … and getting the app. Now the app is a click away in a different tab or window. Instant gratification for the user, and embedded parameters making it measurable for the marketer.

7) Retention is even harder

Easy come, easy go is already one of the key rules of engagement for mobile app marketing. But when you can simply “uninstall” a game that has never actually been installed by just navigating away, retention becomes even more of a challenge.

Which is why …

8) Early gameplay and first impressions are huge

In the cloud, your game is a click away from being played. It’s also a click away from being forgotten. So a great first impression and fun, successful early gameplay are essential to set the hook and draw a first-time player into your game.

Tough gameplay, a long storyline, significant amounts of configuration, design of a ship, selection of weapons, or preparation to play are probably not great entry points for most players.

Pick the right game to be successful

Not every game that works on mobile will be successful on cloud gaming platforms.

There’s a huge amount of potential in cloud gaming, but that doesn’t guarantee success to anyone. Nor does it mean you should approach this opportunity by just relegating it to being a fine-we’ll-throw-our-games-there-just-to-see-what-happens opportunity. Throwing a game at a cloud gaming service just because it’s there is probably not a great option. You run the risk of wasting time and money. You also run brand risk: the risk that people see your logo and your game icon and associate it with something that’s less than awesome.

My guess?

Cloud games that succeed will be reasonably quick to load. They’ll also be simple to play on different devices and platforms. They’ll start with a bang — maybe with a dedicated cloud gaming entry point — and they’ll be super-smart about only loading what’s needed for gameplay when it’s needed.

And they’ll probably also be aligned to the strengths and weaknesses of the cloud gaming platform itself: degree of latency, ease of access, barriers to transitioning to other platforms, and so on.

The simple way to kick the tires on cloud gaming is to throw a title at it. The smart way is to pick one very carefully and thoughtfully, and consider spending a few dollars and a bit of time to make it a great native cloud experience … even if you ultimately want players to install your games at some point.

Reasons to try cloud gaming

The question, of course, for busy mobile publishers is obvious: Why should I dip my toes into cloud gaming? We’re busy doing what we’re doing, and we don’t have a ton of resources to jump on additional initiatives.

That’s likely true for most.

Putting aside the fact that Now.gg specifically is designed to take your Android APK with a very minimal amount of customization, dipping your toe in cloud gaming future proofs your company against changes in future platforms. That means changes on each major publishing platform, and it means change in general in the gaming industry away from native games on each platform and towards always-available, playable anywhere, instant-on gaming experiences.

That might be nebulous and futuristic for busy developers and marketers.

But there’s also a hard and tangible near-term benefit, at least in the way that Now.gg is set up: easy conversion of cloud gaming tire-kickers to mobile app installs. That’s potentially a very inexpensive means of user acquisition even in traditional mobile channels. Even better for marketers, advertisers will be able to attribute mobile app installs back to the original web source where the user clicked on the ad.

That’s huge, and gives you measurability all the way through the user journey. The result: you can optimize, tweak, and improve conversion rates.

Need measurement for growth? Talk to Singular

Singular measures mobile app installs, sure. Singular also measures multi-platform marketing, including web-to-app marketing and web marketing, among other channels.

And Singular’s deeply integrated with both Bluestacks and Now.gg to make all your user acquisition and growth tactics in those spaces measurable and optimizable.

Book a time and chat with an expert today …

The mobile marketing industry is just starting to try to get settled with the changes that iOS 14.5 brings to measurement. But we’re already seeing at least one significant undocumented change in SKAdNetwork in iOS 14.6, just out this week. And, concurrently, additional changes in how Apple is dealing with privacy thresholds.

I spent 15 minutes with Singular CTO Eran Friedman to get all the details …

iOS 14.6: IP addresses out of SKAdNetwork

The first change is an undocumented change in how SKAdNetwork functions with regard to IP addresses.

Here’s the original and still-documented flow: postbacks are sent to ad networks (and Singular, with 307 redirects) right from users’ devices (see bottom right).

But in iOS 14.6, that flow has a slight change. Instead of postbacks coming from the device, they first go to an Apple proxy server, which then forwards them to ad networks.

What’s the impact?

“First of all, it means you won’t be getting the device IP address in the SKAN postbacks, which essentially protects user privacy,” says Friedman. “Because previously you could think about how to do fingerprinting based on SKAN postbacks. So now that won’t be possible if anyone was even thinking about that approach.”

The effect goes deeper, however.

IP addresses also enabled geolocation, which gave advertisers a rough idea of what country, at least, an install was in. That won’t be possible anymore: advertisers who want it will need to encode it in their campaign IDs.

One benefit, however: fraud will be harder to accomplish with this new method. Apple still isn’t cryptographically signing the conversion values, but it is taking a more involved approach with the install postback, making fraud tougher.

SKAdNetwork: privacy thresholds relaxed

On May 21 Apple made another significant change to SKAdNetwork. This one is entirely backend and unrelated to the point version update of iOS.

As multiple people notice, more SKAdNetwork postbacks are coming with conversion value payloads.

“In short, it seems like they decreased those thresholds or fixed something in the thresholds, causing the advertisers to get many more conversion values than what we’ve been seeing before,” Friedman says. “And we see it across ad networks across advertisers … definitely a pretty significant phenomenon that started just a few days ago.”

The challenge had been primarily with app advertisers who had fairly low install volume per campaign: something like 20 or 30 installs a day. Friedman dug pretty deeply into the data, and those advertisers are now seeing much more post-install conversion data.

“If you have higher than let’s say 20-30 sales per day … then we see that the change is pretty significant,” Friedman says. “We saw that some campaigns changed from getting 20% conversion values — very low numbers — to 80 or 90% conversion values. So pretty dramatic.”

That’s a big deal, because if you’re subdividing app installs into multiple campaigns to use the full available power (if I can use that term) of SKAdNetwork to encode creative data, geodata, campaign data, or other optimization insights, you’ve been losing the ability to get conversion data.

Now that’s changed, and you’re able to get full conversion information even from relatively low-volume campaigns.

WWDC: What’s next from Apple in SKAdNetwork?

Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference is coming very soon, on June 7. If there are additional changes to the SKAdNetwork framework, that’s likely where we’ll hear about them.

If Apple does add anything, web to app flows would be nice, Friedman says.

“I think web to app is a big one,” he says. “A lot of the web networks can’t get SKAN postbacks at the moment and I think that if they would announce that something like that, that will be huge.”

Also on the wish list?

Creative granularity.

SKAdNetwork help

If you’re looking for help to implement or optimize SKAdNetwork, chat with a Singular rep. We’ve worked with the best, including Rovio, to help companies maximize advertising optimization capability on iOS 14 and beyond.

Mastercard is a global enterprise with a market cap of over $350 billion, tens of millions of merchants, and $6.5 trillion in annual payment volume. This is a very significant company. You would expect the chief marketing officer to be similarly impressive.

And you would not be disappointed.

Raja Rajamannar is an MBA with a history of executive leadership at Citi, Diners Club, Humana, and WellPoint, and a bucketful of directorships. He’s been the chief marketing and communications officer for Mastercard for eight years, and is also the president of Mastercard’s health care business unit.

He’s also what I call a “push play” podcast guest. In other words, push play, and out flows relevant, structured, and digestible awesomeness. (There have been literally five or six guests like this in my podcasting career.)

Here are six things I learned from Mastercard’s CMO:

1) Forecast for the unthinkable

Can you imagine being prepared for the first global pandemic since 1918?

“Three and a half years back, I put in place what they call a risk management function within marketing,” Rajamannar told me. “And they look at all the risks that marketing faces from cyber threats to data security risks, to privacy risks, to brand disintermediation risk, financial risk, everything across the board, and then put plans in place to either avoid those risks from materializing or if the risks do materialize, to do something very quickly about it. And one of those risks we forecast at the time three and a half years back was probably there’ll be some natural calamity or a manmade disaster, because of which people will not be able to go outside their homes. So that was a fortuitous forecast I would say, though unfortunately, it has materialized, and so we actually had our contingency plans and the building blocks in place. So when COVID hit us … we could actually quickly cut over to our contingency plans without missing a beat.”

Now, granted, Mastercard has a lot of resources at its disposal, and can probably prepare for things that perhaps your 7-person marketing team can’t. And maybe you can’t prepare for the zombie apocalypse, or global collapse due to impending gigantic meteorite impact. 

But just maybe, the principle holds, and there are micro “pandemics” that could hit your app’s niche, or the platform you target most, or your specific userbase … and having even a draft contingency plan in place would help when the unexpected but not impossible happens.

2) Diversify your advertising

As mobile performance marketers learned painfully over the past year and are experiencing live at this very moment, things change. The way that worked before is not guaranteed to be the way that will work in the future, and the advertising identifier that sits at the center of your data-driven growth machine is not certain to remain.

In fact, you could argue that the history of technology and marketing over the past few decades declares precisely the opposite: things are guaranteed to change.

“About seven years back, we started moving a lot of our budget away from traditional advertising into experiential marketing and into influencer marketing,” Rajamannar says. “Advertising has become extremely crowded and people hate advertisements. They’re [using] ad blockers at scale  … and are going in droves to ad-free environments like Netflix and Amazon Prime … so where there are lots of hours consumed, our people are spending tons and tons of hours in front of those, in those channels where we cannot put advertisements. So it’s a narrower inventory of attention, humongous amount of clutter, and reduced span of attention of people … so we have moved a lot of money away from traditional advertising into experiential marketing, where you are not telling stories, but you are helping consumers make stories by giving them experiences that money cannot buy.”

The reality is that we are moving into the age of privacy-first marketing. Kicking and screaming, perhaps. And not without established players making moves to preach privacy while instituting targeting methodologies that privilege their existing positions, sure.

But privacy first, nevertheless.

That’s a good opportunity to reconsider channels and partners. To look at advertising and marketing methods you wouldn’t necessarily have picked pre-iOS 14.5, and re-examine what might work. Low tech doesn’t necessarily mean low effectiveness, as Mixtiles has discovered, and everything is measurable given the right technology.

3) Hire for IQ + EQ + DQ

We want smart people when we hire. We also want people who can effectively work with others: listening, understanding, communicating, and activating.

That’s IQ + EQ, or emotional intelligence.

Rajamannar suggests that marketing leaders also hire for DQ: decency quotient. The need for this has become painfully obvious in the past year as we’ve seen executive after executive felled by untimely comments, unkind words, or imperfectly hidden prejudices. 

“We keep talking about when you are selecting candidates that they should be very intelligent, that they should have learning agility,” Rajamannar says. “They should have the right attitude, and they should have the cultural fit and they should have interpersonal relationships and all those kinds of things … essentially IQ as intelligence quotient and emotional quotient as in EQ. So these are the two we keep talking about, but when you talk of culture and if you want to create a culture, which is based on people being real, people being decent … we don’t want people to stand on other people’s dead bodies and then sort of keep rising and play politics. That kind of a thing is not really a place where you attract the best of the talent and you keep the best talent out there. 

When Covid hit, Mastercard’s CEO told the company that he didn’t know what was going to happen, but that no-one would lose their jobs. That settled everyone’s nerves and gave them the quiet confidence to work through the storm of 2020 and the ongoing trials of 2021.

That’s DQ: decency quotient.

And that’s something that becomes visible outside the company to customers and prospects as well. For those worried about the costs … imagine the costs of becoming internationally known as a company that does not have values and standards. It can literally break a brand.

4) Build da Vinci marketing teams

The marketing of the future is one of those rare disciplines that will call for extreme right-brain creativity and innovation at the same time as high-end left-brain analysis and computation.

In other words: melding the left brain and right brain together.

“If you look at the traditional marketers, they have come from the qualitative side of the house, which means they’re very creative, they’re intuitive,” Rajamannar says. “Their appreciation and sensibilities around aesthetics is fantastic. Right? And that’s how they come up with beautiful ads and beautiful communication and wonderful packaging … now, on the other hand, when you look at the new ways of doing marketing, it is heavily technology driven. It is data driven. It is analysis driven and that kind of approach, or need is through the left brain. The left brain actually is the part which processes these kind of things, the data, the numbers, the analytics, and so on and so forth.”

You simply can’t market at scale without technology today, he adds. That’s true of both traditionally performance marketing and traditionally brand marketing.

Leonardo da Vinci was known for both being an artist and a scientist. He painted probably the most famous painting in history, the Mona Lisa, and was the first to formulate the laws of friction, as well as invent the concept of the helicopter, the parachute (presumably to be used when the helicopter failed) and numerous other machines. (And he was also, few remember, at one time employed as an engineer.)

Da Vinci marketers can at once create and analyze. Invent and refine.

“To survive and thrive, you need left-brain thinking,” Rajamannar says. “And in future, in addition to left-brain thinking, you also have to be immensely right brained.”

The challenge, of course, is finding both in the same individual. That’s rare, something that Rajamannar acknowledges. The solution is to build in aggregate what you cannot find in isolation, and grow a team of marketers that collectively embody both mindsets.

5) Build trust into every customer experience

Rajamannar has said that the concept of “brand” needs rebranding. 

Interestingly, when you come right down to it, the difference between a brand that wins and a brand that loses is generally trust: do you trust that the brand you’re selecting will deliver on its promise? Will offer the service or functionality that you’re seeking? Will provide an experience or product that meets expectations?

Marketers have some make-up work to do here.

“Trust is very critical,” Rajamannar says. “Marketers have been consistently breaking that trust, unfortunately, and that’s what has landed us in this place … when all the products will look similar in functionality and capabilities, with the impending technological transformation and tsunami that is going to happen … the one big differentiator from brand to brand will be trust: is this brand trustworthy? Are they doing good by society? Are they doing good by me as a consumer? Are they respecting my privacy? Are they deceiving me or are they being transparent? Even if they’re at a disadvantage, are they being transparent?”

People remember when trust is broken, and every time that happens, trust dies just a little bit more. In our modern social-media-is-the-ultimate-water-cooler world, it’s not just one person you have to worry about. How you treat the one is how the many might see you.

My son recently had a 4-month old tire blow up on the freeway, and when I posted about it on Facebook, a friend said he would never buy that brand again.

That’s for as potentially major items as tire safety and vehicular accidents to as seemingly minor details as the packaging for your snack is 3X bigger than it needs to be, essentially tricking customers into thinking they’re getting more than they actually are. 

Or when your app marketing promises a particular functionality, only for installers to find that they need to buy a subscription to make it usable.

“You have to shift your focus to more long term as opposed to how can I maximize my sales for today, for this month, for this quarter,” Rajamannar says.

Serving and selling are not mutually exclusive, he adds. And here’s where the more performance-minded marketers need to listen to the more brand-focused marketers and built middle ground.

6) Redefine “customer” loyalty

Marketing communities spend hundreds of billions of dollars annually on loyalty programs, Rajamannar says. But in an age when more than half of people in long-term committed relationships admit to cheating on their partners … what does loyalty mean?

Perhaps we have it backwards when we talk about customer loyalty.

“We as brands rate so low in people’s hierarchy of needs and hierarchy of things that matter. Why would they be loyal to us?” Rajamannar says. “It is the brand which should be loyal to the consumers, not the other way around. And if you ask consumers, that’s exactly what they’ll say. So I think we got loyalty wrong … we expect that we are running loyalty programs to enable consumers to be loyal to us, but loyalty cannot be bought.”

Now there’s a thought grenade.

Customer loyalty is a brand being loyal to its customers by doing what it says it will. By privileging their experience over an extra dime or two. By making decisions that benefit customers, not just your app, your subscription service, or the metrics your boss will review in the morning.

The future of marketing

The future of marketing contains a lot of technology. It isn’t technology itself. At heart is a very old mindset that puts customers or “users” first, focuses on brand, delivers on implicit and explicit promises, and combines qualitative and quantitative thinking.

Sure, maybe that’s easier to do when you have billions in revenue and massive market share. But just maybe that’s how some of the biggest companies of our time became that way in the first place.

Would you believe that Silicon Valley tech companies need digital transformation? Can you imagine that some of the hottest tech startups on the planet require digital transformation? Is it possible that digital transformation is not just the task of enterprise companies and legacy brands?

According to top CMOs at companies like Hotwire, LinkedIn, and iHeartMedia, absolutely.

Every year for the last half-decade, I’ve surveyed hundreds of CMOs on the hottest new technologies for marketing and advertising. Every year, they’ve given me the hot trendy sexy answers: the VRs and voice searches and augmented realities of marketing. In other words, everything trendy and hyped and … tactical.

Tactics are great. In fact, essential. 

But unwrapped in a winning strategy, tactics are zero to 60 in three seconds flat to chasing your tail, wasting your budget, and ending up with cute case studies on multiple vendor-du-jour websites. But … not generating lasting, pervasive, and — perhaps most critically — continually compounding marketing advantage. And we wonder why there’s faster turnover at the CMO position than any other C-level executive role.

We generally hear about “digital transformation” in the context of companies of a certain age. Companies that don’t do business online, perhaps. Maybe that don’t have a mobile app, an Alexa Skill, or a podcast.

Do they need help? Sure.

Are all those things good? Yes.

But there’s something deeper that modern digital-first companies need. And it’s something most marketing departments in young tech-savvy companies also fail to achieve.

Most of even the best-run companies don’t:

• Have a single source of marketing truth
• Enrich first-party customer sales data with first-party customer support data
• Have omnichannel communications capability that connects with customers or prospects on their devices of choice in their channels of choice at their times of opportunity
• Connect all their marketing tools
• Consolidate marketing data in a clean, unified, accessible source
• Enjoy real-time insight into customer health
• Know their exact cost of customer acquisition by channel, and which channels are trending better over time
• And much more …

Unfortunately, 2020 was a horrific, ghastly year. So much changed in just a few months, and we’re not out of the woods yet. But something in marketing technology changed in 2020, too. Marketing changed for the usual reason most things change.

It had to.

And the CMOs I surveyed knew it. They understood that the time for flashy tactics is over. That in a down economy there was no room for flashy tactics that don’t impact the bottom line and don’t translate into lasting competitive advantage. Ultimately, CMOs realized en masse that the time for a holistic data-driven approach to complete marketing digital transformation is past due. The global pandemic wiped out the air cover for hype cycle tech, and what’s left is a burning platform to get real about sustainable holistic change.

“Finally, all the sacred cows are dead,” Openpath CMO Kieran Hannon to me. “Now meaningful customer-centric digital transformation can accelerate.”

It starts with digital, says VP of Marketing at LinkedIn Penry Price.

“We’ve learned during this pandemic that we can communicate over digital platforms better than we thought,” he said.

But it must include some degree of unification. Look: not everything can or needs to be connected at all times. Innovation needs space and time, and sometimes you need to break something creatively to blaze a new trail. But sustainable marketing effectiveness requires connection. Isolated data and isolated systems have isolated impact that is unsustainable over the long term; successful innovation infuses new insights and capabilities into a context where they can be understood, applied, and acted upon globally.

“Fusion is the new ecosystem,” says Suzanne Kounkel, Chief Marketing Officer for Deloitte. “Fusion is the art of bringing together new business partnerships, customer insights, and digital platforms to create ecosystems.”

Marketers have long had systems of analysis and systems of engagement. Isolated systems of analysis lead to knowledge without action. Isolated systems of engagement lead to action without knowledge. Both are clearly not great by any standard. But also bad are one-way systems. One-way systems feed analysis into engagement, but don’t report back results. One way systems take action, but don’t update analysis. Both slow institutional learning at a time when brands need to learn, improve, and engage at internet speed

Unfortunately, both are easy to achieve. In fact, they’re the default result of chasing every new hyped technology that doesn’t in some way connect back to the core.

The core is digital transformation in marketing.

And that means holistic digital marketing: marketing where you comprehensively understand customer touchpoints when and where it’s privacy-safe. Where you exhaustively manage your marketing activity, spend, and results in privacy-safe ways across all channels, modes, and methodologies. Where your systems of analysis and systems of engagement are aligned and integrated, shortening the span between awareness and action.

Google learns from each search. Facebook learns every time someone posts. Tesla learns every time a driver takes a seat. In just the same way, good marketing organizations are wired to learn from ongoing engagements and touchpoints in real time. Every engagement makes you smarter about what customers want. Every click provides data. Every view contributes to insight. 

Anything less, and you’re learning slower than your competition.

That does include investment and innovation. As iHeartMedia executive VP Hetal Thaker Patel says, “it’s critical for consumer-facing companies to invest in data and insight tools to stay ahead of the trends.” But those investments need to connect islands of data and siloes of engagement.

Then we’re seeing the whole customer, or as much as she or he chooses to reveal. And we’re seeing the whole of our marketing activity, combined with its results.

“The first place to start would be examining lifecycle marketing programs to ensure that everything from onboarding to reengagement campaigns create relevant and memorable experiences that engage customers, build stronger loyalty and drive ROI,” says Myles Kleeger, President and chief customer officer at Braze.

It’s not about an app. It’s not about a website. It’s not about a social initiative.

It’s about how they all work together.

“That was so 2020, where every business scrambled to become digital and mobile-first,” says Cynthia Gumbert, CMO at SmartBear. “That’s quickly becoming old news, and the biggest thing differentiating businesses is how well these digital experiences now operate for their customers.”

Every touchpoint is a glance at your brand’s face. But for most brands, customers’ experience with them in different channels is like the old story of the person who views an elephant through a fence, and while they see a leg and a trunk and a tail, can’t figure out how they all fit together. That doesn’t accomplish anything for your brand but frustrate your customers and dilute your brand.

“The strategy for 2021 needs to be an alignment of all platforms and initiatives, and in many cases, an increased focus on centralizing and utilizing the data each of these programs is producing to better drive execution,” says Shawn Rogers, a marketing VP at TIBCO. “Just having the newest tool isn’t the answer either — it’s a challenge to bring the data together in a way that drives innovation.”

You have the data required to drive the insights you need.

The way to activate it is to bring it all together.

As Axway CMO Paul French told me, the next big trend is liberating the value locked up in your martech stack.

Fewer than 20% of iPhone users have updated to iOS 14.5. And fewer than 20% of those agree to allow apps to track their activity to personalize advertising or measure marketing effectiveness.

Singular just pulled a subset of our data to answer key questions that are on mobile marketers’ minds in the aftermath of Apple releasing iOS 14.5:

1. How many people are adopting iOS 14.5?
2. How many people are accepting tracking when apps ask?
3. How is this impacting the mobile advertising ecosystem?

The data sample size here is a representative slice of Singular’s iOS traffic: just under 12 million app installs on iPhones and iPads, all measured and attributed from May 17 to 20.

iOS 14.5 adoption rates so far

New versions of iOS are typically adopted quite quickly. For example, iOS 14 reached about 50% adoption within about six weeks of release, and within seven months, was at 90% penetration. Interestingly, you often see significant (10% or more) adoption before an iOS update is even released since so many iPhone owners participate in Apple’s public beta programs.

Point releases generally come with much less fanfare than major new editions and therefore slower adoption. But we’re already seeing fairly quick adoption of iOS 14.5, which finally introduces Apple’s major new mobile privacy features, announced almost 10 months ago at WWDC.

Germany is the quickest to adopt, with a quarter of all German iPhone and iPad owners updating within just a couple of weeks, and China is the slowest, with few than one in ten updating their devices.

The global average is just under 20%.

What that means, of course, is that 80% of global iOS traffic is still using earlier mobile operating systems — mostly iOS 14 or subsequent updates — and is therefore not required to even see the App Tracking Transparency prompt. Marketers can still target these users and will be able to for many months to come if historical patterns hold.

And that’s critically important to note, especially when we start drawing inferences about App Tracking Transparency opt-in rates.

Essentially, we’re barely past the Early Adopter phase. The Early Majority has barely started to register that hey … there’s a new version of the operating system for my phone. And it hasn’t even penetrated the consciousness of the Laggards yet.

Two conclusions are obvious:

1. We’re in very early innings of the “IDFA apocalypse”
2. What we see happening among early adopters may not bear a resemblance to what happens in the early and late majority of users

That second point is particularly important as we look at the next few data points: ATT visibility rates and ATT acceptance rates.

One caveat on the data sample we’re using: it’s based on new app installs. So people who are not actively installing apps could be under-represented in this data. Those might be people who app developers are less interested in anyways — game developers and growth marketers probably want to target people who download and install new apps at least semi-regularly — but in verticals like banking and retail, marketers want to target broader slices of the market.

App Tracking Transparency visibility rates

Much of the data that we’re seeing in the wild right now focuses on ATT opt-in versus opt-out rates. That’s important information for mobile marketers, but it’s not the first data point to care about. The first data point that matters is how many people will even see the App Tracking Transparency prompt if I choose to show it?

Because the reality is that if someone has turned the Allow Apps to Request to Track setting off in their phone’s or tablet’s settings … they will never even see ATT. Your app will request it, and iOS will deny the request. This is essentially the iOS 14.5 equivalent of limit ad tracking in previous versions of Apple’s mobile operating system. And, in fact, if people have Limit Ad Tracking on, by default iOS 14.5 sets All Apps to Request to Track off. (In addition: this could also be the case for child accounts and managed corporate accounts.)

As it turns out, almost 19% of devices globally are ATT restricted: users will never see your request to allow tracking.

A clear and massive outlier: China, with almost half of iOS 14.5 users opting out of even getting ATT prompts from apps. Most other countries are in the 15-20% range, with the U.S. being a slight outlier on the permissive side. But remember: while China stands out here, fewer than 8% of the iOS devices in China have upgraded to iOS 14.5 so far.

So we could be seeing a statistical anomaly based on what very technical early adopters tend to do.

It’s tempting to think that early adopters are more tech savvy than your average smartphone owner, and more tech savvy people are more likely to make restrictive choices about their digital privacy. That’s entirely possible, but we also see that the older people are, the more privacy-sensitive they are … and younger people are typically digital natives. And we also know that some of the most knowledgeable people, including developers, never upgrade immediately but wait for the almost-inevitable major bugs to be fixed first, upgrading only when iOS 14.5 becomes iOS 14.5.1 or 14.5.2.

So: time will tell if this percentage holds through the early and late majorities. (And we’ll be sharing data on this over the next weeks and months.)

The obvious point, however, is that even in this group of early adopters, most marketers in most countries have the ability to ask more than 80% of their app users and customers for tracking permission. That’s a significant majority.

And in the U.S., that bumps up to 85% (for now).

App Tracking Transparency acceptance rates

If you’ve skimmed to this section because you’re a dessert-first type of person, you’re probably not alone. (But I’m still silently judging you.) This is the most interesting part for many, and it’s what ultimately determines which methods advertisers will be able to use to measure, attribute, and target their users.

The most trusting and giving country so far?

France, and not by a little.

(And remember: more than 20% of French iOS devices that we’ve seen in the past four days have already updated to iOS 14.5.)

Average it all out, and 19.4% of all iOS users both see and allow tracking permission. Interestingly, there seems to be a very consistent grouping of countries at the 23% level, while the rest are mostly in the 15-18% range. China is the lowest at under 14%.

I would suggest caution in reading too much into these numbers right now. As we get more data it would not be shocking to see France revert to the mean a little, and China to increase somewhat as well. There very likely will be national and regional trends, but I would like to see more data over more time from a larger percentage of people in each region before asserting with confidence that the French people love tracking and Chinese people are privacy fanatics.

Another potentially important factor, believe it or not: font size.

Thomas Petit, who writes the Mobile Adventures newsletter, shared this image:

Some languages just use more words to say similar things. And so the do-not-allow option in the ATT prompt in French and Italian is almost unreadable, and the allow becomes essentially ALLOW in caps and boldface. This is likely also having an impact, Petit suggests.

Finally, while there’s ultimately only one set of numbers that matter here: how many iOS users give apps tracking permission via ATT … there’s another slice of the data that is worth sharing.

And that’s the number of people who allow tracking as a percentage of those who even get the option in the first place. In other words: if you’ve deselected the Allow Apps to Request to Track setting, you’re excluded from the universe of people who will see the App Tracking Transparency prompt.

Unsurprisingly, these numbers are a little higher. And they also provide more insight into how different regions respond to requests for tracking permission.

France again leads, but Japan, Korea, and South Africa grow significantly. Interestingly, in spite of the huge number of Chinese people who will never see the ATT prompt thanks to their phones’ settings, those who allow apps to request to track and see the App Tracking Transparency prompt respond positively at a high rate: almost 25%.

Ad ecosystem impacts: iOS vs Android ad spend

The third major focus for most mobile ecosystem players is: what is iOS 14.5 and its new brand of mobile advertising privacy doing to mobile app install ad spend?

The short answer is: Android’s up and iOS is down.

But, as usual, reality is more complex than that.

There’s a clear downward trend in global ad spend starting in early March, but accelerating around the week of April 26, which coincides precisely with the release of iOS 14.5. Where iOS was 40% of ad spend to Android’s 60%, it’s now just under 32% to Android’s 68.3%.

What that trend means is, of course, the million-dollar question.

There are a number of possibilities here:

1. Ad dollars are fleeing an unfavorable iOS measurement environment to Android where targeting and tracking are business-as-usual.
2. Ad dollars are still pouring into iOS, but advertisers are not finding as much addressable inventory as they want, so budgets are going unspent.
3. Advertisers are pulling back on iOS ad spend until they fully acquaint themselves with the new realities of measurement and optimization.
4. It’s some seasonal change that we just haven’t noticed before.

It’s entirely possible that #1 is right and that ad spend is fleeing iOS. And that wouldn’t be a good look for the iOS ecosystem, potentially, if ad dollars — and therefore app monetization — tilt toward Android. That would drive innovation towards Android, which would be challenging for the health of the iOS ecosystem over time.

It’s not the most likely scenario, however.

We certainly did see app install ad prices jump on iOS over the past few months as brands accelerated iOS spend in the early part of 2021. Another strong possibility, however: advertisers are now relaxing to spend as they accommodate to new realities, finalize new piping and plumbing in their tech growth stacks, and have already spent much of their Q2 ad budgets.

It’s also not inconceivable that there’s insufficient inventory available. The No IDFA No Problem alliance, which Singular is a part of, shows SKAdNetwork-compatible inventory at a still-low 59.5%.

And, I haven’t pulled enough data at this point to rule out seasonal variation.

So again: it’s too early to say definitively what is happening and why. We’ll be pulling and sharing more data over the next few weeks and months which should illuminate the situation more.

Stay tuned for more data

Stay tuned to the Singular blog for more data.

Also, we’ll be running an iOS 14.5 Aftermath webinar on May 26 with EA, Gameloft, and Liftoff. Suggestion: register for that, where we’ll share more data and also ask the top mobile marketers at those companies what they’re seeing and how they are reacting.

In some mobile marketing fantasy world, people’s main goal, urge, and key driver in life is to achieve the utter nirvana and extreme bliss of PERSONALIZED ADVERTISING. I know this because marketers smartly only craft messages that speak to what their customers want, and never what marketers themselves want.

(Just joking about that second part.)

Since iOS 14.5 hit, I have been studying App Tracking Transparency prompts.

And they suck.

ATT for everyone

As every mobile marketer knows by now, iOS 14.5 requires apps to surface Apple’s App Tracking Transparency prompt for pretty much all app installs. Even companies that didn’t think they needed the IDFA and considered themselves not to be tracking users have been pressured to show it, in some cases having their app updates rejected. And as we’ve all seen, consumer acceptance rates of the ATT have been abysmal. Below almost every previous estimate, ranging from 4% to 20%.

(Singular’s going to be releasing some extremely interesting data on this very soon, by the way.)

But part of the problem here with getting people to tap “Allow” on the ATT prompt is that the messaging is awful. The strategy is horrible. And the execution is poor.

As I said, I’ve been studying ATT.

74% of App Tracking Transparency prompts tell people that tapping “Allow” will give them personalized advertising. The phrases appear to have been minted in the same 10-cent-a-word content foundry: “better ads experience,” “personalized ad experience,” “better personalized ads,” “personalized ads,” “more relevant ads,” “most relevant ads.”

Look: getting personalized ads is not high on your users’ priority list. They do not wake up in the morning and think their days would be even better with personalized ads. They rarely reflect on how much richer and more fulfilling their lives are thanks to personalized ads.

Marketing 101: get people to do what you want by either giving them what they want, or less of what they don’t want. Just once, I want to see an ATT prompt that is honest.

“Look, we know ads mostly suck. This makes them suck less.”

I challenge an app developer to try this.

8 keys to better App Tracking Transparency Prompts

1) Treat the ATT as marketing
Everything is marketing. Your logo, sure. Your product and user experience, absolutely. Every interaction and engagement with a user or customer is both utilitarian (actualizing both what they need and what you need) and part of the overall experience of your brand. As such, it’s marketing.

Treat App Tracking Transparency the same way. And invest in a great message that resonates with what people care about.

There aren’t a lot of great examples to show here — at least until someone takes me up on the challenge above — but here’s a particularly bad example:

“Your data can be used for app crash tracking …”

In other words … this app crashes a lot? So … why am I downloading this app again? This is anti-marketing. Avoid it, or people will avoid your app.

2) Don’t be creepy
Tracking, targeting, and personalization involve the use of a lot of data. That data can and should be handled responsibly, and increasingly that data is anonymized and aggregated so that everyone has more digital privacy.

So a message like this ATT prompt is unlikely to make anyone feel good about the app that they just downloaded:

“Your browsing activity will be used to show you personalized ads.”

In other words, ve are vatching you. Much better to just say “This helps us show you personalized ads.”

Another one highlights the tracking aspect:

“We work with [MMP Name], who’ll tell us where you downloaded the app from.”

Can anyone say TMI, too much information? No user cares which tech vendors you use. Simply state the benefit of tapping “Allow” in the ATT, which is: “this helps us know if our marketing worked.”

(Note: this is only a benefit for the brand, not the customer, and as such it’s horrible marketing, but it’s at least marginally better because it’s simple and brief.)

3) Mention your brand
One of the single biggest reasons people are more inclined to allow tracking and measurement via App Tracking Transparency is brand. In Singular research, we’ve seen that knowing and trusting the company that makes an app is a major factor for 59% of people to consider clicking “Allow” on the ATT.

Facebook uses that insight:

“This allows Facebook to provide you with a better ads experience.”

So does TikTok, with an almost identical message. Glovo, Flo, Depop, and Coin Master are other examples of apps that use their brand in the ATT pop-up. If people like and use your app already, personalizing the prompt transfers some of those positive associations to the choice that people are currently facing … and makes acceptance more likely.

Of course, if they don’t like your brand or app … you have bigger problems.

4) Be brief
Brevity is always a good policy. In a pop-up prompt that is interrupting your customers’ flow of installing your app to using your app, that’s even more important.

The longest one I found: 50 words and 287 characters.

In a pop-up!

“Your data will be used to deliver personalized ads. If you “Ask App not to Track,” we may not be able to deliver certain personalized experiences, but may still serve ads and use your data in accordance with our Privacy Policy. Learn more about “tracking” in Apple’s privacy control documentation.”

Being wordy is one thing. But providing way too much information is another egregious sin of bad ATT prompts. This one is much shorter, but it includes way too many items in the list.

“Allow [App Name} to use your location for local content, tailored advertising, attribution, analytics, and research as well as personalized product enhancements.”

Look: don’t list the kitchen sink.

In the real world of real people who are not in the tech space, mobile development world, or marketing ecosystem, no one knows what one of the listed items — attribution — even means. Simply saying “This helps us give you local content and a personalized experience” would be fine.

5) Ask, don’t tell
Consider asking people what they want and allowing them to make a choice based on their answer to that question instead of telling them what they should do (read: what you want them to do).

For instance:

“Want personalization? Click Allow.”

Simple, brief, honest, and gives people a true choice.

6) Be humble
Humility is generally a good thing for both people and brands. Patting yourself on the back is never a good look.

This app reaches around with both hands to congratulate itself on its almost unbelievably awesome amazingness, which its users can enhance EVEN MORE by hitting “Allow.”

“We’ll use your data to give you a more personalized [App Name] experience to make our app even more amazing.”

So tempting to be a part of making some random app I downloaded on a whim even more amazing. Life goals!

7) Understand what people want
People aren’t pining away or composing sonnets for personalized ads. They do however care about free apps. They care about fun. They care about privacy. They care about connecting with friends and family. They care about being able to manage their lives, finances, smart devices, or get access to information they want. They care about their food order arriving on time, and their car service delivering them where they want to go.

Understand what want people are fulfilling with your app.

Use that knowledge in the construction of your App Tracking Transparency prompt.

You can understand all of that and still do a clumsy job, however. Here’s a classic an-attempt-was-made version of using customer knowledge to design your ATT prompt. It’s also in perfect Jerry McGuire style: help me help you …

“This identifier will be used to deliver personalized ads that funds our creation of new content for you to enjoy.”

Keep it simple, Simon. Just say “This helps us fund new content and personalize your experience.” Maybe try a dash of radical honesty, a la the “Ads suck. Allowing this makes them a bit better” route.

Or, for a retail app, if people are using your app to find cool new products, just tell them that:

“This helps us suggest products we think you’ll love.

8) Don’t confuse people
I already shared the ATT prompt above that mentions “attribution.” This is much more likely to confuse people than make them click “Allow.” Another app fell into the same trap:

“We need your permission to use the Advertising Identifiers (IDFA) for promotion targeting and tracking analysis.”

IDFA is a big deal in the small mobile marketing industry. Even within this space, few really understand what it is, how it was intended to be used, how it actually was used historically, and some of the liability reasons around why Apple is making it much, much more scarce. (And yes, there are multiple reasons privacy, security, and legal reasons for that.)

Don’t use it with civilians.

Another app says granting IDFA access via the App Tracking Transparency prompt is all about customer safety:

“This will be used to protect you from inappropriate ads.”

Really? Is this literally the only way? Do you really want customers and app users thinking that your app will contain inappropriate ads, and that they might not want to be using your app if there’s a chance mommy, Math Teacher #5, or a very important Significant Other might happen on by and see something they shouldn’t?

Another says peoples’ data will be used for “analytic purposes.” In the industry, I know and you know that this probably means user analytics, monetization analytics, marketing analytics, and so on … but your average app user probably doesn’t.

Optimizing your ATT

If you’re considering calling a mulligan on your first attempt at the ATT and you want to optimize for “Allow” in your second iteration, spend a bit of time at an App Tracking Transparency gallery. Sort by App Store category. See what competitors are doing.

And build something brief. Honest. Simple. Perhaps with a question, and perhaps using your brand or app name in the message.

iOS 14.5, SKAdNetwork, and marketing optimization

And if you’re looking to optimize your marketing measurement and analytics for growth in the age of privacy, you’ve come to the right place. Singular was the first marketing measurement company to support SKAdNetwork, and Singular has the most robust and complete mobile attribution stack for iOS and Android available.

Book some time for a quick chat to learn more.

Apple Search Ads attribution is changing in iOS 14, but not in the way you think. ASA doesn’t use Apple’s new SKAdNetwork mobile attribution framework. And no, it’s not iAd anymore either. But yes, Singular does integrate with Apple to bring app install attributions from App Store search, Apple News, and Apple’s iOS Stocks app.

Including the new tech in town, Apple’s AdServices app install attribution framework.

AdServices is the new iAd

“Apple Search Ads, starting with 14.3 but really coming into effect in 14.5 … released a new way to measure Apple search ads attributions,” says Jonathan Chen. “They are self attributing, although they’re a bit different from the classic Facebooks and Googles where they’re server-side based.”

In other words, AdServices lives on-device, like SKAdnetwork.

But it’s different, primarily because Apple Search Ads is an Apple first-party product with only first-party data between Apple and its customers: iPhone and iPad owners.

Apple Search Ads attribution used to be managed by iAds, of course. The old iAds framework comes from Apple’s acquisition of Quattro Wireless way back in January of 2010: an eternity ago in the fast-moving mobile marketing ecosystem. It was discontinued as an actual app ads network in 2016, but still served as the base technology powering Apple Search Ads Attribution.

In iOS 14.5, that’s all going away.

In its place is the new AdServices framework from Apple, which is intended to phase out iAd.

Apple explains it this way:

The Apple Ads Attribution API is a solution that combines the AdServices framework on client devices and a RESTful API for server-side communication with Apple’s attribution server. The API retrieves attribution data from app downloads and redownloads from Apple Search Ads campaigns. Measure attribution data using specific Apple Search Ads campaign metadata against the performance of Apple Search Ads campaigns.

Some developers use a server-side integration with Mobile Measurement Providers (MMPs) for enhanced reporting. Developers also have the option to hand off attribution data to a MMP or manage their attribution data themselves.

Singular integrations with AdServices

Singular’s latest SDK and server-to-server integrations support the new AdServices framework as well as the end-of-lifed iAds technology. They are fairly similar. AdServices supports marketer data requirements for creatives, view-through attributions, and re-engagement. Marketers will get all installs, click timestamps, and so on. 

The data you get includes:

• Campaign ID
• Adgroup ID
• Source
• Keyword ID
• Creative ID

And, of course, since Singular not only gets attribution data but also spend and campaign data, that data will be matched with spend data from the Apple Search Ads API, including spend by campaign and keyword.

Important note: because Apple considers this first-party data, even if people opt out of App Tracking Transparency under SKAdNetwork, you still get some data. In fact, quite a bit of data.

“Even for users that opt out or don’t even get to the ATT prompt you still get some information about a potential Apple Search Ads attribution,” Chen says. “What is the main difference between an opt-in and opt-out user in terms of that attribution decision? The only difference right now is that for opt-out users you won’t know the click time.”

Essentially, AdServices attributions exist in a parallel universe to SKAdNetwork. And that has some implications.

“When ATT enforcement happens, you’re going to have partners and MMPs integrated with SKAdNetwork and getting attribution decisions there,” he adds. “But in parallel, you … will be getting Apple Search Ads attributions because they are separate platforms and products.”

That means that you can have scenarios where a mobile app user gets attributed to another ad network — let’s say Facebook — as well as Apple’s AdServices. They could, for example, view and even click on a Facebook ad, but also click on an Apple Search Ads ad before finally installing. Then you will have two partners claiming the install, and there’s no real way to dedupe those results.

Mobile attribution in an increasingly complex world

Are you looking to make sense of all the changes in iOS attribution, and the likely coming changes on the Android side as well? Singular’s huge number of integrations and commitment to privacy-safe mobile attribution is helping the largest mobile publishers on the planet.

It’s real.

It’s here.

It’s live.

After a year of talk, talk, talk, we’re finally living in an iOS 14.5 and SKAdNetwork world. And while it’s spring in the northern hemisphere, the sun is shining, and life is good, work is totally insane because everything is upside down in the world of mobile marketing on iOS. Shockingly, just shockingly, huge chunks of the mobile ecosystem were not actually prepared for iOS 14.5 and SKAdNetwork.

So are you completely and totally set up for SKAdNetwork in your iOS campaigns?

We recently brought together an all-star cast to get ground-level insights on critical components of a winning SKAdNetwork setup and best practices for conversion value management. We also chatted about fingerprinting (of course!), App Store rejections, supply side challenges, fraud prevention, and reporting. 

But as per usual, there were more questions than time. 

So I’d like to take this opportunity to answer all the questions from webinar attendees that we couldn’t answer live. (Note: answers are provided by Thomas, Gadi, and Alon, with some additions and details from me. Any errors are entirely my fault, so hunt me down if you find them.)

Your top SKAdNetwork questions, answered

Q: What are the top 5 platforms that are most prepared for ATTmageddon?

A: We see more than 5 platforms that are ready, and we’re adding more to the list every week. Readiness is measured both by a working setup which includes SKAN campaigns, API and data access, reporting, and of course publishers supporting the demand side. You can find our integrated partners here.

Q: Has anyone received the source app populated on SKAd postbacks?

A: Yes, you should be able to receive the source app for postbacks. If you’re not receiving this, it could be because you haven’t crossed the privacy threshold. 

Q: If users opt out ATT consent, is there a way we can send them an email and request opt in?

Thomas Petit says: You can send users to settings to change them manually. There’s a deeplink for that, and it can be from an email, or via an in-app message, etc. Don’t expect a very high rate of  completion though: few users are expected to go through that process, at least in the first few weeks.

Q: What are your thoughts on the privacy threshold on the conversion values? Only a small number of players convert, and those are the ones we really care about …

A: No one knows exactly what Apple’s privacy thresholds are. What we do know is: 

1. Privacy thresholds are not reliant on conversion values. So using a smaller pool of possible conversion values will not make more conversion values appear in your postbacks. This is easy to tell by the fact that conversion values are not signed and not sent to Apple’s servers.
2. As far as we know, privacy thresholds are determined by campaign-id and source-app-id, but the exact thresholds are unknown.
3. Technically, Apple provides a device with a signed SKAdNetwork postback and a flag telling it to send out a conversion value. That means that technically it’s possible that different thresholds affect the inclusion of the source-app-id and the conversion-value. This can probably be determined by looking at the data and seeing if there are cases where only one of the two fields appear.

Q: How does SKADNetwork impact log level data access for companies that build custom algorithms?

A: There is an impact because the data is different … but you still have data. These companies need to completely rework how they look at quality campaigns. You have to look at your SKAdNetwork data in aggregate. You need to extrapolate quality scoring from limited data which will be a challenge, but isn’t impossible.

Q: Do you think it will be feasible to guess at user attribution based on conversion values? For example …  two users with a given conversion value from a particular country … let’s say the UK. Then, since one campaign had two such conversion values from the UK, those users must have come from that campaign. Feasible?

A: Thomas Petit says: Some companies work on probabilistic modelling like this, from internal data (unlike fingerprinting). Check, for example, the work from Algolift on this. Don’t expect to replicate what you had before. The insights from such methods differ from previous ones, but can be directionally helpful.

I’ll add: This particular method is clearly unlikely to work at scale. It’s also an additional layer of complexity. And, you get campaigns (yes, just 100, or much less on some platforms) in SKAdNetwork. I’d be willing to bet that if Apple caught wind of serious threats to the privacy levels it thinks are necessary, it will refactor SKAdNetwork to add more obfuscation.

Q: Can you talk about how time based metrics (D3 retention, etc.) can be incorporated in this new world for optimization?

A: You can use some conversion value bits to encode time since install. At Singular we call this a retention bit as part of our measurement periods. We support up to seven days. 

However, it’s important to note that the longer your measurement period is the less accurate your reporting will be due to inherent randomness built into timers. If you want to measure longer retention, you need to balance that with your partners who ask for shorter measurement periods. For example, Facebook doesn’t support long cohorts today and recommend 24 hours to ensure they can optimize as quickly as possible.

Q: What is your model preference? Is it better to go simple to start, especially since the industry is not quite there yet?

A: There are a slew of conversion model options for marketers to choose from. The key is to first define what events and conversions can be used to predict the future value of an activity for your specific app. 

For example, if you monetize via in-app purchases, you may want a revenue-based conversion model that helps you optimize towards high-revenue users. Or if users need to make a sequence of actions for a significant conversion, you could use a funnel model. Leveraging early growth indicators in your conversion model will help you to understand which campaigns are performing and what they drive.  

One thing to note is that different business models are impacted differently by SKAdNetwork limitations. If your app normally optimizes on D1 revenue because your users take action on the first day, you won’t see a big difference in KPIs.

But if you’re an app with a 30-day trial, or if you’re a game that monetizes over time, you need a longer attribution window, and since that isn’t available, you have to pick an earlier event that is a good predictor of future growth.

Check out this post for a good overview.

Q: What do you think the impact will be to IAA (in app ads) monetized games? Do you expect revenue to be heavily affected?

A: We do expect that Q2 of 2021 will be challenging with eCPMs on iOS dropping by 20%-40% initially. Having said that we do not foresee a catastrophe and most advertising spend will be retained, though it may be distributed differently. We believe that in Q3 we will start to see numbers picking up again and getting closer to 2020 levels.

Q: Not sure if I heard correctly, did Gadi say filtering consent will not meet the review requirement. What happens if you have a primer gating the ATT native pop up, with two CTA buttons … for example Allow, and Ask Me Later?

A: Thomas Petit says: Apple updated their guidelines specifically banning such filtering. Your pre-prompt screen can have only one option and has to trigger the native prompt.

“If you display a custom screen that precedes a privacy-related permission request, it must offer only one action, which must display the system alert.”

Q: We are seeing 10% accuracy of SKAN vs our MMP (IDFA based). Do you think MMPs will go towards modeled conversions for opt-out users to compensate for this under-attribution?

A: 10% shouldn’t be the case. We’re seeing some customers with 80% accuracy, but keep in mind that it’s highly dependent on the ad networks you’re working with and making sure targeting is working. But we have seen customers working with partners quoting 80-90% accuracy.

Q: What about GDPR in Europe? Do you have to trigger a GDPR notice first, and then ATT?

A: Alon Golan says: Apple’s policy and GDPR do not necessarily define privacy the same way, and for that reason there may be a need to show two prompts. You may decide to show the GDPR notice first and if the user rejects consent then perhaps you can avoid showing the ATT popup as well. Having said that … this is open to interpretation for every app developer. 

Q: Can someone touch upon fingerprinting vs. probabilistic determination? Can we still operate on a CPI model given this change?

A: There are two parts to this answer …

Gadi Eliashiv says: Fingerprinting is about identifying a specific device and associating the device to a specific group (campaign, creative, or publisher app) using non-deterministic identifiers … mostly IP address and User Agent.

The fact that attribution using these identifiers is not 100% accurate, and hence probabilistic, doesn’t make it legitimate. Even if you do such attribution on the server-side and only share this data in aggregate, it still does not comply with policy.

Thomas Petit says: While the terms are sometimes used for each other, I see a clear distinction between them: fingerprinting is one of various types of probabilistic attribution, and it’s not allowed.

• Fingerprinting is used to try and identify a specific device using user-level data (such as IP) for the purpose of attribution, AKA “tracking across apps & websites.” As accuracy can fluctuate, it had been used when other methods (such as IDFA) aren’t available, as a fallback method. It’s now been unequivocally banned by Apple from April 2021. 
• Other probabilistic attribution methods remain valid  and allowed. They are sometimes called media mix modelling and use anonymous first-party data only such as internal ID and funnel behaviour. This does not match device info from other sources, and as such is legitimate under Apple’s new policies. (Example: Algolift. MMM is a complement, not a replacement.)

Q: As an incentive-based business we need to reward our users, so getting user-level data is a must. In addition, our traffic is mobile-web based. What solution does Singular have for such cases?

A: There are certain workflows where you can still collect user-level data. Mobile web-to-app flows is one such example. We go beyond mobile attribution, and also provide web and cross-device measurement, so I definitely recommend you reach out if you’d like to discuss your current setup.

Next steps: maximizing SKAdNetwork data for growth

If you’re looking to learn more, watch the on-demand webinar for a huge amount of insight and guidance from experts. If you’re ready to improve your SKAdNetwork set-up and engineer for growth on iOS 14.5, book some time with a Singular expert to talk through what you’re doing, what you need, and whether we can help.