The state of mobile measurement in 2025: an emerging golden age?

Is it possible that we are in a golden age of mobile measurement in 2025? At this very minute? After ATT, after SKAN and AAK, after GDPR, after the uncertainty around cookies, after the rumors and threats of Privacy Sandbox, and after everything else that has eroded traditional marketing measurement?

In a word, yes.

It’s possible.

Not certain … but possible.

After you finish laughing your @$$ off, take a moment. Watch this episode of Growth Masterminds with Singular CTO Eran Friedman. And keep scrolling as I make a case that now, right now, in the age of privacy, marketing measurement might, just might, be entering a golden age.

What’s happening in mobile measurement in 2025

In a word: lots.

Big things are happening as big ad networks and platforms are making big changes. You’ve probably seen all these announcements individually over the last 18 months, but in aggregate, they lead up to massive change in mobile measurement in 2025. 

Here’s just a few of the relatively recent ones:

• Apple: ongoing impact of ATT, SKAN, AAK, including Apple Ads adding support for SKAdNetwork
• Meta: continuing to build out its modeling solutions, sharing more data with MMPs via Advanced AEM to enable better attribution
• Google: slow-rolling Privacy Sandbox, resisting changes to the 3rd-party cookie, potentially adding Advanced SAN capabilities to share more data with MMPs
• TikTok: offering TikTok Advanced SAN services to offer more privacy-safe data to MMPs, allowing better triangulation of attribution
• Snap: adding Snapchat Advanced SAN to provide more data, like TikTok and Meta, also to enable better attribution
• Other ad networks: also investing in modeling tech to prove value, and using probabilistic measurement to provide signal on iOS where SKAN does not

At the same time, we’re seeing more on-device measurement. The Google referrer of course is still around, Meta has its own version, Apple knows plenty about what happens with its users on its device using its App Store, and there’s likely more in the wings from third-party OEM app stores via players like Avow and InMobi.

Plus, sophisticated advertisers are using many of these datapoints, generally aggregated by an MMP, to layer on incrementality testing (geo lift, A/B, MMM) to understand true lift from campaigns.

And of course probabilistic measurement got a big lift in the months and years after iOS 14.5 and App Tracking Transparency.

Add it all up, and there’s more, more, more of everything.

“Everyone is pushing towards offering more information for MMPs to provide better, more accurate, more granular attribution,” says Friedman. “ That’s definitely a trend that we’re seeing. It’s across really all the SANs.”

Even, potentially, Google at some point. (Obligatory caveat: I have no insider information on this; it’s just speculation right now.)

What does all this more in mobile measurement in 2025 mean?

More isn’t always better. 

Some spice: awesome. Ghost peppers that shred your tongue … not so much. 3 photos from Uncle Frank about his crazy awesome vacay in Mallorca … great. A 500-pic slideshow with Frank’s long-winded narration … no thank you.

But for mobile measurement in 2025, more is turning out to be … MORE.

“With all these advancements, we see that the data makes more sense now compared to the last two years,” says Friedman. “Behind the scenes there’s more moving parts … but at the bottom line when you’re trying to start a campaign and you want to check the results, I think the end user experience for the marketer and the advertiser is getting better.”

Take that statement and cast your mind back to the months right after iOS 14.5. Remember the angst and the despair throughout the industry back then.

Now there’s a real sense of a fresh wind of actionable data that makes data-driven performance marketing better. Mobile measurement that makes more sense is definitely better than where we were.

Hmmm … better than what?

Just a few years ago, we lived in a world of deterministic IDs: IDFA on iOS, GAID on Android (which seems likely to stick around for a while, as there’s no clear plan for Privacy Sandbox to take over). We had last-click attribution, maybe some multi-touch, and measurement was (relatively) straightforward.  

Privacy turned that world upside down.

But did last-click attribution ever really tell us the truth? It was adequate — and maybe even more than adequate — for campaign optimization. It was mobile measurement that built the app universe we live in today.

But it wasn’t true, in a sense. It wasn’t necessarily an accurate depiction of reality, of causality. Or at least not a complete picture.

Just because the last click got the prize didn’t mean that the first impression didn’t matter. Maybe that first impression had much MORE work to do than the last feather than fell and tipped the scales of our decision-making apparatus, triggering a conversion. Maybe the second, third, or fifth impression — or click — had something to do with achieving a desired marketing result too.

Now we’re actually finding ways to recognize that. Mobile measurement in 2025 is starting to give us the broader picture.

Fragmentation behind the scenes, but unification in Singular measurement

If we put all of the measurement methodologies into a chart, what does all of this look like?

It looks like a lot … and a lot of complexity.

And yeah, it is:

That’s where Singular’s Unified Measurement comes in. It’s a big red easy button for mobile measurement.

Unified Measurement …

1. Consolidates modeled conversions, deterministic installs, and probabilistic touchpoints
2. Deduplicates installs across SANs like Meta, Snap, and TikTok
3. Audits results using SKAdNetwork, App Store data, and internal first-party signals
4. Surfaces discrepancies like a missing placement in an ad network’s modeled data

In short, mobile measurement in 2025 is entering an age of multi-pronged measurement, where Singular is combining deterministic signals, probabilistic models, touchpoint data, SKAdNetwork/AAK, IDFA and GAID data  to deliver something marketers desperately need: truth. 

Singular’s job as a mobile measurement partner has evolved from processing deterministic pings to orchestrating a complex data symphony. 

The goal is to help marketers by simplifying the noise and surfacing a unified view of performance.

Unified but not submerged

But the underlying data sets remain, and that’s critically important.

On the 1 hand, they provide the raw materials for renewed marketing measurement methodologies like incrementality that, done right, give you convincing proof of the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of your advertising campaigns, channels, and partners.

On the other hand, they’re critical for debugging the inevitable issues you might encounter. Because this is marketing analytics, after all, and there are still complexities throughout the ecosystem.

“If you’re just a starter, you might try to look at 1 data set,” Friedman says. “But as you get bigger … you want to validate your data, debug your attributions, and make better decisions.”

An example:

A large customer with massive spend was seeing a 50% discrepancy between SKAN and advanced SAN data. After diving into the numbers and troubleshooting the issue, the problem became clear:  the advanced integration on the network side was missing one of the bigger placement types: it wasn’t visible as part of the inventory.

A few configuration and code fixes on the network side, and the numbers made sense again.

Essentially, what the different data points give you are lenses into reality that you can use to debug attribution.

So … golden age of mobile measurement in 2025?

Obviously, there are still challenges. And even with the best measurement, the hardest parts of marketing remain creative, targeting, messaging, and optimizing.

So it’s hard to say we’re in a golden age of marketing measurement.

But at the same time, it’s clear that there’s been some massive ecosystem-level changes that have significantly improved what marketers can know to be true about their campaigns. There are still challenges — mismatched models, attribution gaps, evolving privacy laws — but for the first time in years, marketers have more data, more control, and better tools to measure real impact.

So what do you need to do as a marketer?

1. Adopt a modern MMP like Singular that supports Advanced SAN, modeled conversions, SKAN, and on-device attribution … all the emerging goodies.
2. Demand data transparency from your ad partners — modeled data, touchpoints, and real-time attribution. You can get most of this from Singular.
3. Occasionally audit your results to cross-check SKAN, partner-reported, and MMP data.
4. Plan to make incrementality testing a core part of your mobile measurement playbooky.

Yes, measurement is more complex than it used to be. But it’s also becoming more accurate, more powerful, and more marketer-friendly. Plus, there’s an easy button from Singular.

And that’s something to celebrate.

So much more in the full podcast

Check out the full podcast to get all the goodies. It’s wherever you want podcasts from, including YouTube.

• 00:00 Introduction and Optimism in Marketing
• 00:50 The Evolution of Mobile Attribution
• 01:31 Deep Dive into Attribution Data
• 03:04 Meta’s Advanced Attribution Solutions
• 06:16 Google’s Ad Conversion Modeling
• 08:34 TikTok’s Advanced SAN Integration
• 11:09 Snap’s Advanced Conversion and SAN
• 15:17 Apple’s Deterministic Attribution
• 18:59 Other Ad Partners and Modeling
• 25:05 Singular’s Unified Measurement Approach
• 32:53 Incrementality Testing and Advanced Strategies
• 35:47 Conclusion and Future of Measurement