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Something big just happened to SKAN 4. Specifically, to SKAN 4 adoption on the Meta platform. And almost no-one noticed.
I certainly didn’t.
The big question, though, is whether it matters.
Meta’s driving SKAN 4 adoption
Meta is now driving SKAN 4 adoption. Meta isn’t completely on SKAN 4. Not 100%. But currently, 44% of SKAN postbacks that we’re seeing from Meta are SKAN 4, not SKAN 3.
There’s the big blue social network, down at the far right of this chart:
It’s literally almost the first significant event in the SKAN ecosystem for over a year. Plus the most significant event in SKAN 4 adoption perhaps ever.
And it leaves Google as the single remaining big holdout.
It also marks the first time SKAN 4 postbacks have sustainably become the majority of SKAdNetwork postbacks. We’ve seen a few spikes here and there, but they’ve always been a flash in the pan.
This trend looks sustainable:
Thank you Gabriel Rosa
Singular’s had the SKAN Adoption Dashboard for a long time. And for a long time I checked it religiously, scouring for the slightest evidence that something was changing in the SKAN world.
Because, for a while, it really, really mattered.
But I’ve gotten out of the habit.
Not for everyone, apparently. Big thanks to Gabriel Rosa, a user acquisition coordinator for By Aliens, who checked the dashboard recently, and then posted about it on LinkedIn.
(Note: he posted in Portuguese; I’m showing LinkedIn’s automatic translation to English here, and it may contain errors.)
“Meta Ads finally heading to SKAN 4.0?” Rosa asks.
As he notes, it’s been about 3 years since Apple released SKAN 4, and we really haven’t seen full adoption by the biggest players.
The biggest question about SKAN 4 in 2025
But there’s a big question to ask here.
First off, let’s be clear: it’s nice to see the ecosystem moving forward to SKAN 4. As I wrote over a year ago, SKAN 4 brings a bunch of good things that SKAN 3 can’t deliver:
- Fixes SKAN 3’s volume limitations by returning more data at lower volumes
- Adds a longer data-collection and attribution timeframe with multiple postbacks up to about 35 days
- Enables better creative optimization insight with a more granular source identifier
- Provides data to support more effective ad network optimization with richer signals for delivery and targeting
- Delivers better measurement of reality with less loss and more accurate conversion capture
- Introduces additional complexity with more signals and harder implementation
- Improves reporting for subscription apps and long conversion-window models
- Improves reporting for low-user-count apps by allowing signal return even at low volume through coarse conversion values
(Get all the details in that post linked above if you want them.)
But the biggest question about increased SKAN 4 adoption in 2025 is, honestly, does it even matter?
And the answer is both yes and no.
Yes, more data is better. And yes, we’ll feed that into our attribution and optimization engines. So yeah, it’s a good thing.
But also no.
The industry has engineered around ATT and SKAN to a fairly significant degree. Singular’s Unified Measurement uses multiple signals to triangulate marketing attribution, and it works so well we’re talking about golden ages of marketing measurement.
So SKAN 4 isn’t as important today as we thought it would be in early 2024.
More is more, and 4 is more
That said, SKAN 4 does offer more data and more insight into what’s working in mobile marketing. Getting that from Meta as well as the rest of the adtech ecosystem is generally a good thing.
And SKAN 4 feeds more data into Unified Measurement.
Also a good thing.
It’s just not quite the salvation that we once thought it might be.
