Getting ready for AppTrackingTransparency on April 26

With the announcement made at Apple’s Spring Loaded event that all iOS apps must have AppTrackingTransparency (ATT) enabled from April 26, we now have a concrete date for when the long anticipated changes to IDFA access will come into force.

Following detailed discussions with advertisers and partners over the past months, the consensus is that advertising will not decrease in a post-iOS 14.5 ecosystem, but it is likely to be less efficient due to a drop in the ratio of deterministic data.

However Adjust believes that because advertising will remain a key piece of the mobile ecosystem, MMPs will remain just as prevalent. In order to explain how Adjust plans to aid your growth in the post-iOS 14 era, we will be releasing a comprehensive guide to iOS 14 and our solutions next week, to coincide with the introduction of the new rules. In the meantime you can check out our iOS & SKAN Solutions for our most up-to-date product offerings.

Adjust’s philosophy from the start has been that having a higher user consent rate is set to be a key competitive advantage, and MMPs will still be able to attribute consented users deterministically.

Working with an MMP also allows advertisers to manage their conversion value set-ups, including its distribution to ad networks, which is something that will become more important as SKAdNetwork evolves and improves.

Once that SKAdNetwork data is returned, your MMP will allow you to aggregate and export all SKAd data from one source. An MMP also gives you the ability to have parity between all your ad networks without overhead. Adjust has been working with the biggest players and partners in the industry as we develop our solutions, because SKAdNetwork solutions should be optimized and standardized across all channels.

Once the IDFA cannot be relied on, advertisers will have less visibility into how their users behave for each of their campaigns, and marketers relying on SKAdNetwork will not be able to see accurate ROI or ROAS per channel. With Adjust’s Attribution Privacy Models you will be able to continue to see this data, but with a lower level of accuracy.

Currently, user acquisition relies on precise campaign data so that marketers know which channels to invest their budget and how to optimize the performance of their campaigns. They’re usually using specific KPIs like d0/d1 retention, user LTV, ROI or ROAS.

All of these metrics need exact data as in some cases marketers operate with very thin ROI margins — knowing where to invest and where to scale down is a matter of a few percentage points.

SKAdNetwork inhibits this level of insight into campaign performance as it simply does not support any of the aforementioned KPIs. Advertising is of course still possible, but it becomes more inaccurate and less efficient.

Many marketers are running campaigns that operate web-to-app (or otherwise outside of app-to-app), using email, influencers, website banners, SMS campaigns or QR codes. So how does iOS 14 impact attribution for these campaigns?

In short, if the user does not opt in, iOS 14 does not offer any solution to measure campaign performance for these campaigns. As per Apple’s guidelines, if the user does not consent, SKAdNetwork is supposed to be the alternative to receive the attribution data. However, as of right now, SKAdNetwork does not support web-to-app campaigns (or anything outside of app-to-app).

In this case, Adjust will attribute non app-to-app campaigns via our Attribution Privacy Model solutions.

Keep the following tips in mind to minimise disruption when the iOS 14.5 changes come into force:

1. Update your Adjust SDK to version 4.28 before submitting any app to the App Store.
2. Make sure you have tested your ATT prompt strategy in a sandbox environment and be ready to iterate once the prompts go live — to
3. Set up your SKAdNetwork conversion value schema.
4. Choose your media sources wisely. In the new iOS 14.5 world, smaller sources of traffic, ones that cannot scale, will be less desirable.
5. Try and get SKAdNetwork as the billing default across all channels.

Your Adjust Account Manager or CSM will be available to talk you through the changes or assist you with any queries.

Our new report on Mastering SKAN 4, created in partnership with TikTok, is out now.