News — 09 May 2023
SKAdNetwork integration for
Ad Networks
We’re witnessing a massive change in the industry, with the iOS 14 release fundamentally changing the way attribution works in mobile performance marketing.
Apple’s new App Tracking Transparency (ATT) policy will significantly limit access to user-level data by obliging iOS mobile apps to ask for user consent before tracking them or accessing their device’s advertising identifier. According to Singular research 62% of consumers will not allow app tracking in iOS 14.
As the iOS 14 release is the most-talked-about matter, there also has been a great deal of discussion about possible solutions.
To alleviate the impact and allow attribution and ad measurement, Apple introduced SKAdNetwork, Apple’s privacy-friendly method to measure mobile campaigns’ attribution on iOS apps. SKAdNetwork presents a different approach to campaign measurement where data at the user level is not available. Still, today it remains one of the very few ways to receive the attribution of advertising campaigns on iOS. To make sure it complies with SKAdNetwork, ad networks must register with Apple, and developers must ensure the compatibility of apps with the registered networks and the new framework.
With the SKAdNetwork in place, no redirects will be allowed, which puts at risk real-time tracking and fraud detection.
To avert the risk, Affise is about to release an additional parallel tracking solution for tracking real-time campaigns that will enable detection of click-level fraud. Today, more than ever, we want to emphasize the importance of using click-level in-built fraud protection tools.
With the postbacks not sent in the moment of conversion and being further delayed by up to 24 hours, it will become a problem to measure CTIT for fraud prevention. With this regard, there will be an adjustment to CTIT metric, as the time between click and install increases.
Further, we recommend setting up CR and Click automation to 24 thresholds. In a short period, we will add a 48-period threshold to reflect the nature of probabilistic attribution. All the calculations will be delayed for the Apple attribution time, which is 24 hours.
As the ATT framework will manage access to the IDFA by giving users the choice to block the IDFA identifier at the app level, we should expect the majority to use this option. For marketers, it means no user-level data.
With all attribution going probabilistic, the industry will lose the exact click to conversion matching. Market players will face a new reality with fewer data for fraud-prevention and statistics with real-time data for further analysis.
Each Ad Network must register directly with Apple and obtain an Ad Network ID. Attribution Postbacks will be delivered by Apple directly to the endpoints defined by Ad Networks. This forces all networks to prepare and adapt to these changes quickly.
Further, each ID will be limited to 100 campaign IDs, which means that you can only target apps up to 100 different ways in your campaign. You can create up to 100 targeting rules that operate entirely independently from each other and have nothing to do with each other.
In some way, it will make campaign IDs a finite “currency” marketers exchange with Apple for targeting granularity. Advertisers and Affise both want to be as granular as possible in their targeting, thus we will use the maximum amount of campaign IDs to meet our targeting needs.
Using their SKAdNetwork framework, Apple will aggregate ad and conversion signals and report back anonymized deterministic attribution data. Not only advertisers need to prepare their apps and configure the settings. Mobile attribution platform started to work on integration with SKAdNetwork well in advance to be ready when the release is rolled out. We at Affise also fulfilled our part.
For ad networks to be able to view data collected by SKAdnetwork through the Affise platform, there is a bit of configuration.
Below you can check the principal scheme of how SKAdNetwork attribution works with Affise.
Affise acts on behalf of a client, direct advertiser or publisher for direct advertisers, and serves as a data collector, to aggregate data from all sources (from MMPs and Skadnetwork in this case) into one universal overview of traffic performance.
After implementing all the necessary elements, the integration with SKAdNetwork should be successful, and you’ll be able to receive the postbacks from Apple.
iOS privacy update and the subsequent, yet unknown for many, SKAdNetwork release is new for all marketers. There will be questions, and we are together in this. If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact your Customer success manager or contact our product representatives.
Stay Affised for more information coming soon.
Written by
Content Manager
Yulia is a Content Marketer with a love to a great story and an eye to small details. Carrying a voice and delivering an accurate message - that’s what Yulia believes content marketing is for. Looking for thorough research and long-reads? You came to the right person. Her goal is to produce content that educates and entertains, and most importantly, has an impact. Challenges and something that is yet to be explored are her main motivators.
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