Spotlight
IDFA Apocalypse: The Next Chapter
Here’s the basic timeline of what went down last week:
- Google: on Wednesday (January 27) at 7 am PST, Google gave a long-awaited update on their iOS 14 plans.
- Apple, part 1: that same evening (around 9 pm PST), Apple issued a press release and a PDF resource titled A Day in the Life of Your Data for their ‘Data Privacy Day’. These finally teased a timeline (iOS 14.5) for full ATT rollout and enforcement, and were covered immediately by TechCrunch, meaning the press release was likely under embargo.
- Apple, part 2: on Thursday morning (January 28), Apple published several new developer updates aligned with the press release, including this notice and a number of additions to their User Privacy and Data Use landing page.
Now the dust has settled, the takeaway is this: if you want granular ad attribution on iOS, you must get user consent consent for ad tracking via the App Tracking Transparency (ATT) framework, and nothing else. If you attempt to perform ad 'tracking' without ATT opt-in, your app will likely be rejected from the App Store.
Whether or not you agree with Apple’s strategy, at least it’s there now in black and white.
There have obviously been a variety of other, second-degree updates connected to these, which we’ll cover individually below.
What the MMPs are doing
As a mobile marketer, your MMP is the part of your tech stack where these iOS 14 changes actually make contact. Let’s recap the approach each is taking as a result of this latest round of news:
- AppsFlyer invested in an 'aggregated attribution’ system for iOS 14 that may no longer be feasible after this latest round of guidance from Apple. They’ve said nothing yet, but that’s not unexpected — they took several weeks to issue a statement after WWDC, too.
- Adjust already recommended that customers display the AppTrackingTransparency prompt by default. They published a blog post this week vaguely acknowledging Apple’s update, but not directly addressing most of the changes. However, the main Adjust news is definitely that they are selling the company (see below). That’s absolutely iOS 14-related.
- At Branch, we previously expected that the ATT prompt would apply to IDFA access, but not to the entire brand <> user relationship. We feel that Apple is pushing the envelope of what is acceptable for a platform owner, but we’re committed to meeting the letter and the spirit of the policy.
- After WWDC, Singular took a position that initially looked like an outlier, but ended up being the closest to Apple’s latest guidance. As you might expect, they’re quite pleased about this.
- Kochava has the same interpretation as everyone else: ATT is required for all device-level ad attribution.
SKAdNetwork 2.2 View-Through Attribution and PCM: What They Mean for Mobile Marketers
On Monday, as part of the first iOS 14.5 beta, Apple also introduced some enhancements to their new aggregated attribution frameworks in addition to the enforced ATT opt-in behavior.
This blog post explains what those enhancements are, how they work, and which common scenarios they still don’t cover.
Facebook testing notification to users about Apple privacy changes
This week, Facebook started testing their AppTrackingTransparency opt-in messaging.
Now that it’s clear this prompt will be required for everyone who wants granular data, expect to see tests like these showing up a LOT between now an iOS 14.5.
If you're working through the details of your app's ATT implementation, Branch, Kochava, and Adjust have all published guides on best practices.
AppStore rejection when using IDFA message
This particular discussion is a couple months old, but it’s representative of a couple threads I’ve seen this week in non-public channels: it appears Apple is becoming a lot more strict on ‘soft ATT pre-prompts’. From the rejection message:
You can provide users with additional information about why you’re requesting access to their data before the iOS permission request appears, as long as you don’t include your own custom permission request.
The data points are sparse, but it seems like the specific triggers so far include:
- Showing the soft prompt more than once.
- Showing a prompt that the user can decline.
That said, Apple is clearly still figuring out their precedents here — under these guidelines, even the Facebook example above shouldn't have made it through.
Google Explores Alternative to Apple’s New Anti-Tracking Feature
Finally, yes…we all know this was coming eventually, but Google is exploring ways to add similar tracking limitations on Android.
Industry Buzz
AppLovin Said to Acquire Berlin’s Adjust in $1 Billion Deal
This is absolutely related to iOS 14 — now that the ‘bean counting’ part of basic app install ad measurement is commoditized, differentiation has to come from elsewhere.
The big question now: how will this play out for all the developers (especially in gaming) who might now be relying on a semi-competitor for their unbiased campaign measurement…
For a few theories on why this deal came together when it did, check out this commentary by the always-savvy Eric Seufert at Mobile Dev Memo.
Walled Gardens
Apple privileges its own ad network with ATT. What's its privacy endgame?
The short version of this: Apple is giving Apple Search Ads special treatment — it doesn’t have to use SKAdNetwork, and its alternative API provides data that is more detailed than SKAdNetwork.
That’s an issue for two reasons: ASA will have better data (competitive advantage), but ALSO no overlap with any competitor network forced to use SKAdNetwork.
Privacy & Security
iPhone app privacy labels are a great idea, except when Apple lets them deceive
Turns out not every app is giving accurate information in Apple’s privacy nutrition labels, whether through confusion or intentional omission.
And non-technical users find them confusing, because if you ask ten different people what 'privacy' means, you'll get ten different answers…none of which seem to intuitively match Apple's.
UX
How Robinhood handled a crisis — A UX case study
In other mobile-related news, Reddit and Robinhood got plenty of attention recently.
Rather than rehashing the story itself (everyone who wants to know about it already has an opinion), this study looks at some of the UX choices behind how Robinhood implemented their trading limitations.
There were clearly some areas for improvement, but at the same time, this was obviously a hair-on-fire moment that wasn't part of anyone's roadmap, and the options were likely quite limited by what could be deployed without an App Store release.
Data
ATT Consent Survey FB v2 -- US -- February 2, 2021
Here’s a recent survey with data showing the likely ATT opt-in rates for Facebook’s ATT prompt.
Obviously things might be different in real life, but the numbers aren’t great: less than 20% of daily Facebook users are Likely or Very Likely to click Allow Tracking. While this will clearly depend on industry and region, these rates will never be high.
People do want to keep their apps free though (they’re much more likely to agree once provided with that context)...but the issue is that Apple’s not providing that context as any part of this conversation.
Podcast
Former Global CMO @ Potbelly: Brandon Rhoten
Speaking in the Voice of Your Customer
As marketers, we all hope that our efforts will transform a brand and have it become the talk of the town. Our next guest, Brandon Rhoten, has been able to do just this at several of the brands he has transformed.
Brandon has worked at Wendy’s, Papa John’s, and Potbelly. Although his approach has differed with each challenge the results have been the same: transformational change. We learn that a company looking to adapt and evolve doesn’t need to hop on the hottest trend; it needs to isolate its market problem and find a solution that aligns with its brand’s positioning. In the case of Papa John’s, it was moving their advertising to digital channels from traditional ones. For Wendy’s, it was reasserting its voice with clever and funny ads on social platforms like Twitter to engage with a younger audience.
In this episode, Brandon shares exactly how he approached evolving the marketing strategies at each of these companies to adapt to the times and ultimately get incredible results. Hear this and how they hired comedians for Wendy's Twitter account, why Potbelly hired former professional football player Peyton Manning, and why Brandon studies the financial news as much as anything else.
Events
Who’s Hiring?
- Stadium Goods | Senior Analyst, Marketing Analytics — New York
- Neptune Retail Solutions | VP, Product Management — Jersey City, New Jersey
Do you have a mobile growth role you’d like to share with the community?
Just fill out this form — it’s free!
It’s an apocryphal quote, but definitely true of the past seven days in mobile marketing land — after months of relative calm, the IDFA Apocalypse is back with a vengeance.
Still, to paraphrase a comment from a savvy performance marketer this morning:
Let’s just get on with it? This is going to be a new world, but at least it’ll be over. No point looking back now.
Without minimizing the importance of making sure everyone is as prepared as possible to avoid extreme disruption (and I wish we'd all had this much clarity nine months ago, instead of getting the information in small drips), I'll be glad when these iOS 14 changes are all in the rearview mirror. Some things will be 'worse' than before, but at least the uncertainty will be over.
PS, I put many of these articles on Twitter before they end up in the newsletter — this week, with a particular focus on highlighting the latest iOS 14 news as it comes out. If you’re interested in getting links and commentary in real time, please give me a follow!
Alex Bauer