Interesting Reads
UA gotta be kidding
This is the incredibly weird and quirky history of the User Agent field, which is still used on mobile today for many analytical and measurement purposes.
I thought this was a fascinating read…but then again, I'm a nerd!
Marketing Analytics vs. Product Analytics
There has long been a separation between marketing and product analytics. Both are important, and often come with overlapping functionality, but separate platforms exist for a reason and have developed to reflect the divergent needs of various internal stakeholder groups.
Don't miss part 2 of the series.
Why China's Version of Email Marketing Is So Effective
In the western world, email remains one of the most influential owned marketing channels. That makes email an incredibly important — and typically under-capitalized — channel for mobile marketers, assuming they get the deep linking part right.
In China, not so much. Email marketing has never been as significant, which led to various alternative communication strategies. One I find particularly intriguing: 'private traffic', an umbrella term for various chat-based tactics.
Now, some of these alternatives are starting to make an appearance in western markets too. And having recently just experienced a variety of chat-heavy commercial interactions during a trip Mexico, I can understand the allure.
What Marketing Attribution Looks Like in the Post-iOS14 Era
Here is a thoroughly exhaustive tour of the modern attribution landscape, with some useful thoughts on how to effectively cross-reference various attribution techniques in a world of increasingly-fragmented data.
My one minor quibble: the authors bucket 'device fingerprinting' into their Modeling category (along with MMM). This doesn't match reality in my experience, because fingerprinting is almost always used as an alternative to pixels/URL parameters (the authors' Tracking category).
In other MMM-related news: more major platforms are jumping on the bandwagon, including both TikTok and Roku in just the last few weeks.
Industry Buzz
Why in-app personalization, not probabilistic attribution, is the future of post-ATT advertising
If you only read the headline, you might initially think this is an argument for why in-app personalization will replace attribution. If so, I wouldn't blame you for feeling some confusion.
That's not actually what this article is about. Rather, the argument is around how to ensure the continued performance of advertising, once maintaining the status quo via ATT workarounds is no longer possible.
Here's the thesis (which I find convincing) in a nutshell:
- In the past, when 'buying a user' via advertising, most of the work done to maximize the conversion probability of that user was taking place via nuanced audience targeting at the time the ad was shown. Basically, filtering for high-quality traffic at the very top of the funnel.
- Going forward, that sort of 'pre-filtering' will no longer be possible, meaning performance will decrease because incoming traffic will degrade in quality. The alternative proposed here is to accept a higher volume of lower-quality traffic, and use personalization to improve conversion potential via more effective segmentation inside the app.
This is probably most relevant for heavily app-first categories like mobile gaming. However, there is a useful thread here for all brands that have a mobile app: improving the user experience with better personalization (i.e., patching the leaks in the bucket) is now a far more effective way to influence business outcomes than simply pouring more cheap traffic into the top of the funnel.
Walled Gardens
Mobile Advertising and the Impact of Apple’s App Tracking Transparency Policy
This is Apple's second sponsored research report in as many months (the first was designed to support the value-add of the App Store walled garden model). It's definitely starting to feel like an orchestrated strategy by their PR department.
Unfortunately, I found this report less convincing and objective than the first one. In particular, the distinction between first-party and third-party data (which the author takes pains to clarify that Apple does not use) is both technically correct and immensely self-serving. The argument all along has never been that Apple violates the terms of ATT...it's that Apple gerrymandered the entire precept of ATT to ensure its own behavior was not a 'violation'.
Said another way, Apple is the most valuable corporation in the world and has multiple internal business lines (which conveniently qualify as 'first-party' to both each other and the OS itself) that directly compete with entire third-party industries outside the company. Basing ATT on an arbitrary first-party/third-party definition has always been the underlying issue.
However, there is one reassuring thread in this report: for anyone who still held lingering doubts as to whether ATT might be intended to apply to measurement of owned and earned channels, or UX functionality like deep linking, this report should put those doubts firmly to rest: these first-party uses of data were clearly never considered in scope.
Tips & Techniques
How To Run an A/B Test in App Store Connect
A useful, step-by-step guide to the new split-testing functionality that Apple added to the App Store earlier this year.
"On March 29th I released an update for @blackboxpuzzles. New ratings shot up massively overnight all thanks to a very small change."
A request for review is JUST that: a request. Just because I was carefully timing when I asked for a rating prompt probably had very little bearing on if the system actually decided to show one!
Data
The Impact of Apple's App Tracking Transparency on App Monetization
This is a fairly dense academic study (the author's Twitter thread is a better at-a-glance summary), but it describes a statistically significant trend around something most of us likely sensed all along: there has been a shift toward in-app payments on iOS after the implementation of ATT.
Podcast
VP, Fan Engagement at PGA TOUR: Travis Trembath
Driving Brand Growth Through Fan Engagement and Customer Acquisition
The PGA TOUR is the premier sanctioning and organizing body for men's professional golf, representing the best players in the world.
Currently, Travis serves as the voice of the fan for the PGA TOUR and is passionate about building great teams and positively impacting people.
Today, Travis shares some insight on the PGA TOUR’s strategy for acquiring and engaging fans, delivering the right content on the right platform for different types of fans, and advice on how to become an engagement, insights, and marketing leader.
Events
Mobile Growth New York
When: Thursday, May 12, 6:30 PM - 9:00 PM (EDT).
Where: New York, NY (in-person event).
Panelists: PayPal, Bonobos, Stash & Consumer Reports.
Who’s Hiring?
Do you have a mobile growth role you’d like to share with the community?
Just fill out this form — it’s free!
- El Pollo Loco | VP, Digital — Los Angeles, CA
- Canva | Global SEM Team Lead — San Francisco, CA | Sydney, Australia
- Canva | Global Paid Social Team Lead — San Francisco, CA | Sydney, Australia
- Canva | Lifecycle Engagement Lead — San Francisco, CA | Sydney, Australia
- Canva | Director of Performance Marketing — San Francisco, CA | Los Angeles, CA | Sydney, Australia
- Notion | Global Campaign Manager, Enterprise — San Francisco, CA
- Sling TV | Head of eCommerce — Englewood, CO
Believe it or not, April 26 marked a year since the release of iOS 14.5 and the new world of AppTrackingTransparency (though as we all know, the real rollout didn't come until iOS 14.6, over a month later).
There were a number of interesting retrospective pieces in honor of the anniversary, so let's kick off this issue of the newsletter with a few of my favorites:
In other news, it seems like in-person events are really getting started again. I'll be at a bunch of them in the near future — shoot me a note if you'd like to say hi during any of the below!
- App Store Optimization Conference 2022, Berlin (May 11).
- App Growth Summit Berlin, (May 12). This one promises to be particularly exciting, because we're holding a 70-minute live panel with representatives from all the major MMPs about the future of mobile measurement. Queue the fireworks!
- Programmatic I/O, Las Vegas (May 23-25).
- Amplify, Las Vegas (May 24-26).
- MAU, Las Vegas (June 6-8).
Alex Bauer