Industry Buzz
App Store Ads in Today Tab Switching to More Compact Design in July
The compact format will also make the ads more distinguishable from unsponsored content in the Today tab, so this is a change that should be well received by both advertisers and App Store users.
Somehow, I doubt both of these can be true at the same time. This more compact format takes less space, but it also shows nothing useful or interesting that could incentivize visitors to take an action.
Walled Gardens
Meta piloting direct app downloads from ads, no app store required (who needs IDFAs or GAIDs now?)
This is an excellent summary of the news story and potential implications for mobile marketers.
But there is one takeaway I think is probably incorrect:
By enabling direct download, Meta gains a first-party advantage in immediate attribution reporting, and likely — depending on the SDK Meta includes — long-term behavioral data as well.
Why would this be wrong? Yes, much of the discussion around iOS and privacy has focused on the App Tracking Transparency policy, which is enforced via App Store review. But in my view, that's only because the App Store is (currently) the logical chokepoint to use.
When citing the actual definitions of what is/is not allowed, Apple has always meticulously leaned back on the Developer Program License Agreement, which is the set of underlying legal terms that all iOS developers must accept. This matters because even developers who intend to distribute their apps outside of the App Store will still need to follow these terms, which means Apple still controls the ultimate gate.
Privacy & Security
"iOS Developers will need to apply for access to required reason APIs. […] This is what it means when an app is denied access to them"
We know that iOS 17 will introduce a list of 'Required Reason APIs', with the objective of preventing fingerprinting.
We also know that Apple plans to publish the actual list 'later this year', which will be critical information to understand what happens next.
…and then on Tuesday, this tweet came along with what appeared to be a real-world example of what data would be redacted. An early scoop?
Turns out, unfortunately not — the author had simply 'simulated the calls' based on a number of assumptions.
In other words, a false alarm. But it's probably not far wrong.
Link Tracking Protection in iOS17
In the previous newsletter issue, I briefly mentioned how iOS 17 would bring changes to URL parameters, in addition to all the other improvements for simpler AppTrackingTransparency compliance.
This article has more details (and yes, UTM tags should be unaffected because this is only targeting 'user specific identifiers').
Data
"Here's the story. I have access to 2,979 PMax ecommerce campaigns…"
This is a long thread with a lot of wonky data. And it's more about ecommerce ads than mobile.
But it's still an interesting read if you're into detailed charts…and want to see a more optimistic case for algorithmic, self-optimizing ad campaigns.
SKAN Adoption Dashboard
SKAdNetwork 4.0 adoption has been shockingly slow so far, but it is finally starting to show a glimmer of potential!
Note: it looks like there is a currently a bug in the chart that causes small values to be rounded up to 5%.
Podcast
Disrupting the Streaming Industry
Founder and CEO of Tubi: Farhad Massoudi
In this episode of How I Grew This, Farhad Massoudi, Founder and CEO of Tubi, joins Mada Seghete. They cover the success journey of Tubi, a free streaming service disrupting the industry, and its growth hack strategies involving content, viewership, and advertising. Farhad shares his journey as an entrepreneur and his approach to leveraging the power of AI in media distribution.
This week, the biggest news story in tech was probably a toss-up between Google video ads not meeting expected quality standards, and the Microsoft/Activision Blizzard antitrust hearings.
For the latter, I'll simply point you to this excellent episode of The Daily podcast: Is Washington Finally Ready to Take On Big Tech?
But on the former, one of the spiciest perspectives I've seen comes from Dr. Augustine Fou: How do we un-fu***k digital advertising? He argues that the real issue is the push towards 'easy buttons' — specifically, self-optimizing algorithmic campaign types like Performance Max (Google) and Advantage+ (Meta).
Dr. Fou is a well-known personality in the world of ad fraud prevention, and happens to sell a product (Fou Analytics) designed to detect exactly this kind of fraud. But that doesn't mean he's wrong: these black box models are inscrutable, and it's no secret that they are built and run by huge companies with objectives that only partly align with what matters to advertisers.
If you're feeling generous, inscrutability means these algorithms might end up optimizing for the wrong things without anyone realizing it (the paperclip maximizer problem). With a less charitable perspective, one could easily argue that these companies might be designing for outcomes that advertisers would certainly not prefer…were they to be aware.
And that brings us — finally — to my world-of-mobile-growth tie-in for this story: one significant outcome of Apple's crusade against 'tracking' has been more insular walled gardens, and an attribute of insular walled gardens is fewer options for the independent observation and validation that eventually illuminated this particular issue.
Alex Bauer