5 SKAN questions you didn’t know you had—answered in under a minute

Running iOS campaigns in the post-IDFA era

Apple’s privacy-focused initiatives have led the digital marketing industry to rethink what a successful growth strategy looks like. Over the past couple of years, there’s been a lot of progress but also a lot of questions on how to gain new users and drive conversions in the post-IDFA era.

In this post, Franco Passamonte, Product Manager at Jampp, answers some of the most frequently asked questions about iOS 15, Apple’s App Tracking Transparency framework (ATT), and SKAdNetwork (SKAN):

• Should you run SKAN, IDFA, or both?
• Can you actually run a successful SKAdNetwork campaign?
• What does campaign success look like in Apple's ATT?
• Can you run App Retargeting campaigns on iOS?
• What are some key tips for app marketers looking to drive success on iOS?

#1 Should you run SKAN, IDFA, or both?

IDFA availability has been steadily decreasing since the beginning of last year. Now it’s around 30% depending on the market. This means that advertisers running IDFA-only campaigns face limited reach and higher CPAs. On the other hand, SKAN adoption is over 85% on iOS today[1].

‍At Jampp, customers running both SKAN and IDFA-only campaigns are seeing at least 37% lower CPIs on the SKAN side, so we can say running IDFA-only campaigns is not an effective strategy. In general, our recommendation is to leverage all traffic types and attributions at the same time (both SKAdNetwork and IDFA when available).

#2 Can you actually run a successful SKAdNetwork campaign?

Yes, you can. Obviously, it’s different from running non-SKAN campaigns. The setup is different, the metrics are different, but it is possible to run a successful SKAN campaign. Our algorithms don’t rely on IDFA and efficiently leverage contextual signals for optimization. Furthermore, at Jampp, we think that this is a great opportunity to develop better solutions, and our team continues to work on improving our platform and reporting capabilities. We’ve helped many of our customers launch their first SKAN tests and optimize their setups for success.

Read more about how Fetch Rewards saw up to 50% lower CPI on their SKAN campaigns with Jampp.

#3 What does campaign success look like in Apple's ATT?

In the last few years, the whole game was about getting behavioral data to target specific users, or buckets of users, based on their interests and past behavior. There were companies like Google or Facebook that were kind of unbeatable because they “controlled everything” and had tons of data points from users. 

Not to mention that many players were more focused on capturing attributions—and even on cannibalizing activity rather than actually encouraging users to discover and engage with apps. In a sense, SKAdNetwork and the changes it brought hit a reset button. Campaign success is no longer only about user data, but about cleverly designed campaign strategies, great creatives, and understanding the impact of different placings. ATT has set a more level playing field for ad tech players.

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#4 Can you run App Retargeting campaigns on iOS?

With the current SKAN framework, the share of advertisers running App Retargeting is lower than before the launch of ATT, but it’s still alive. We keep working on new optimizations and we’re seeing some encouraging results. In the meantime, we keep focusing on helping our customers launch their SKAN campaigns under the current scenario. We look forward to the solutions we are testing and the updates Apple is working on, which will hopefully allow us to do even more.

#5 What are some key tips for app marketers looking to run iOS campaigns?

‍1️⃣ Avoid falling behind: SKAN adoption has already surpassed 85%[1] while IDFA availability keeps decreasing, so any advertiser running on iOS without experimenting on SKAN is going to be operating with very limited traffic. 

2️⃣ Keep testing and try mirroring results: leverage Android and IDFA insights to check whether they are similar or different from SKAN results. Then, work together with your growth partners to understand if there are any opportunities to optimize your SKAN campaigns. 

3️⃣ Leverage contextual inputs: Apple’s ATT is just one of many privacy-focused initiatives we’ll be seeing in the digital marketing industry in the upcoming years. Start building a future-proof marketing strategy for your app by leveraging contextual signals without depending on IDFA or GAID (Google Advertising ID) insights.

4️⃣ Implement the opt-in prompt: this pop-up message allows the app to gather information from IDFA traffic and access performance insights. To learn more about prompts and pre-prompts, read this article we wrote in collaboration with the InMobi team.

5️⃣ Get ready for SKAN 4.0: last June, Apple announced a new version of SKAdNetwork that will support multiple conversions and feature new types of conversion values, among other updates. These changes will require app marketers to rethink their overall conversion value strategy—work together with your MMP and growth partners to stay on track! You can read more about SKAdNetwork 4.0 vs SKAdNetwork 3.0 in this post.

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Get started with SKAN today!

At Jampp, we’re helping the most ambitious mobile businesses grow with SKAdNetwork. If you want to know whether your current SKAN setup is working for your app, or if you want to take your iOS campaigns to the next level, drop us a line to talk to one of our sales reps and see our growth platform in action.

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References

[1] Aggregated data from Jampp’s integrated exchanges, 2022.