Everything You Need To Know About A Mobile Marketing Agency

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• How to Get the Most Out of Twitter Ads

  November 03, 2020
  They may not be as talked about as Facebook or Google, but if you’re a marketer running mobile app install campaigns, you may want to give Twitter Ads a second look.  When used correctly they can generate quick wins that many marketers are missing out on, in addition to boasting some compelling advantages to the alternatives, such as other major ad networks.  Before we get started though, it’s important to note that Twitter Ads are not necessarily “vertical agnostic” when it comes to their efficacy, and not every industry is the right fit.  Although, for apps in the shopping, finance, and news spaces (not to mention politics) they are seemingly almost tailor-made. Campaign Strategy & Optimization Name Your Price Per Install One interesting feature that Twitter Ads offers is the ability to learn about your audience at no cost to you when using a CPI model.  This is because unlike some of the other social platforms you can choose to be charged exclusively for app installs generated by your campaign right out of the gate.  This differs from other platforms that make you pay for impressions or clicks while its algorithm runs its “learning phase.”  In fact, Facebook doesn’t even offer installs as an option to be charged by in the beginning and won’t (for lack of a better word) unlock it until you’ve reached its algorithm’s threshold of data needed to determine who are the best people to show your ad. Furthermore, platforms such as Google (UAC campaigns) even suggest locking yourself in for a period of 7 to 10 days and hold off from doing any optimization when it comes to your budget while it conducts its learning phase. This contrasts with Twitter which allows you to test out their system for free.  Well, not exactly for free, but allow us to explain.   Rather than pay for the actions you aren’t interested in and will eat through your budgets, such as impressions and clicks, Twitter lets you save your money by only paying for those you do, in other words, app installs.  From our experience, it is the exception to all the other major social platforms in providing this option immediately from your campaign’s launch. This includes Apple Search Ads as well, where no matter how much time and money you invest you’ll never be able to achieve this payment method, and will always be paying for taps. Something to Consider:  For startups, the defacto “free trial” Twitter Ads offers could be a helpful resource both when it comes to budgeting for user acquisition, as well as for calculating customer LTV. An App Install Campaign Cure-All?  Well, Not So Fast Now, to be clear, we are not suggesting that the learning phase isn’t an essential element of your campaign. In reality, it’s a near impossibility to achieve any success with it at scale without allowing a platform’s algorithm to do its thing.  Additionally, if you don’t find your app install “sweet spot” when it comes to the bid, you can conceivably be running a campaign indefinitely that generates nothing.  While it’s true that you won’t incur any financial expense in doing so, the amount you’ll be spending on your time, an ever depreciating asset, is certainly an expense worth considering.  Worst Case Scenario, Go Back to School As mentioned earlier, if you have a lesser known brand or perhaps one that is not necessarily in one of the more popular verticals that appeal to Twitter, this “fire away in the dark hoping to hit something” approach may result in you spinning your wheels and wasting time.  If that’s the case and you find yourself literally going nowhere, simply switch over to a different model, such optimized action bidding (OAB), where you pay for clicks but bid for installs.  That way you’ll gain more reach and exposure, while still maintaining a lower amount you’ll pay on a cost per install.  In short, you’re back to paying for the algorithm’s learning phase, much like you would be doing on any other platform.  However, once you feel confident that you’ve found the right CPI benchmark, now you can revert to the charging/payment model again, and resume paying only for what you want. More Targeting Flexibility Every social platform offers a certain set of capabilities when it comes to reaching your intended audience including via interest, or lookalike audience.  While Twitter has these as options too, it also offers unique ways to reach the right people not exactly available on other networks.  Some of these unique targeting capabilities include by keyword targeting, by interest targeting, by handles, and even by current events.  In short, when it comes to targeting, Twitter is really a hybrid offering everything the others can do, plus a few other tricks of its own. Keywords One of the more compelling features of Twitter targeting is its ability to do so by keyword, something that is in fact not even an option when running a universal app campaign (UAC) on Google.  The same also applies to Facebook where search intent isn’t taken into account, thereby taking the ability to target by keyword off the table, and instead puts the impetus back on either core lookalike audiences or interests.  Obviously, with Apple Search Ads you can target by keyword, however, you are limited to either exact or broad match.  With Twitter, these constraints don’t always apply, meaning you can reach people based on keywords in their search queries, recent tweets, and even tweets they have recently engaged with.  In fact, something very special happens with Twitter when you add your list of keywords and hashtags.  Almost magically, its algorithm interprets its users’ search intent for you!  While some marketers may say this is a drawback because it prevents you from being able to gain more keyword granularity and see the exact effect for each keyword, the tradeoff is an easier and more manageable process.  This can be especially beneficial if you’re an organization without the resources to devote to continual optimization and report analysis. Interests Just like Facebook, when it comes to targeting by interest, Twitter allows you to do the same.  However, unlike Facebook, Twitter is much more flexible in allowing you to leverage it to create an “audience persona.”  Essentially, it provides you a way to create a de facto lookalike audience without needing a mass core audience list to base it on.   With other social platforms, deciding on who you want to reach means designating core interests to target.  This allows you to get very specific, however, can also be somewhat “hit or miss.”  Similarly, Twitter allows you to target by specific interests, however, it also provides a robust list of categories to choose from, followed by a plethora of subcategories to drill down into, enabling you to get more precise in the type of mind behind the eyeballs seeing your ad.  So, rather than treating interests as mere qualifiers that groups of people fall into, you can use them as attributes that combine to define a larger and more delineated audience. Pro Tip:  Create different ad sets for these different user personas.  You know who you’re after - now go get ‘em!  Handles Another powerful feature Twitter Ads offers marketers is that unlike other social advertising platforms, you can directly target followers of your competitors.  This contrasts to Facebook, for example, that when using its native UI, only allows you to target either followers of your own page, or those that resemble those who do (or who have previously interacted with one of your other assets linked to Facebook).  However, with Twitter, you can literally target by any handle that you wish.  This affords marketers an amazing opportunity to achieve wide ranging brand awareness with their mobile app install campaigns, especially for those without a large Twitter following.  Whether it’s a direct competitor of yours or an account whose followers would be likely users of your app, simply put, followers of these handles are low hanging fruit that is ripe for the taking.   Important to Remember:  Make sure any handle you’re targeting is one with a legitimate following, otherwise you may blow through your budget marketing to bots! Real Time Events & Conversations Because Twitter is different from other social platforms in the way its users engage with it, it also presents another unique opportunity when it comes to targeting your audience.  This is because with its fast-paced back-and-forth sharing of thoughts and ideas Twitter is truly a hotbed of discussion.  Consequently, this presents an excellent opportunity to reach people based on things happening in real-time and take advantage of the buzz.  This is especially true for example with political and sporting events where user participation in the discourse is active.  As a result, Twitter is constantly updating, identifying those of its users who are talking about these hot items, and thus providing marketers with the chance to compose special lists to reach out to in real-time if the event gets big enough on Twitter.  This differs from a platform like Facebook where you may be trying to reach someone with your ad who chimed in on the Super Bowl this year, but instead it finds its way to someone who did so in last year’s big game.  Additionally, Twitter also provides marketers with a means for getting in front of users whose interest in a topic is based on recency.  By leveraging its lookback feature, marketers can single out users who have actively sought out the topic of conversation within the past 28 days.  This can be another fantastic way to take advantage of opportunities such as in the weeks leading up to holidays while they are fresh on users’ minds. Pro Tip:  While Twitter can pretty much do anything every other social platform can offer and more when it comes to targeting, limit each campaign to only one targeting option in order to avoid creating an overlap.  A Creative Way to Remarket The internet is filled with articles providing pretty much the same exact message when it comes to your Twitter Ads’ creative.  These typically offer the familiar guidance to make sure your campaigns are engaging, to use high-quality visuals with contrasting colors, and if possible to make your ads fun.  For that reason, we will not discuss that here. Plus Twitter makes it easy to size them correctly with its Twitter card library.  However, something that is worth taking a deeper look into is how Twitter’s unique user behavior presents some interesting ways in which to structure your creatives. On platforms like Facebook, for example, posts that get engagement almost always must include some sort of media such as an image, GIF, video, or even a combination of them all in the form of a carousel.  Text with no accompanying visual very seldom has any chance of garnering significant engagement or going viral.  However, because Twitter is engaged with as a news service, as much as (if not more than) a social network, users are very likely to pay attention to content that does not include media. This creates an interesting use case for marketers to leverage Twitter to develop an effective funnel for their audience simply by taking a less-is-more approach.  So what does that look like?  The answer, a tweet with no media and just text.  As we just mentioned, Twitter is unique from other social platforms when it comes to the type of experience users expect to get from it, which includes tweets with no visuals.  A promoted tweet of this style has the potential to be perceived more as organic content rather than an advertisement, and thus draw engagement.  Plus, thanks to the retweet button, content on Twitter is incredibly easy to share and thus increases your brand awareness.   Combining those two factors creates an amazing beginning to your marketing funnel.  First, you achieve brand awareness with easily engageable and shareable content that most importantly does not look like an ad.  Then later you can go back and remarket to that audience who interacted with the tweet using a traditional creative featuring a visual asset that can be easily constructed from one of Twitter’s app install ad cards. Think Outside the Box:  Use emojis, ASCII-art, cool fonts, or even upside-down text to give your promoted tweet-with-no-media some personality and help it stand out from the crowd. Twitter Art using ASCII character codes Key Takeaways Clearly, Twitter is an underappreciated avenue for acquiring mobile users that can be a great source of wins for marketers.  It not only provides excellent opportunities to reach new users but when leveraged correctly, one with seemingly less competition than the others.   Unlike other social platforms, Twitter allows advertisers to set up their app install campaigns to be charged only when their ad results in an install at a specified price, thus allowing you to conduct your learning phase without cost.  Take advantage of this “free look” to experiment and determine your ideal cost-per-install.  If you find you’re not able to locate that “sweet spot” and are just wasting your time, simply switch over to the OAB method, pay to allow the algorithm to do its learning, and then switch back to the payment method and leverage your new-found data.When it comes to targeting Twitter really is the best of all worlds, offering the same features as the other platforms, as well as its own unique ones including keyword, handles, interests, and time-sensitive events.Not only does Twitter allow you to target by keyword, but its algorithm will even interpret user search intent for you.Build specific “user personas” for your audiences by choosing interest categories and then drilling down into them to select even more.  Treat them as attributes that combine to define your ideal users, rather than just listing off what their potential interests are.Because Twitter gives you so many topics to work with, it really is a playground for growth hackers when it comes to experimenting, learning more about your ideal users, tweaking, and scaling. Targeting by handles is a great way to build a lookalike audience without having a core audience to base it off.  However, just make sure you’re targeting accounts with actual people following them and not bots.Make the trend your friend, by leveraging the option of targeting those engaging in hot topics of conversation on Twitter both in real-time, or who have expressed an interest in them over the past 28 days.Take the long view when it comes to creatives on Twitter.  Start by using tweets with no media to spark engagement with your brand, then go back and retarget those users later for the actual app install. Many marketers fall guilty of bailing on their Twitter Ads campaigns too soon due to not seeing the desired results fast enough.  So be patient, be diligent, keep our best practices in mind, and you’ll be reaping the benefits of adding Twitter Ads to your mobile marketing strategy no time.
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• What is iOS 14’s New App Clips Feature?

  October 08, 2020
  Apple’s App Store is a heavily saturated marketplace, offering millions of apps at your fingertips. How do you decide which app to download next? Do you even have enough storage on your phone to download more apps? It’s safe to say it’s a competitive world out there, so anything new to leverage is a win for app developers and marketers. Especially when it follows the trend in making mobile actions convenient enough to compete with our everyday actions.  The launch of iOS 14 last month has brought with it some exciting changes. Introducing: App Clips, a way for developers to introduce users to their app away from the jungle of the App Store. Essentially, App Clips are ‘in-the-moment experiences’, a ‘lightweight’ version of an app offering only the best and most necessary features. Users find them in context and on demand, whether that’s in a particular location or for a specific function. The whole process should be streamlined and functional. Since they don’t stick around long after use, they have to pack a punch.  images from Apple We’re often faced with a simple user experience on the web, so why should apps be any different? Yet the effort we have to put into installing an app can be off-putting and time consuming. Often we just need one feature once, or we want a trial before committing. App Clips remove the barrier (the download process) from the user experience to allow this. Since they’re designed to be ‘lightweight’ with a 10MB maximum size, they load almost instantly, and there shouldn’t be an onboarding process.  The Different Ways To Launch App Clips App Clips are accessed via specific URLs which are embedded in various formats. To launch these URLs, you’ve got multiple options: App Clip Codes: this is a new development that combines both NFC tags and a visual code, allowing users to either tap or scan to launch the App Clip. They’ll have a unique design so that you’ll be able to distinguish them from QR codes.  NFC Tags: forming part of the Internet of Things, these chips allow you to tap and be directed instantly to a specific location, in this case the App Clip in question.  QR Codes: these barcodes, that are readable through your phone’s camera, can be scanned and lead you directly to an App Clip. Apple Maps: an App Clip icon will appear in Maps to offer you a relevant App Clip if the input location is a business with one on offer. Smart Banners in Safari: ever noticed the banners advertising a website’s app version? This is the same thing, but for App Clips. This is a great option for when users are browsing a product page in Safari. The App Clip linked in the Smart Banner can lead them directly to the same product page.  Links: these can be sent via messages, e.g. when a friend wants to introduce you to a new app but you’d prefer to trial it before downloading.  What Scenarios Will An App Clip Work Best For? App Clips will often have to compete with the convenience of in-person or web interactions. Whether that’s ordering food, paying for parking or booking a taxi ride, people are unlikely to use an App Clip unless it’s easier than the in-person or web alternative.  Cafes, restaurants and bars will be able to offer quick mobile ordering for customers to avoid the queue and pick up their goodies as soon as they arrive. In the current COVID climate of social distancing, the importance of this offering has grown significantly. Imagine this scenario: you’re travelling out of town in a busy city and you need to grab a bite to eat. You don’t know what’s around, so you turn to Apple Maps for some help. It shows you there’s a Starbucks around the corner, but it’s lunchtime and you imagine there’ll be a big queue. That’s where App Clips come in to save the day. In a matter of minutes you can have the Starbucks App Clip downloaded and your coffee and cake ordered. No long waiting time for the full app to download, no onboarding process and no entering payment information necessary. Just a few taps and your food is ready for collection and paid for with Apple Pay.  In a similar vein, you could be in the queue at a bar and scan a QR code to make your order from an App Clip. Or, you could be sat at a table in a cafe and order from the App Clip that you’ve accessed via an NFC tag on the menu. You’ve ordered and paid in just a few clicks and there’s no big app taking up precious storage space on your phone.  image from Apple Aside from the hospitality industry, App Clips can also be used within the arts, entertainment and travel sectors (to name just a few). Think big exhibitions that could benefit from information being given about the art, or ride share apps like Uber or Lyft that could allow users without the app installed to order taxis in a heartbeat, or events venues that require e-tickets downloaded on your phone. The possibilities are seemingly endless.  Let’s imagine another scenario. In major cities around the world, scooter brands like Lime and Bird are taking over. But what if you need to get somewhere in ten minutes and you don’t have the app downloaded? It would be great if you could quickly download an App Clip, pay with Apple Pay and be on your way. Scooters could easily have NFC tags or QR codes attached to them that enable this - sometimes people just don’t have the time to download the main app and onboard fully.  App Clips have the potential to become part of the fabric of our everyday lives and find their way into every industry. Although they’re not limited to on demand experiences, that’s where their use will most thrive and offer the biggest benefit to app developers and users. After all, if users like what they see or continuously use the App Clip, the next obvious step is to download the app itself. And that’s a big win from the developer's perspective, while the user is also satisfied. Are App Clips Private? With App Clips, there’s no need to worry about your data privacy because they can’t access the sensitive data stored on your iPhone. Privacy issues can be a big deterrent for people downloading apps, especially from sources they don’t know whether or not to trust.  However, in the case of regular use of an App Clip, it can begin to store information such as your previous order for a more convenient user experience. What’s more, should you decide to download the full app while the App Clip is still on your phone, certain data can also be transferred over. This data includes your authorization settings and previous orders.  image from Apple The App Clip card that displays upon launch shows the main app provider and links to the App Store page, should you wish to find out more about the publisher's privacy policy regardless. It’s also worth noting that if you attempt to access an App Clip and already have the full app installed, pressing “Open” will take you to the section of the app that the App Clip features so that you can fulfill the same intended purpose.  The App Clip Experience There are multiple different App Clip Experiences that can be launched by an App Clip, and the one you access depends on the specific URL you clicked to get there. When you click on the URL, whether that’s from an App Clip Code, NFC tag or QR code, you’re shown a graphic that correlates with the App Clip Experience that indicates what’s to come.  image from Apple The URLs within QR codes, NFC tags and App Clip Codes can be created with different identifiers so that a user can be taken to these relevant Experiences. For example, one App Clip Experience could take you straight to the search result for a specific product, whereas another Experience could put a specific product straight in your basket. Both can be part of the same App Clip. You’ll know where you’re headed thanks to the unique graphics for each Experience. This can also work for businesses with different locations. Each location can have a different tag so that you’re automatically directed to the page for the location you’re at. Let’s say you’re at a chain restaurant. Do you really want to be sifting through a list of locations to find the relevant menu when your phone is smart enough to know where you are and do it for you?  Key Takeaways With App Clips, Apple intends to make the use of apps more convenient and beneficial for both sides of the spectrum: for app developers and users. While developers can make their offerings more accessible and targeted within context, users get to reap the benefits of a more streamlined experience that takes less time to achieve the desired results.  There’s countless opportunities to get creative with the implementation of App Clips, and the more creative businesses get the more we will begin to see them crop up in our daily lives. It could be browsing a menu and ordering food to your table, or it could be shopping for a product at an online store where you’d prefer to use Apple Pay for the purchase, and all the possibilities in between. Since iOS 14 is so new and the development of App Clip Codes is still underway, we aren’t yet able to know the full extent of creativity that App Clips offer or the full effect on how we use our iPhones. What we do know is that it’s definitely an exciting progression to keep our eyes on, and you should too!
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• Apple Delays IDFA Changes and Google’s Response to the Planned Updates

  September 07, 2020
  Apple’s iOS 14 IDFA Updates Delayed In a win for developers, this week’s hot mobile marketing news is Apple’s announcement regarding the delay of its iOS 14 privacy measures that were set to be implemented this month. The changes sent waves of panic across the industry as they would essentially kill the IDFA, which would have dramatic consequences on the $80 billion industry that relied on it.  Now, in an effort to give mobile app publishers and advertisers time to make the appropriate preparations, the updates have been pushed back to early 2021. Although the same challenges are still to come, the extension of preparation time allows for more effective solutions to be put in place to help save user attribution.  The transition is from an ‘opt-out’ policy regarding IDFA, in which only around 30% of users dig deep enough to actually opt-out, to an ‘opt-in’ policy whereby developers will actively have to request permission to track a user immediately after app installation. The likelihood that nearly every user will now deny permission prevents the opportunity to track the effectiveness of advertising as we currently know it, by threatening the many forms of attribution marketing, such as retargeting. The positive outcomes of the announced delay are not only for advertisers and MMPs like Adjust, Branch or Kochava (whose entire business value relies on user tracking). Many hope that Apple will now invest more time into improving its IDFA alternative, SKAdNetwork, which is currently more simple than would be ideal.  Google’s Response to the iOS 14 IDFA Updates Now to Segway into Google’s response to the iOS 14 privacy measures. Despite the newly announced delays, it’s still interesting to note the contrasting tone Google has taken in comparison to Facebook (read more about that here). The IDFA changes may be delayed but they're still coming in a matter of months! Google remains relatively positive, confirming that it expects to ‘continue meeting advertiser needs for App campaigns on iOS.’ It has taken the approach that encouraging users to grant consent is the best response, as well as preparation in various other forms such as the consolidation of app campaigns. They recommend customizing the dialogue in the consent pop-up to make it as persuasive and informative as possible. More technically, Google recommends its Firebase SDK for benefits including the automatic implementation of Apple’s SKAdNetwork framework.  See you again next week for some more updates!
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• Helpful Ways of Preparing for the IDFA Changes

  September 07, 2020
  At long last, the release of iOS 14 has arrived, and with it what was expected to be a major shakeup for app developers and advertisers.  In case you’ve been off the mobile marketing grid for the past three months the de facto elimination of the Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) is what we’re talking about.  While iOS 14 is loaded with lots of great new features for users and interesting ASO opportunities for analysts, for those looking to advertise their app the IDFA “phase-out” has been a major source of uncertainty and concern.  Even before the changes to the IDFA were announced the release of iOS 14 was already a big deal.  However, with more strict privacy rules and regulations as part of the package, the new operating system was set to send shockwaves throughout the industry regarding changes in the way app marketers choose to spend their ad budgets.   Fortunately though in a much welcome stroke of good luck Apple has decided to delay the changes to the IDFA until next year.  While this is great news for app marketers who have been scrambling to figure out what to do in the absence of the highly popular unique identifier, the change is inevitably coming and there’s no way around it.  So, in the interest of setting yourself up for the best chance of success, we’ve put together some suggestions to help you take advantage of your new-found gift of time. IDFA Privacy Enhancements First things first, let’s define exactly what the IDFA is and why it’s perceived numbered days are garnering so much attention.  In short, the IDFA tracks user data across apps and websites, and not just ones not necessarily owned by the company doing the tracking, in order to provide targeted advertising.  Its technology is similar to a cookie, but even more powerful because it allows for full mobile attribution tracking of individual users from install to usage.   Previously an active IDFA on an app installed by an iOS user was the default, buried deep away in the app’s Settings and hard to find (provided you even knew about it to look for in the first place).  However, as part of the iOS 14 shakeup, the new policy will require users to consent permission to be tracked. Source: Apple The New Order of Business The way in which this process will play out will be as an opt-in delivered in the form of a pop-up notification with messaging to the effect of “[App Name] would like permission to track you across apps and websites owned by other companies.”  Not surprisingly, expectations are slim at best of a high conversion rate for gaining users’ permission.  In fact, the general sentiment around the industry is that even just a 10% opt-in rate would be borderline wildly optimistic.  Clearly this development is going to have far and wide-ranging implications on the entire $80 billion industry, so needless to say this is hardly small potatoes and one that not even the most cleverly worded opt-in message alone will miraculously solve the problem. So How To Prepare Your Business For the New IDFA Rules Now, while automatic access to the IDFA may be going away, the good news is it doesn’t have to be the end of the world.  Yes the IDFA gets the lion share of the attention, but it’s important to keep in mind that it isn’t the only game in town.  Apple announced its own attribution framework called SKAdNetwork providing an, albeit limited, alternative: Source: Apple Most of the MMPs already have bundled the SKAdNetwork into the SDK that enables advertisers to control the data flow from the MMP’s UI without needing to implement another SDK.  Moreover, the MMPs are also offering data enrichment that should provide some level of attribution.  To what extent we’ll probably never know before the IDFA deprecation part of iOS 14 is fully rolled out. Besides that, publishers with many apps could leverage IDFV and there are already talks in the industry regarding the next big identifier (email / credit card are 2 big and obvious ones which Apple is already taking on with their sign-in with Apple/ Apple Pay products). Even beyond these efforts though you can also prepare on your own end if you’re willing to put in the work and get creative.  The following are a few different solutions and workarounds you may want to consider depending on your team size, budget, and more. What Is Your Data Modeling Structure? If you have a Business Intelligence team and the resources to support it, this could be the option for you.  First things first is to assess how you are currently measuring user data.  Is your business relying solely on IDFA?  If so, that’s going to be a problem.  Are your data gatherers working off of raw data or aggregated reports?  If the answer is raw data then switching to aggregated reports that rely on multiple identifiers could provide a good hedge and something you want to do. AppsFlyer’s Aggregated Attribution Solution Be aware though that while this may sound simple, changing the way you model your data is quite an involved process.  Yes it can definitely be effective, but we’re talking about a pretty big fundamental shift in your BI’s modus operandi, and the time, manpower, and financial costs to implement such a change can add up in a hurry. How Are You Pulling Your Data? If you don’t have the resources to change your BI operations (or don’t have a dedicated BI team at all) then looking into your MMP and its capabilities must be high on your priority list.  It’s important to remember that not all MMPs are created equal. Some were devised mobile-first while others trace their origins back to web attribution.  Do you know the backstory behind the one you’re using?   If your MMP is on top of its game then they are probably hard at work with solutions already in beta.  Without naming names there are definitely two MMPs we know of, albeit in the more expensive price tier, that have already made great strides in this area since the IDFA news broke back in June.  Unfortunately, others of the slightly lesser expensive variety who typically don’t trace their roots back to mobile attribution are somewhat behind the curve with getting solutions into beta.  While they may be excellent products in their own rights, you truly do “get what you pay for” and with a development as disruptive as the required IDFA opt-in, the end may justify the means when it comes to spending a little bit more.  However, and this is important, don’t jump without looking first - as we mentioned above every MMP is its own creature, so don’t assume you can or can’t get what you need from yours based solely on its size or price tag. Rethinking User Acquisition If you’re a small agency or publisher without a high level of technical experience the first two suggestions probably aren’t the right fit for you.  However, even if you don’t have a BI team or aren’t using an MMP there are still some tactics available to you if you’re willing to put in the work. Think Outside the Box First things first you will need to get users to opt-in to allow you access to their IDFA.  As we mentioned above and with an expected conversion rate of 10-20% tops, the outlook is rather bleak.  While that intrusive consent pop-up that users are going to be presented with is the same for everyone, the messaging inside that pop-up doesn’t have to be.   With developers free to get creative with words it still provides one last shot (albeit a long one at that) to stand out, show a little brand personality, and entice users to opt-in. Even if you’re successful with converting just a small percentage of users into IDFA consenters you’re ahead of the game and have now set yourself up to target them with their own unique campaigns featuring different messaging.  It isn’t exactly a retargeting campaign, but rather a separate step in your user acquisition. Obviously it’s going to be a far smaller audience that you’ll be targeting, but one that’s composed of quality over quantity, and even more important, one that’s trackable and attributable. Higher Learning In addition to giving your creative team a new assignment with your opt-in messaging, you’re also going to need to put your UA manager to work in getting more statistically oriented when it comes to analysis of upper-funnel analysis.  Up until now for performance marketers, the focus has been all about down funnel and mapping in-app events.  However, with the IDFA no longer a given, conducting deeper analysis on metrics like impressions, CTR, CVR, and clicks are more important than ever before. Key Takeaways IDFA may be going away, but not all is lost.  It certainly won’t be an easy change, but with the right planning it doesn’t have to be a catastrophe.If you have a data team and the resources to go with it, a restructuring of how you model your data, including switching to aggregated reporting rather from raw data could reap the dividends that justify the costs of doing it.Take a good hard look into everything your MMP has to offer.  Do they already have solutions already in beta?  If yours doesn’t, does it make sense to possibly spend more and switch to one that does?Treat your opt-in messages like ads.  Make them as enticing as possible.  It would be naive to expect them to move the needle a tremendous amount, but why leave any chips on the table?Change up your focus from down funnel to upper-funnel analysis to help identify trends more quickly.Stay alert. Yes, the changing trends in privacy present a huge challenge for everyone, and it’s not just iOS.  Even Google is eventually expected to make its GAID an opt-in identifier as well.  That said, keep in mind that Facebook relies on the IDFA for a significant percentage of its advertising technologies so they’re on it, as are many of the major MMPs.  It’s a fluid situation that is pretty much guaranteed to change so in addition to doing your legwork make sure to check back with us as we’ll no doubt be keeping our eyes on the situation and sharing updates and insights when we have them.
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