In September 2020 Apple launched iOS 14 and ended mobile marketing as we all knew it.

Fast forward to a year later - September 2021 - and the release of iOS 15. What does the update imply for mobile marketers?

iOS 14: a quick review

SKAdNetwork, by becoming the solution to measure attribution post iOS 14, brought significant changes to marketers.

• Users choosing to give or deny access to their IDFA
• Maximum 100 campaigns per ad network (with certain limitations for specific networks)
• No ad campaign granularity
• The Conversion Value becoming the only data available on post-install activity
• The access to opt-out users’ post-install activity limited to 30 days
• No real-time tracking
• No access to raw/unedited postbacks

iOS 15: what’s new?

iOS 15 is clearly a continuous emphasis on data transparency and privacy. It does provide enhanced privacy controls, yet it also brings improvements mobile marketers were asking for.

Access to raw/unedited postback

Amazing news with iOS 15: mobile marketers can finally get the unedited attribution of their mobile marketing efforts. By collecting it by themselves from the attribution source, they don’t have to rely on ad networks to share attribution data with them anymore.

The app developers will now have opportunity to validate if that data is accurate and make sure that there is no bias towards any ad network.

Even though they lost the granularity of user-level attribution with SKAdNetwork, they can now audit how their marketing budget is spent across ad platforms in a way they never could before.

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Mail Privacy Protection (MPP)

This new feature stops email senders from knowing whether or not an email has been opened.

The MPP removes tracking pixels in emails and hides the recipient’s IP address so their location remains unknown. So, when users choose to “Protect Mail activity,” Apple automatically loads images and CSS, to make it look like the email has been opened. Users who opt into mail privacy protection will appear as they open every third-party email they receive. This means open rates are likely to be severely inflated and inaccurate.

‍Private Relay

Presented as a beta feature for iCloud Plus users (Apple’s upgraded iCloud subscription service), Private Relay is the new internet privacy service for Safari browser users. It masks a user’s IP address on their device and keeps it private.

This new service can impact 1) deferred deep linking (a form of deep linking that leads users who click on a promotion to a specific page inside an app they haven’t yet installed), and 2) attribution as both rely on the IP address to redirect a user to a desired page/content and to measure performance.

That means that iOS 15 users who:

• use Safari as their browser
• have an iCloud Plus account
• and choose to activate Private Relay

will no longer be deferred deep linked. Instead, they will be taken to the app’s default page, and app developers won’t get the IP address of this user.

App Store

Paid and Organic categories

‍The App Store gets to be divided into two categories: Paid and Organic.

This means marketers can now tailor the content on the product pages based on their audience, increasing opportunities to drive more traffic.

Custom Product Pages

It’s now possible to create up to 35 versions of each app product page and tailor most of it:

• The promo text
• The screenshots
• The app icon
• The app preview
• The video
• The URLs

This means UA Marketers can finally tailor and align their message with their target audiences, which is very likely to significantly increase conversion rates.

This also gives a great understanding of what drives conversions or increases downloads in particular categories.

Now, with custom product pages and product page optimization, mobile marketers can easily A/B test their pages and see what clicks. In addition, they can monitor and review analytical data associated with each of the product pages, including:

• Downloads
• Impressions
• Conversion rates
• And more in App Analytics

For each Custom Product Page, they can also see the average revenue generated per user. This finally gives granular insight on how to optimize product pages for the audiences.

Searchable in-app events

In-app events will now appear in the App Store in various sections including:

• The Today Tab
• Search results
• Under “Events you might like” for personalized recommendations

The events can be featured on product pages (each submission can include up to 10 in-app events), and Apple will curate the biggest events in the App Store. This creates more interest and engagement with the page content and opens up new opportunities for marketers to come up with attention-grabbing creatives and events to garner more users.

While in-app events were previously only relevant for driving engagement for existing users, it is now creating opportunities for app developers to enhance discovery and downloads.

Are you ready for a solution that can help you predict and measure your user acquisition journey?

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