AppLovin has struck again. Bloomberg scooped late Wednesday afternoon that AppLovin is on the cusp of acquiring mobile app attribution startup Adjust for $1 billion. The news was confirmed by AppLovin in a press release. [Read the release]. AppLovin is an app marketing platform that helps advertisers automate their user acquisition and re-engagment campaigns. Adjust, […]
SKAdNetwork is entering its final form, though details are scant. Apple recently updated its page dedicated to user privacy and data use to reflect its plan to add support for view-through attribution for video, audio and interactive ads in apps by “early spring” 2021. Apple will tie these attribution capabilities to creative measurement, so developers […]
So few publishers and advertisers are ready for Apple’s forthcoming IDFA changes that mobile DSP Jampp had to develop its own app just to run live tests of SKAdNetwork. SKAdNetwork is Apple’s privacy preserving attribution API for iOS 14. Once Apple implements its AppTrackingTransparency (ATT) framework, which will require advertisers and publishers to get an […]
Here’s something for an investor to bring up on Facebook’s next earnings call on Wednesday: Apple’s upcoming IDFA changes could have a significant impact on Facebook’s revenue – as much as 7% of total revenue in Q2. That’s according to Eric Seufert, a mobile consultant and investor and editor of Mobile Dev Memo. Doing a little back-of-the-napkin […]
Assessing a customer’s lifetime value (LTV) usually requires observing that person’s purchase behavior over time. But there are more efficient ways to calculate LTV earlier in the customer journey, said Emad Hasan, CEO and co-founder of Retina, a startup that uses machine learning and data analytics to help brands predict LTV and lower customer acquisition […]
Food delivery app Deliveroo has long wanted to justify spending more on affiliate marketing, but the tech to measure affiliate incrementality just hasn’t been there, says Tiziana Bacchilega, Deliveroo’s global affiliates lead for performance marketing. “There’s no doubt about the value of this channel,” Bacchilega said. “We just need some backing to be confident in […]
Mobile ad networks have been busily stress testing SKAdNetwork in preparation for Apple’s IDFA changes – but they’ve been doing so with one arm tied behind their back. For months, two of the most crucial pieces of information necessary for attribution were absent in the postbacks coming from SKAdNetwork, which is Apple’s API for enabling ad […]
The ad industry is partially pinning its hopes on email as legacy identifiers get knocked off one by one. But hashed IDs, including emails and phone numbers, collected elsewhere cannot be used as a replacement for app tracking on iOS 14. That’s true whether or not the hashed identifiers were collected with consent. In its […]
Starting in Q2 2021, bidding will be the only way to buy ads in iOS apps through Facebook’s Audience Network. At that point, waterfall-based buying will no longer be supported. Facebook says the goal had always been to become a bidding-only demand source ever since in-app bidding first launched in Audience Network in 2017. But […]
INCRMNTAL, a startup focused on incrementality testing and measurement, launched on Monday with $1.4 million in pre-seed funding. The round includes participation from a handful of angels, early stage venture firm toDay Ventures and the Mobile Dev Memo Investment Syndicate, an initiative that vets seed and pre-seed opportunities in the mobile space. Interest in incrementality, […]
The TikTok saga continues. The New York Times reports that Chinese-owned TikTok and WeChat will be removed from all United States app stores (all two of them) starting Sunday, Sept. 20, as per an executive order from the Trump administration issued Friday morning. The order will bar Apple and Google from making TikTok and WeChat […]
Affiliate marketers are largely overlooking what could be one of their best-performing channels: apps. Although most retail marketers say they generate hardly any app installs from their affiliate programs, the reality is quite different, said Mike Jaconi, CEO and co-founder of mobile commerce marketing company Button. App users are more loyal, more likely to make […]
In light of Apple’s decision to delay enforcement of its opt-in feature in iOS 14, Facebook will keep on collecting the IDFA – for now at least. Facebook had planned to stop gathering the IDFA for iOS 14 devices across its own apps and via third-party apps through the Audience Network. But “given Apple’s delayed implementation […]
The developer community welcomed Apple’s recent move to delay the rollout of its IDFA changes in iOS 14 until “early next year.” But that delay only adds a few months onto the deadline. Early next year is sooner than it sounds. And there’s still a lot of prep work that developers and their partners need […]
The rumors are true: Apple is going to postpone the enforcement of its planned IDFA restrictions in iOS 14 until sometime early next year. That sound you just heard? It’s the collective exhale of relief coming from mobile developers and measurement vendors who had been scrambling to adjust to the changes. In a statement provided […]
SKAdNetwork is Apple’s homegrown solution for attribution. Apple itself verifies when clicks lead to installs and shares that information directly with ad networks through an encrypted postback and without the need to pass an IDFA. That should make app marketing in iOS 14 pretty much impervious to fraud … right? Well, yes and no. It […]
Ad creative can be a bigger driver of performance for app advertisers than audience-based targeting or segmentation. “We can make a huge difference, depending on the creative, in almost any game regardless of the target,” said Rick Grunewald, a digital marketing analyst at PerBlue, a Wisconsin-based mobile game studio with a license to develop games […]
Like all companies invested in the mobile ecosystem, Google is getting ready for iOS 14. But the company is playing its cards close to the vest. As opposed to Facebook, which yodeled from the rooftops about the negative impact Apple’s IDFA changes will have on publisher monetization through Audience Network, Google quietly updated its AdMob […]
Facebook’s strategy for dealing with the changes coming in iOS 14 is to simply stop collecting the IDFA. But there’s nothing simple about it. Facebook’s ad partners have a lot of steps they have to take to prepare themselves for Apple’s update if they still want to run app install campaigns through Facebook. On Wednesday, […]
Facebook is preparing its partners for Apple’s IDFA restrictions – and there’s no sugar coating it. Considering the uncertainty of the situation, Facebook has decided not to collect the IDFA for any of its own apps on iOS 14 devices or to request the IDFA from apps in Audience Network, the company said in a pair […]
An embedded tweet or Instagram post is often the first place a reader’s eye lands on the screen when reading an article. Mobile ad exchange Kargo said Wednesday it will acquire Rhombus, an ad tech company focused specifically on targeting social embeds within articles, for that very reason. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. […]
Mobile app advertisers have been slower than their web counterparts to embrace programmatic-style RTB auctions. That’s starting to change as more app publishers test in-app bidding and see significant lifts in ARPDAU (average revenue per daily user). “Publishers are pushing their ad networks to get into bidding, and we’re beginning to see a snowball effect,” […]
With iOS set to get a lot less measurable, developers are considering putting more of their performance budgets into Android. The impetus is Apple’s move to start requiring an opt-in for its proprietary advertising ID, the IDFA, beginning with iOS 14 in September. Without ready access to the IDFA, apps are limited in their ability […]
Apple has a tendency to ask for forgiveness, not permission. Scratch that. Apple doesn’t apologize. Known for unilateral decision making that can throw entire industry sectors into a tailspin (just ask the mobile ad ecosystem), many of Apple’s recent moves fit a pattern of behavior. Developers have long considered Apple’s App Store policies inscrutable and […]
Vivoom, a Boston-based mobile ad platform focused on user-generated ad campaigns, closed its operations on Wednesday, a victim of the pandemic economy. The company’s website is no longer live. Vivoom CEO and cofounder Katherine Hays relayed news of the shutdown in an email sent to clients and partners yesterday. “Despite our amazing partners, peers, advisors […]
Hypercasual dominated the mobile gaming charts even before the pandemic. Installs of hypercasual games, characterized by extremely lightweight, free-to-play mobile titles, more than doubled between December 2019 and March of this year, according to joint research from Adjust and Unity. Once lockdowns started, the growth accelerated, with play sessions up by 72% in March. But […]
Gaming apps are getting better at beating install fraud. Just 3.8% of paid installs are fraudulent among gaming apps, according to research published by AppsFlyer on Tuesday, compared with 32% of non-organic installs for apps in other categories. Finance apps have the highest app install fraud rate at 48%, for example, followed by travel apps […]
Users flocked to apps during the first few months of lockdown. Paid acquisition was a bargain thanks to lower ad demand, while entertainment apps, games, fitness apps and delivery apps saw massive upticks in organic usage. Global downloads for hypercasual games, for example, shot up 103% between December 2019 and March of this year, according […]
White Ops has uncovered a mobile ad fraud operation with unusually sophisticated and patient tactics to embed itself in mobile phones, the company said Thursday. The investigation, dubbed CHARTREUSEBLUR (most of the 29 perpetrating apps used “blur” in the name, and apparently the White Ops threat research team is fond of the liqueur chartreuse), rounded […]
Companies that rely on Apple’s proprietary ad ID are seeking solutions for a post-IDFA world. Although Apple didn’t actually kill it, the IDFA will become opt-in for consumers starting with iOS 14 in September. Without user permission, IDFA tracking will be zeroed out, just like when Limit Ad Tracking is enabled. Some are predicting opt-in […]
