Sep 29th 2020
How Does iOS 14 Affect the Ad Tech Ecosystem?
In our series of iOS 14 and how this affects the mobile ad tech industry, we’ve discussed how the coming changes affect:
We would like to take our learnings and summarize in this blog post what this all means for the overall ad tech ecosystem.
Vungle perspective: What does this mean for the ad tech ecosystem?
These changes bring both positive and potential negative impacts to our industry and to the end user. Overall, iOS14 includes stronger regulations of an individual’s personal data usage. For end users, this is important because people are more sensitive about how their personal data is being used and are calling for more transparency. No one will argue that giving users more control and transparency with the way their personal data is used is not positive or important.
For the Ad Tech industry in general, these changes also bring positive changes. In many ways, the new standards in iOS 14 help to level the playing field with larger industry players such as Google or Facebook. With iOS 14, apps such as Facebook and Google must ask explicitly for the users’ permission to opt-in. This means that the data these larger companies can collect is more in-line with other independent Ad Tech partners. The new changes with iOS 14 also bring better security. Apple’s SKAdnetwork’s data uses cryptography, which means an install can be verified as actually happened without compromising user privacy.
However, these changes also bring challenges to our industry. The SKAdNetwork brings changes to the advertiser’s performance measurement. For example, campaign notifications are sent to the network at least 24 hours after the app is opened for the first time, limiting real-time data. Also, the postbacks to ad networks can include ad campaign IDs, but only 100 values per ad network are available to be mapped, which severely limits advertisers in how they can break down and analyze their data. All this may lead to CPM degradation as advertisers are going to bid less given they have less information on the end user. This in turn leads to less relevant ads to the end user, as ad serving platforms have less information about their behavior and interests and the ad experience is therefore less personalized. Vungle continues to leverage our strength in contextual data to mitigate these challenges.
In the upcoming months, we will continue to inform you of ongoing changes surrounding iOS 14 and how to address them. Please regularly check our blog page for more information on how to best prepare yourself for these changes. This page contains blogs that address how advertisers, publishers and ad networks are preparing for IOS 14.
