With social media platforms growing increasingly numerous and diverse, advertisers have recognized that they can’t rely on achieving growth and success on just one platform when running a media ad campaign. Diversification is the key to reaching as many users as possible, especially on mobile.

Recent Roadblocks – Apple’s iOS 14.5 and Its Impact on Marketing 

Tracking users’ activity is essential for building a media strategy that works. Knowing which ads drew users in and where they came from can help set a guideline for future successful campaigns. Unfortunately, recent privacy overhauls in major companies make it harder than before to track users’ activities, particularly across multiple platforms.

Just over a year ago, in April 2021, Apple released their iOS 14.5 update, which included significant changes revolutionizing user privacy. One of the more significant changes made in the update was that now apps would need explicit permission from Apple users to track their activity across different apps installed on their phones. Unfortunately, few users were willing to waive their privacy and permit apps to track them. 

This development has made it almost impossible to track user registration or even downloads across applications, and the change has had severe ramifications across all platforms. The update has had a huge impact on Facebook, reducing the app’s ability to directly attribute ad spend and identify what ads work for which users.

What’s the Next Step for Media Strategy

Apple’s new privacy policy changes have made diversification in advertising campaigns more essential than ever. The inability to track users’ activity and not knowing which platform is responsible for bringing in the most users means advertisers need to treat every platform as their most important. Advertisers need to shift their focus to reaching as many users as possible without building too much reliance on any one platform.

The change has led to an evolution in user acquisition and forced app developers and advertisers to create campaigns for platforms that may have been previously out of their comfort zones. In addition, as the user acquisition process matures, advertisers are shaking up their media lineup and turning to less traditional social media sources such as TikTok and Snapchat and the traditional standbys such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google.  

While the transition to newer forms of social media is mostly a good one, new platforms also require advertisers to learn new strategies. The tried and tested campaigns that worked for Facebook and Google can’t simply be copy-pasted and applied to TikTok. Instead, advertisers must create new campaigns, and without metrics finding out what works and what doesn’t is complicated.

How to Know What Works 

Apple may prevent advertisers from tracking user activity and collecting metrics from applications, but platforms such as Zoomd’s SaaS still allow you to collect all the information you need from one screen. Keeping track of how your campaigns are going isn’t always easy, especially when you’re running a campaign on multiple channels simultaneously. Zoomd allows you to see how all your social channels are doing simultaneously, gathering all the information and presenting it on one easy-to-read dashboard. See which media strategies bring the best results and focus all your energies on the most efficient channels with Zoomd.

Mobile advertisers will likely never forget the summer of 2021. Until then, Apple enabled them to track specific user activity on iOS 14+ with IDFA (Identifier for Advertiser), which made retargeting both easier and more efficient.

However, understanding customer demand for greater privacy, Apple revoked the option, leaving many advertisers feeling lost. Starting this summer, Apple ATT (App Tracking Transparency) asks users whether they’re interested in sharing their information with app owners and advertisers. Beforehand, users had to make an effort to protect their privacy, and many weren’t aware of their options. Now, when the option is presented to them with a simple pop-up message, many customers choose “no” on the Apple ATT.

Advertisers, therefore, find themselves wasting precious dollars, as their ads for one gender reach another, and the overall interest and intent targeting becomes significantly less accurate.

But thankfully, advertising on Apple’s iOS 14+ devices isn’t the only option. In this new ecosystem, smart advertisers are diversifying their investment utilizing DSPs as well.

How DSPs Help Advertisers Generate Results in a Post IDFA Ecosystem

DSP stands for Demand Side Platform. It’s an automated, programmatic, algorithm-driven media buying platform. As we previously shared, DSPs calculate the best bid to get you the impressions they need at the moment they become available.

They’re not connected to your usual big players, like Facebook and TikTok (more on why that’s a benefit in a bit), but to a variety of other media sources and exchanges. They’re not meant to replace the big players, either, so this isn’t a suggestion to stop advertising on Apple’s iOS 14+ devices in a post IDFA ecosystem.

Instead, we recommend tapping into DSPs to expand your media buying toolkit. Often, DSPs enable advertisers to utilize even small budgets more efficiently across channels and geographies.

DSP mobile advertising

1) Diversify Your Ad Investment

Before privacy concerns were addressed and Apple ATT was launched, advertisers were encouraged to invest larger budgets in iOS14+ devices. However, as massive of an audience as Apple has, people using iOS14+ devices only comprise a portion of the market. Like we’ve discussed Facebook and Google, there are more baskets for your advertising dollar eggs.

Diversifying your ad spend across the channels DSPs have to offer will actually help you reach a larger audience. You still get access to very high-quality inventory. You show your audience you care about their privacy by advertising on channels that protect it. And, just as importantly, you protect your own user acquisition safety.

When you do that, you stop relying exclusively (or mostly) on one media channel. As we’ve seen this time and many times in the past, a channel can change the rules on you whenever it decides, or whenever regulation decides for it.

A post IDFA world is a challenging one for sure, but it also holds hidden opportunities for advertisers who are open to discovering them.

2) Overcome Platform Advertising Fatigue

As efficient as IDFA was for advertisers, constantly advertising to iOS 14+ customers presented another challenge on top of privacy concerns. It’s called advertising fatigue. We often see it with clients who dedicate their entire budget to the same big platform or two, such as Facebook and Instagram.

On the one hand, members on these platforms see the same advertisers over and over again. Unless you surprise them with truly outstanding creative, it gradually becomes more and more challenging to gain their attention and clicks.

On the other hand, after a while of focusing so much of their budget and effort mostly on one platform, advertisers maximize their reach. Their ads show up over and over again in front of these fatigued audiences, without drawing in new ones, who might be a great fit, but hang out elsewhere online.

It’s kinda like going to the same beloved grocery store in a small town. You know the people, you love their products, but when you finally make it to the supermarket in the big city, you find yourself with an almost endless stream of exciting products that could be a great fit, but you never would have discovered them if you hadn’t ventured outside your comfort zone of daily habits.

3) Actively Discover the Most Profitable User Acquisition Channels for Your Specific App

Just because Apple ATT leads to less data doesn’t mean a post IDFA ecosystem is completely data-less. In fact, that’s one of the reasons it’s recommended to test out DSPs. DSPs tend to offer transparency – you see exactly which media source led to higher acquisition in a more cost-effective way. The more you use them, the more data you gain, the more comfortable you get making experiments, and the better results your bidding provides.

With DSPs, it’s very easy to conduct user acquisition experiments across media sources. The idea is to do incremental testing. Turn off media sources, and turn on just the one you want to test. Once a media source performs well, turn on an additional one.

It’s all done from one platform, so you don’t need to learn every channel’s own dashboard from scratch each time. This makes it easier to focus on performance, and you gradually optimize the unique channel combination that works for your specific app.

A Post IDFA Ecosystem is an Opportunity for Growth

As Apple ATT changes privacy reaches and advertisers adjust to a post IDFA ecosystem, it makes perfect sense to feel overwhelmed and take some time to process the changes. Yet it’s equally important to remember this isn’t the end of the game, nor is it the change that will stand in your way of user acquisition and app growth.

First, this change only impacts iOS 14+ user targeting – a large audience, no doubt, yet not the only audience around. The rest of the world continues as usual, at least for now.

As hard as it is, it’s an opportunity to venture out of your comfort zone and test out other platforms and media sources. DSPs give you access to data, larger and newer audiences, plus the ability to cook up your own unique mix of optimized user acquisition channels.

As you’ve witnessed, the only constant in our industry is change. But if you start now, next time there’ll be a big change like this, you’ll be prepared. Maybe you’ll even be ahead of the game.

In a recent company announcement, Apple announced the latest changes for the app store on its iOS 14 release in September, crushing the identifier for advertisers (IDFA) and leaving marketers wondering if data-driven audience-building and targeting can continue on its current path.

The age of personal data privacy is in full swing and for obvious reasons. The Cambridge Analytica scandal and its far-reaching implications alerted the masses to the dark side of data driven advertising that can be executed through major tech and social media giants. Amid the public backlash, companies have been taken to task on their lack of social responsibility and accountability to users. With its upcoming app store changes on the iOS 14, Apple answered the call.

While the media and advertising industry await to see the full impact, we at Zoomd are preparing for various scenarios possible.

read on LinkedIn the full article by David Itzkowitz, Zoomd head of performance.