The October Surprise in Mobile Advertising

My guest for this episode is Alex Bauer, the Head of Product and Market Strategy at Branch. On Monday, October 24th, alongside the release of iOS version 16.1, Apple released its long-awaited major update to SKAdNetwork, its privacy-safe app advertising attribution framework for iOS, with SKAdNetwork 4.0. The industry was first made aware of SKAdNetwork 4.0 at WWDC this summer and we only saw public documentation for this fundamental and substantial upgrade to the framework with the release of iOS 16.1. 

In this episode, Alex and I cover four major topics related to SKAdNetwork 4.0:

First, the new timer system that accompanies the two additional attribution windows that have been made available;

Second, the ability for advertisers to lock conversion values within those attribution windows;

Third, the concept of crowd anonymity that has been introduced to SKAdNetwork and how the four tiers of crowd anonymity regulate the information that is transmitted within postbacks;

and Fourth, how ad networks will adapt to SKAdNetwork 4.0, and on what potential timeline.

We additionally briefly touch upon fingerprinting and whether or not Apple begins to police that behavior anytime soon.