Resist the Urge to Hit the Reset Button on Your SKAN 4 Gameplan

There’s no shortage of complexity app performance marketers are faced with when navigating the path towards a privacy-first future, and things got a bit more complicated recently when our partners at Singular and AppsFlyer reported on their discovery of an iOS bug in SKAdNetwork (SKAN) 4 that was causing conversion values to reset due to a faulty API connection between SKAN and Apple Search Ads. While Apple quickly sprang into action with a fix, media partners must now account for bug-impacted supply when signing SKAN impressions in order to ensure the integrity of advertiser’s attribution data.   

If you’re an app marketer left wondering what to do about your SKAN strategy and conversion value schemas given this new wrinkle, you’re not alone.  Here’s what you need to know and recommendations for how you can continue to future-proof app performance in 2023 and beyond.   

Stay the course with SKAN 

Maintain positive momentum with your SKAN adoption plans, which remains the way forward and Apple’s only sanctioned way to deterministically attribute iOS campaign performance while respecting user privacy. With changes coming in iOS 17 later this year aimed at combatting fingerprinting and holding app advertisers accountable for how their third-party partners leverage user data, which we covered in more detail in another post, it’s a critical time to be accelerating SKAN adoption journeys, not postponing them.  Here’s a few tips for how to stay on track towards building the most resilient growth strategy for your app –  

1. Continue to focus on deploying SKAN 4 conversion models, which are backwards compatible – Whether new to SKAN, or a veteran, developing a sound approach for leveraging SKAN 4’s hierarchical conversion values and multiple postback windows that aligns with the customer journeys of your highest value users is the optimal way to future-proof your growth strategies.  Adapting to SKAN 4 conversion schemas takes time for even the most sophisticated advertisers, requiring a thoughtful approach and close collaboration with your MMP and media partners.  But, aligning with SKAN 4’s core mechanics now ensures you’ll receive the maximum amount of performance insights available regardless of which SKAN version ad supply is compatible with, and puts you in the best position to rapidly take advantage of new features coming in SKAN 5 later this year.  
2. Ensure media partners take steps to mitigate SKAN 4 bug impact – Rely on your media partners to account for the impact of the recently discovered bug and sign each SKAN ad impression with the most appropriate version that ensures you get the best campaign performance insights available while maintaining data integrity.   Some media partners such as Meta have reverted to signing all ad impressions with SKAN 3, while InMobi plans to closely monitor user penetration rates by iOS version and leverage SKAN 4 ad signatures on any compatible bug-free inventory in order to continue gaining SKAN 4 performance insights whenever they’re reliably available.   

3. Consult with your MMP on their approach to SKAN 4 and addressing this bug – Each MMP supports a different mix of SKAN features and may also have variable levels of impact from the reset bug.  Singular, Kochava and Appsflyer have published customer guidance on the reset bug, and we’ll update these links when new information from our MMP partners becomes available.   

4. Understand the new Privacy Manifest requirements coming in iOS 17 – One of the more notable developments during Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) earlier this summer was the announcement of Privacy Manifests, which will debut with the imminent rollout of iOS 17. This new feature strongly indicates that Apple intends to more proactively monitor and enforce their long-held policy that prohibits fingerprinting by holding app developers accountable for ensuring iOS users are not tracked across apps and sites with different owners unless permission is granted, regardless of whether tracking is done by the app owners themselves or by their third-party partners.   

   This fall, Apple will begin alerting developers when their app or one of its third-party partners accesses APIs Apple has flagged as high-risk for abuse in fingerprinting without declaring a valid reason for this access in a Privacy Manifest. This grace period is intended to give app owners time to better understand how each partner is accessing user data and remediate any trouble spots, but starting in spring ’24, Privacy Manifests will become part of the formal App Store Review process and can result in rejection when Apple’s new requirements are unmet. We recommend engaging with your SDK partners and product teams to understand and prepare for any potential impacts to your measurement strategy and user experience.   

Check out our Ultimate Guide to SKAN which is full of tips on how to adapt your iOS app performance strategies for the privacy-first era and reach out to performance@inmobi.com to see if our team can help you throughout your journey.