SKAdNetwork brought many surprises to the lives of app marketers in the past several years. The system is upgrading, but nothing becomes easier. But user privacy is on the top.
Recent release of SKAdNetwork 4.0 (24 of October) brings a lot of new features. 4 major updates are:
1️⃣ Hierarchical source identifiers (previously called the campaign ID field). Now, advertisers can configure up to four digits values based on their goals, such as campaign values, ad placement, or type of ad creative(up to 10 000 combinations are availaible for the configuration). In previous SKAdNetwork versions, campaign IDs were limited to 2 digits(0–99 unique values). In its turn, the ad networks will receive all four digits in a postback if the privacy thresholds are met. Otherwise, the ad network may receive three digits or two digits.
2️⃣ Coarse conversion values. These allow to receive less specific attribution information when the privacy thresholds for conversion values are not met, or more detailed attribution information when additional privacy thresholds are met.There are 3 possible values: low, medium, or high. Similarly to how app developers currently map events or revenue to a conversion value 0–63, now it can be mapped an event or revenue to low, medium, or high.
3️⃣ Multiple conversions. SKAdNetwork 4.0 gives triple the conversion postbacks. With the first postback app developers can measure up to 48 hours of user activity. The introduction of a second postback allows measuring user activity for day 3 to day 7, the third postback measures activity from day 8 to day 35.
Also appeared the concept of ‘lockWindow’ with the opportunity to stop measuring user activity to receive the postback earlier.
4️⃣ SKAdNetwork for web ads allows attributing web advertising that directs to the App Store. Before, web-to-app attribution was not supported so some of the key advertising channels (e.g. Google Ads) were not tracked by the system. The solution supports Safari browser only.
