User acquisition is one of the most important factors in a game makers success, and advertising is a key part of bringing your title to the attention of larger audiences.
However, the recent changes to Apple’s privacy policies have added an additional barrier for developers hoping to advertise to the most relevant users, as players must now opt in to data sharing. While this goes a long way to address the concerns of consumers, it means that game makers have to reevaluate their user acquisition and targeting strategies.
In this guest post, AdLiven co-founder Kai Yu talks about the impact of Apple’s IDFA changes and how the newly launched AdLiven Insights tool can help developers and marketers working with playable ads.
Apple’s IDFA changes have undoubtedly impacted ad targeting; IDFA was initially designed to allow publishers and advertisers to track users and measure clicks against ads to measure marketing campaigns accurately. However, this data can no longer be accessed after the iOS 14.5 update, and Apple’s decision to effectively dissolve IDFA in April 2021.
It used to be that users had to opt-out of having their data shared, but since the update, users now receive a notification to opt-in or opt-out when downloading an app. Naturally, many users don’t want to share their data and, as such, mobile game marketers have lost crucial insight into the performance of their ads.
There are other ways to get user data, such as with Apple’s SkAdNetwork, but they don’t give the depth of data that allows for fully personalised ads. AdLiven Insights launched as an extension of our full-service creative offering as a new way to gain a full understanding of the performance of interactive ad formats that were lost with the IDFA changes. We provide granular data that will inform brands, advertisers, and marketers as to how an ad is performing and how it can be improved.
Customization is the name of the game
Customization is what makes AdLiven Insights different from other platforms; most other ad tracking and analytics tools offer a predefined bucket of possible reporting events. That’s not the case here. AdLiven playable ads are custom-built, so insights are tailored to each playable instead of a cookie-cutter set of reporting options. Users can compare and modify their playables and even prototype them without needing to know how to code. Whether it’s metrics such as gameplay mechanics, difficulty duration, art style, or completion rates, the tool will tell users what is and isn’t working, accessed within the AdLiven Playable Platform.
Budget concerns? No need for that!
Starting an entirely different project just because of a design tweak can be costly and time-consuming. AdLiven Insights was designed to be paired with the AdLiven Playable Platform so ads can be tweaked and optimised without creating a new project.
IDFA is done – what now?
There’s no doubt about it, IDFA regulation changes have dramatically impacted how mobile advertising is measured; advertisers, brands, and marketers have all had to find alternatives to understand user behaviour and preferences and simply understand if their ads are working as intended.
AdLiven benefits from building all our playables from scratch, so we’re not tied to pre-defined tracking metrics, and we are giving our partners the granularity they lost through IDFA changes. We work closely with our partners to understand their marketing goals and build customizability into the ads so that we can test many different scenarios and ensure a greater understanding of user behaviour and preferences, allowing them to make educated decisions around the creative direction or even product development decisions.
AdLiven Insights is available to all our partners on supported ad networks (Vungle, AppLovin, IronSource, Unity, Liftoff, AdColony, and Chartboost).
