Kicking off 2024 for iOS Device IDs, Privacy Manifests & SKAN - David Philippson, Dataseat.

[Music] [Music] [Music] please uh welcome our first speaker for this afternoon David Phillipson from data seat uh of the worth group uh thank you in my uh 20 minute speaking slot I'll try and stick to 20 minutes I was at 18 minutes so I might have 2 minutes for Q&A um I'm going to be speaking to you about Apple's attribution system SK

ad Network sometimes abbreviated as scan but also their recent updates around privacy manifest uh but if I go straight into the technical details of the required reasons API and all the technical details that go with it I thought I'd be getting a little ahead of myself so what I'd like to do is give you some background um some context on device IDs and particularly iOS device IDs because as most uh historians or economist will tell you if you study the past you get pretty proficient at predicting the future so you get to know what to what to expect uh but before I go into the main body of my presentation I just wanted to briefly introduce myself to you my audience to establish some credibility as to why I might be considered a subject matter expert so my name is David Phillipson I am the co-founder and CEO of data seat data seat is a DSP it's an app DSP um we

built it from the very beginning on the thesis that device IDs would disappear and so so we drive performance UA performance without any Reliance and device IDs contextually in a privacy compliant way uh prior to data seat uh I founded a business called addex tracking it was one of the first mmps I'm showing how old I am now because that was uh that was a long time ago that was 12 13 years ago uh we sold that to a business called crio and at crio uh we built one of the world first inact retargeting and re-engagement platforms um so if if if you haven't read malcol gladwell's book outliers you should do it's fantastic book but there's a concept in there about 10,000 hours um I feel I've certainly done my 10,000 hours on all things programmatic UA and device IDs so uh to get things uh moving um I will be talking to you about the history of device IDs and they're going to be bringing you up to speed with what was announced at WWDC in June last year and then I'll be giving some advice to you

as gaming developers as app owners as what you should be doing to remain compliant so from the very beginning in 2007 it's when the very first iPhone shipped with with os1 it wasn't even called iOS it was just called iPhone os1 there was no app store at the time basically the very first iPhone was basically a phone with your iPod on it and a fully functioning web browser um that was in 2007 it was in 2008 this is when I bought my first iPhone it actually resembles what you might be familiar with today but in 2008 we had the iPhone 3G with iOS 2 was the very first uh introduction of the App Store Apple had a very cheesy marketing slogan at the time that was there's an app for that and that was to encourage both consumers to be going to the App Store to look for utility apps but it was also encouraging developers you know start developing utility apps and it was the beginning of when mobile game in was

starting it was also in iOS 2 uh where the first persistent identifier existed it wasn't Ida it was called udid unique device identifier uh there was many pitfalls with udid which I will come on to shortly um following this it was in 2009 when the first big advertisers started spending money promoting their apps there weren't many it was kind of Groupon eBay Viber was one of them there was a handful but it was really the start of of what was to come uh also some of the first games came to Market mobile games on on iOS came to Market in 2009 uh some of you uh well it depends how old you are really might remember uh Doodle Jump Plants versus Zombies uh and World of Goo it's also interesting to note that lots of these represent or or similar uh to some of the games today doodle Jump's hyper casual it's kind of hilarious that 12 13 years later it there's very similar games uh and also

Plants versus Zombies very similar to axi Infiniti the play to ear you know phenomenon from just a year or two ago so lots of these things tend uh to go in Cycles when you have big advertizers and some of the big Gamers putting media dollars uh you know behind uh campaigns that was when there was the first need for attribution this is when I founded adex tracking it's when aurin started apps flyer and Charles man started kachava um yeah it seems a a long time ago now uh at the time there weren't many ad networks Tik Tok didn't exist meta didn't exist not not in a way that they could be driving performance this was pretty much what drove the majority of of Impressions and and performance in the market admob was called admob before Google acquired them Quattro Wireless Apple acquired it became IAD Millennial media fizzled away um and imobi has been around you know for a long time now this

was the majority of AD networks but they weren't sharing the persistent identify you did on click with the mmps in addition to that the majority of inventory way back then was actually mobile web all of your businesses hadn't started yet there wasn't a huge amount of in-game rewarded video so the fact that most of the inventory was mobile web and you did wasn't being shared on click the mmps had to invent a way to track that was fingerprinting or probabilistic matching which is now really coming under the under the head under the headlights because of the changes that apple apple is making in 2012 the Congress of the United States House of Representative sent a very snotty Letter To None only than Mr Tim Cook the CEO of Apple citing the lack of tools provided by Apple to Consumers to prevent unwanted online tracking this isn't new this this is 12 years ago this

this this has been around for 12 years you so it's just a matter of this is how long it's taken you know for these changes to take effect but you're beginning to probably pick up my narrative that I really do think change is going to be is going to be enforced the answer from Apple after the complaints and highlighting the problems with I with with udid the problem with udid is you couldn't reset it so users couldn't opt out of tracking so the answer to it was in 2013 with the introduction of iOS 7 with idfa id4 advertisers the very purpose was to give advertisers a means to attribute deterministically accurately roas to their marketing campaigns mmps loved it there accurate attribution I liked it there was still fingerprinting going on at the time because there was still mobile web but it was certainly a positive to the industry but what was about to happen wasn't really predicted or there

wasn't really that anticipation of what was going to happen and it started with with Facebook that launched their IOS app in 2013 at the time I remember lots of speculation about well could could Facebook transition from a web browser product to an app browser kind of seems hilarious now that we were even questioning it at the time but it was the start of srn or s n it's a swear word in my mind I don't like it um it means the same thing self-reporting Network or self- attributed Network um it was actually Facebook that created it um it is where mmps will have to share all idas with amps flyer with ajust with singular and those uh and and Facebook would then reply true or false now there's a clear downside to that in a you have one of the biggest gorillas in the industry marking their own homework you know that's never a good Dynamic but B it was a huge data collecting exercise

it was a data collecting exercise of enormously valuable data and arguably non-consented consumer data you can start seeing you know when Apple created this as a solution actually they they Unleashed something that was even worse than what they had what they had before and of course if one of the biggest you know entities is doing this and we're all competing for the same media dollars it didn't take long for Twitter and Google to follow suits and that really was the start of this RN movement which you know arguably creates some unfair advantage and it was then during this period of 2013 to 20 to 2017 for for me it was the beginning of profile based behavioral targeting and advertising you know to some of you it might represent the good old days of where you're spending 70 to 90% of your budget with Facebook or Google and it was easy you just create a campaign Press Play and get a dollar an install and R positive

after seven days well we know that doesn't exist anymore but it did create this Dynamic on the ad Network side of whoever has most data wins and imagine if you were a entrepreneur or a Founder starting a business an ad Network between 2013 and 2017 you know what would you do is Whoever has most data wins well I'll tell you what most of them did and a lot of the big names you're familiar with today did start during this period well you had to comp for the same data so how would they go about it well the CPI buying metric was introduced now this is convenient for advertisers it was convenient for lots of you because you wanted to drisk buying users you just wanted to buy a certain number of users at a certain price or even CPAs at a certain price it's convenient for you but it had a hidden cost it had a hidden cost because you were you and this is true and reasonable if an ad network is selling you CPI or CPA they want a suppression list they're not getting

paid for serving ads to your existing users so they want to suppress it which is legitimate but it's also the suppression list also gives a disguise for collecting the same data that srns have and these ad networks would then insist upon being shared attributed and non-attributed data probably still happens today for many of you on Android you should check your iOS and your DPA because you're sharing all of this data with ad networks I can guarantee you it's probably benefiting some of your competitors you know they may hide behind the oh it just goes into the machine so and have a look at your iOS and your dpas and question who you're shelling who you are sharing data with um Apple's response was coming it was obvious to me that had been kind of looking at this at these patterns over a period of time this wasn't what Ida was made for for me it was just a matter of time I'm surprised it took so long but Apple's got a history of testing something in an environment before

rolling out in a big way I'm not saying Apple didn't care about Safari I'm sure they do but ITP was introduced itp1 and itp2 in the Safari browser it limits first and third party cookies in Safari now I'm sure Apple do care about Safari but I tell you they care far more about iOS and the App Store and apps than they do about Safari so this to me was the Prelude to idas disappearing um most people didn't agree with me but I was pretty ad that this was going to happen you know the the people would argue oh that's going to be terrible Facebook and how are we going to run our UA campaigns and I don't think they care um but that to me was enough for me to start uh my next business was where I started data seat in 2019 I thought this was going to happen I thought then there would be a need in Market to have privacy compliant contextual advertising sometimes people call me out and say isn't it easy if you'd say yeah that's what I thought was going to happen in hindsight but no truly this is the thesis of my business this is the this is the proof

this is in May 2020 uh where you know I published this article in ad exchanges saying I think Ida is going to disappear and then of course it was just one month later in June 2020 that Apple announced ATT is coming in iOS 14.5 uh now I'm sorry but I was celebrating I know this has been uh problematic for many of you I know but just you know the facts as an entrepreneur I put my chips in that particular you know roulette square that it's going to happen so we're like yay it's going to happen but then I'm sure up to speed now as many of you familiar there was a long old delay for it being rolled out right it took a long time Apple usually announces and then two months later the iOS rolls out and then very quickly it's 80 90% usually by Christmas but here there's almost over a year in delay which is almost proof of how seriously Apple was taking this so iOS 14.5 rolls out in April 2021 there's an 80% opt out some people say to me uh well isn't 80% 20% optin isn't that

enough well no it's not because you got a for attribution or targeting you're matching the demand and the supply side 20% of 20% is 4% it's gone you know so anyone particularly in hyper oh we've got 30% it it's gone because you it's a matching exercise of one size of the other but then don't worry Apple's given us skad network but s scan 2.0 was I'm being polite it was feature poor um or you could say not fit for purpose so the whole industry then just begins fingerprinting you it's like sh don't tell anyone we're just going to carry on doing in a probabilistic way and that you know isn't really going to get unnoticed so over the subsequent 18 months Apple gives us further iterations of scan 2.2 3.2 and then four with additional functionality uh including view through multi-touch mobile web attribution additional three post backs

as well as course grain conversion values so they have been improving the functionality to get past the bar or fit for purpose it is fit for purpose so you kind of see what's coming in June just gone so WWDC announcement Apple announc privacy manifest and the required reasons API now this is from documentation on the Apple website today this is live today it could not be clearer regardless of whether a user gives your app permission to track fingerprinting is not allowed you know that is front and center and very clear uh to me but if you don't take my word for it perhaps take the word of the late Steve Jobs a lot of apps that want to take a lot of your personal data and suck it up into the cloud a lot you've missed the very first few seconds which he said we have rejected a lot of that a lot of apps you know so I am expecting

this but let me go on and I'll move on to what I think uh you should as app developers be expecting because they gave a headline in June that they will be enforcing this in the spring of 20124 we're pretty much here now as far as preparation comes you know I remember a couple of years ago I was asking all my American friends what spring me in the US you know over here it's when the daffer deals come out but by the way the last time Apple said it it was ail so I would say between now and April this is going to happen I wouldn't want to be one of the people that get my wrist slapped so what is going to happen your apps going to have a privacy nutrition label that will be highlighting all of the data that your apps collect you are accountable for the third party code in your app it's no longer oh I don't know what their sdks do their app is not allowed regardless of what your MMP says so even if your MMP is saying they don't need a privacy manifest I'm going back a slide now you do if

you're a gaming company or you you have an app and you're using any of these five apis I guarantee you you'll be using one of them dis space API if you push updates out to your users with new levels new characters I guarantee you you'll be using the dis space API if you use the dis space API your app needs a privacy manifest if you have a privacy manifest you need to be naming the tracker URL you know so I don't care what they're saying you're going to need it and of course they need one fingerprinting is not allowed privacy sensitive sdks so what that their names wer named on the list that Apple published just a few weeks ago it's irrelevant they're are privacy impacting SDK of course they do so you should be asking for it from them um so my recommendations for what you should be doing as app developers have a completed privacy manifest for your app listing the tracking domains at work with all of the third parties that have code in your app and you should just be asking them to have one for default start consolidating you your UA Partners you

know to work with those that have got a strong scan only proposition anyone that says I don't worry about that you know we're just probis Mets just you know Grill them or don't work with them because this is this is happening and I'd also say Embrace scan as it will become the norm for iOS UA in 2024 um and it has many positives you know there's been so much negative narrative around scan um but there's many positives that people don't talk about it's got multi-touch attribution mmp's never had multi-touch attribution cuz Facebook and Google wouldn't take an impression tracker from apps FL or adjust you know now we got multi-touch attribution including Facebook and Google that's a plus publisher transparency how often would a Advertiser go to an ad Network and say can show me the Publishers and they just gave us a loot of hashed IDs they would you had you didn't know where your campaigns were running now you know exactly where your campaigns are running what your top Publishers are redownload if you're hyper casual or dating apps having an accurate tracking

of redownload is a really powerful metric in kpi view through and click through you know you never used to be able to get view through or click through from some of the big video networks you they didn't want to tell you no that's just an install and of course there's less fraud you know the cryptographic signatures that come with Apple's attribution system there is far less room for Bad actors there isn't an SD to spoof you know there and and and because of that there aren't all these fraud modules that you need to pay choose licenses license fees for as well so uh my advice to you you is to is to embrace it um it's happening um that is the end of my talk if you'd like to speak to me about privacy compliant sorry privacy compliant UA uh with data seat and how we would optimize your campaigns using skad network Source identifiers uh please feel free to DM me at at David dat.com I have no idea what what time

I'm on because there's no that's why you're you're postering closer to me thank you very much pleas thank you