Mobile Growth: IDFA Deprecation Scapegoat or Reality?

we have a lot of people in the mobile games industry screaming and shouting about how idfa deprecation has destroyed mobile marketing has made new game launches literally impossible but in private conversations in a lot of talks with their game industry executives I'm hearing this kind of counter narrative which is more whispered or um I actually heard from you for the first time Warren that actually maybe idfa deprecation isn't having as big huge of an impact as some people are saying and maybe it's a narrative to hide possibly you know bad accounting bad projections things like that and so I wanted to like go back uh to this conversation we had before Warren maybe you could explain kind of um your perspective on idfa deprecation and what you believe is the actual reality on the ground yeah I mean I guess to kind of sum up uh our our perspective in it like

it at uptick we have the luxury or advantage point of working on a number of different games with small developers large developers and also just talking to a lot of people so we hear these narratives uh UA's dead iOS is dead Facebook is dead it's all dead just give up um but I I it it it has really been I'd say at our assessment just a lack of big companies specifically being able to adapt quickly um being a startup we have I think a little more autonomy and kind of pivoting our Focus so yeah I mean in short like we do about two-thirds of our buying on iOS right now higher profit margins higher scale um and it didn't take rocket science to figure out like a viable work around you just need kind of like a fresh approach cross-disciplinary approach using some engineering resources some data resources some UA expertise uh yeah it's what I always tell teams is like you don't need to use us like you can just if you have the right kind of cross-disciplinary squad you can stare at the problem for you know a couple days a couple weeks and figure out some viable workarounds that work for your

business I know you know team teams like singular have obviously been building in this area so yeah I think just don't listen to the narratives like there's plenty of viable ways forward it's actually a super easy time to buy on iOS once you get tactics less competition lower cpms the math works in your favor so I guess I'll just you know Baseline it at that I think with most things it's complicated um and there is a tendency to just kind of scapegoat one particular narrative um you know like deprecation had an impact totally is it as much as people make it out to be I don't think so um you see just companies are really really focused on profitability now and less kind of willing to invest in r d i mean you see a world coming out of covid restrictions you know so you kind of potentially have customer fatigue going on um so I think there's a lot of stuff actually happening you know I'd kind of echo Warren a little bit in saying that you know the majority of our buy-in is still on iOS we still see a bunch of success

um and yeah cpms are are significantly down but uh it all kind of like Nets out in the wash to where you know Savvy developers are still able to spend effectively clearly there's a massive impact to the whole sector right but that's very different from you know does it have to be an impact to you in your business and can you work around it so yeah two separate topics it's complicated and definitely we see success stories in iOS and like you know like some of you have mentioned they're the ones who are not necessarily publicizing at that much but they're like sophisticated advertisers actually doing very well on iOS and kind of saying you know we see it as kind of they they actually like the narrative that UA is dead on iOS because it's actually more opportunity for them right um so uh definitely have been saying that uh for sure so yeah I would agree with uh um kind of you know that points around like uh it's not that UA is just a bit different on iOS the thing though you know just to add the debate there is it really is

different and you need the resources sometimes or you need to learn really you know how to deal with it it's not the ones who've just tried to I think we've seen like multiple types of advertisers out there they are the ones who just tried to do everything the same way exactly the same way didn't change anything and just saw plummeting performance without you know like doing the actual work of like adapting to the matter exactly like for instance we did see that the adaptable companies and it's not rocket science out there right it's like just doing the work figuring out like the new kind of mechanics basically figuring out to adjust definitely find a way to find success and we also saw the companies who kind of said you know what it's just too complicated for us so we're just not gonna advertise in iOS literally like dropping the spend completely focusing more on Android seeing kind of the CPM is kind of growing there and kind of making it more difficult uh but kind of just afraid of like tipping the the toes in the water so you know it's just like

a mix of experiences and I don't know like Risk analysis I guess for companies and really racist of how much they want to invest I do think it's an opportunity right for the ones who have the resources of one to come them learn adapt it's a great opportunity for them I was just going to say to to to that point of so many companies just tapping out um yeah you keep saying that there's analysis paralysis of like uh we can't figure this out we're just not going to do anything it's crazy to me it's like this is like half or more of your business like throw some sort of reasonable resource at this like integrate like talk talk talk to more companies um that that we've seen this as like such a go-to tactic for major companies of just bowing out of the ecosystem um it's it's like truly insane to me