The Game Developer's Guide to iOS 14: Expectations & Preparations

our next discussion will be evgeny from ironsource and the discussion will be on the game developer's guide to ios 14 which i know is going to be a popular one ios 14 has already come up quite a few times today welcome you of jenny i think we're all pretty excited for this one hey kaley good morning how are you i'm good how are you i'm good i'm good thank you so much really happy to be here yeah welcome to the stage the digital stage yep that's uh that's what it is that's what it is all right i will pass it off to you we're

all excited to hear about ios 14. so um we're going to be talking about um [Music] probably one of the main elements of ios 14 when it comes to um [Music] i'd say the most disruptive change of is14 and we're talking about a framework that is called app tracking transparency my name is evgeny paris been with uh with the iron source for around eight years by now um based in san francisco uh an iron source um a mission is basically to build a top growth platform from game developers um currently where our technologies is integrated on mobile to um uh pretty much almost every every one of the top game developers out there and through that platform um which uh focuses on on maximizing

uh revenue from users uh we're also serving ads and and are one of the bigger marketing channels out there across across the industry when you think when you look at appsliers latest index we're talking about being ranked first among the marketing channels for casual games and uh third after google and facebook uh for uh for all types of games now um ios 14 is you know there's a lot to talk about uh in terms of um things are going to be different i want to start off by saying that we won't be covering anything uh around scia network um nascar network is is one of the uh key changes of of ios 14 but it is uh tied to app tracking transparency i would say ab tracking transparency is kind of the

the beginning of everything um and uh one of the main things that uh happened the last couple weeks is that apple has decided to um postpone the functionality uh the the tracking um uh it's the enforcement of the app tracking transparency framework uh i'll explain what does that mean because the reason it was it was postponed because people need to invest much more time to be ready for that and that that would be the uh the main topic for this call and we're going to talk about asking permission or not asking for permission to track users if you do decide to ask how to ask and when to ask and we're going to summarize at the end the main takeaways feel free to ask any questions or reach out to me after this presentation now uh a bit of background and history uh around after acting transparency which is introduced now uh literally these days um

it's very important to understand what's behind this change eight years ago ios 6 was introduced this was kind of the beginning of the story uh from my perspective it's where when limit ad tracking uh was was introduced and limited tracking was a hidden feature um on the iphone that a user had to go through a couple of screens i believe it was this was like the fourth layer deep where it was basically the user asking anyone not to track him this was io6 this was 2012 i believe um and in the next four years i'd say um not much has changed because the only thing that was introduced is that flag and um it seems that apple um wanted to keep uh uh honing in on the topic of privacy which is what this is

about basically um and in ios 10 um something changed and what changed was that apple decided to take things into their own hands when it comes to really blocking the technical capability to track users and back then when it comes to tracking and serving ads that are targeted to the user's uh behavioral uh interests um it was relying on an identifier that is called idfa um the idfa did not exist before as six it was introduced together with uh with a limited attracting toggle and in ios 10 um what had it was introduces the ability to reset the advertising id and also um if the flag if that toggle is on you had no ability to really gain access to the true identifier of that user

so if on ios 9 the only thing that was kind of noted to um by the operating system is that user just asked not to track starting ios 10 not only that toggle was also available but the idfa value was zeroed out right so anyone that is accessing that efa would get a value that is all zeros meaning that technically that ability is broken using that mechanism right that idfa mechanism and obviously there's more ways to to track a user and this is where um ios 14 really uh changes things um and uh introduces um app tracking transparency uh the app tracking currency fair one in terms of the the screens this is kind of uh a new setup where where uh um uh where where um the screens change eliminate tracking they no longer exist exists and um

in this new setup basically um what is it what is what is there for the user is the control to whether or not to allow apps to ask him or her to request to track him and what that means is one of the main changes here is that the the permission to track the user is moving from the operating system level from the device level to the app level and um that permission will need to be asked per app so even if you do have access to idfa on on one app it doesn't mean you're gonna have uh ask access to the same user on a different app and that basically by itself is breaking one of the main mechanisms used for tracking um and uh it's also the only mechanism that is technically broken by by apple um if permission is not uh

if is not granted on the right here you can see how this uh framework looks like in from the user so one upon upon triggering this uh this problem to the user basically we have the app name um asking for permission to track you the user across apps and websites owned by other companies and the the options here are not uh uh are focused on tracking right basically the you know the opt-in option is locked a lot tracking the opt-out would be ask app not to track uh we're talking about um [Music] other um uh other companies tracking you right so if you're a family of of uh five apps if you're a big publisher you want to track your users within your own apps that's something that is okay by apple it doesn't mean that um you will have access to idfa across the

apps but from apple's perspective you are you're okay with tracking your users across your own apps and this small message here below is kind of the only thing that you can customize i'm going to touch it in a bit [Music] but this is where apple kind of allows the developer to explain why are they asking to track the users there's a lot of compliance issues here around how that message should look like i'm not going to go into that but this is definitely something to invest time in reading all the documentation related the framework itself is is is about requesting the permission uh like i mentioned uh one of the most interesting parts here is in order to avoid kind of spamming the user this will prompt a single user only once within an app right so this is something that is very important to uh acknowledge because um the way apple uh goes about it is that you you kind of have one shot to

uh to ask the user uh and get his permission and you will not be able to really kind of uh spam him with more and more uh permission this is you know i think one one uh one aspect here is user experience obviously the other aspect here is kind of respecting the user's privacy and his decision not to be attract one of the most interesting parts here is that this pop-up will appear only when you ask for the first time and also the user has uh the allow apps to request the track uh toggle on and um one of the key things to understand here is that this toggle will be on by default to many many users and the users these users will be mostly users that currently have their limit ad tracking uh toggle on and we're talking about 30 sometimes 40

um of your users in in in the tier markets in the market like the united states this means that let's say 30 percent or 40 of of users that are currently playing your game and will update to ios 14 you will not be able to show this problem to them unless they turn on this this toggle and this by itself questions in general should you even ask uh to track those users because of how uh significant that impact of that toggle would be um the only uh thing that this does basically technically is gives that app developer uh the true id of that user is not gonna be zeroed out so that the permission allows access to that idfa within the app um and that's kind of the only technical mechanism impacted so if there's user asks at the app natural track it's gonna be zeroed out if the user allows tracking it will have a unique value a unique

though resetable value and another key element that is important here is that you must call the framework every time you want to use any functionality that leverages dragging right so we're so far we're talking about idfa uh but there's many things that apple are communicating here to the developer uh around any any other mechanism that is for for tracking the user id itself uh if you have the ability to use that user id let's say the user id is an email address you are not allowed to use it outside of your app or your family of apps for the purpose of tracking um and um and that's a that's that's a that's a big element here that is much harder to enforce technically um and and idfa is the only one that is really kind of blocked but any other device identifiers a fingerprinted identifier a user profile anything that will allow you to find that user

elsewhere and drag him um or target a specific uh identifier that user with a certain message outside of the family of your apps this is something that is not okay without the permission of of the user um and it's not only the ifa that's a very important element to understand because it's pretty much anything you will be using for the potential tracking usage and there's much much more that we won't be able to cover in this documentation in this presentation but within the documentation itself there's a lot of uh information around what is okay and what is not uh also a lot of updates to um the the policy itself the uh around are you allowed to block content um without the you know if you want to use that to kind of as a gated access to your

content there's documentation around that you are allowed to reward users for tracking there's documentation around so it's very specific in terms of both user experience and also the implementation of anything around the privacy of that user based on on the answer to that question the permission to drag and also you know the part of the decision is uh even not whether or not to ask for permission right what is happening there are you allowed to what are you allowed to do it's also very clear that if you're not asking you pretty much cannot do anything around tracking another important element which is i'd say in many cases overseen as the the usage of a third-party single sign-on um that is based on the documentation requires uh the user's permission to track and in general every app has a long list

of sdks understanding what does each sdk collect and what does it do and for what purpose uh because at the end of the day there's there's going to be um code running within your within your game it's very important to understand um what is collecting for what purpose if you are asking for for permission to track if you're not asking if the user agrees or not that's a big part of of that kind of behind that permission dragon since there's a lot of elements here that are disruptive to the game itself to each game pretty much um apple um this is uh a week and a half ago basically delays uh decides to delay uh the the feature of uh i'd say it's more around the uh enforcing the uh the tracking related changes um ab tracking transparency framework is

still out there if you want to use it you can use it but basically uh the idea here is we want to give more time to developers to make the right changes in terms of how it's implemented and it will require uh kind of that part to be enforced early 2021 that is the latest message from from apple so well there's there's you know there's a sigh of relief uh on that front there's a lot of things that need to to be done here and i want to cover a couple of them um next couple of minutes um as part of that notice basically in that interim phase until the apple decides to pull the trigger there's one small element that has changed and it is within kind of the different statuses of of a user's current state uh of permission and um basically um it questions whether or not

you should be asking for permission until they pull the trigger the reason here is that if you're if you are trying to access idfa without the permission to track you you're going to get it it's fine it's there based on kind of the the master toggle um but if you decide to ask the user uh to request uh his permission to track kind of once that is implemented uh any user that says no you will be getting zeros so this uh kind of questions everything in that interim phase so if today i have let's say seventy percent of my users i have access to their idfa so this means i can keep keep moving forward with with how i'm used to operate around user acquisition around atmosion around how i track users across apps if i do decide to ask for permission and many developers have been

focused a lot uh last two months three months almost in developing the right methodologies around it if you really ask you're going to lose access to that idfa if the user does not approve permission to track and and and that's something that is important to understand for the interviews because part of the next couple of months will be getting ready and getting ready around how to ask when to ask if and whether or not you ask the user at all um a couple of the pros and cons that are i think important to understand in general for for uh even whether asking or not because there are developers out there some of them are uh uh pretty big that have decided not to ask the user uh for permission to track for many reasons uh that decision might change now that things are postponed but uh it's very important to send what what is the value of getting you know that permission to track uh you get you're going to get idf access for some of the users uh which

theoretically should increase your administration performance so there's dollar value there for the users that agreed to be tracked user acquisition measurements uh as basically as people are used to today in terms of recording measuring user level granular uh uh data points for uh for us acquisition uh the signals fired back to the marketing channels will be real time this is kind of where things are touching s cat network a bit but it's kind of business as usual but only for those that agree to be tracked retargeting obviously is available it's allowed in third-party single sign-on for those users on the other side user experience is a big unknown here that will impact churn it is a very uh quite aggressive uh uh language on that uh on that framework and that pop-up and it's a very tricky question you know

you might get some users to say yes but what about all those users that are gonna say no just implementing that to itself also uh has a huge opportunity cost instead of investing in other features of the game uh maintaining that uh feature optimizing that on the go adding additional placements additional features around that has asked why the opportunity costs it's very important to understand kind of what what's the upside on the product side it's also very clear from the documentation that you need to be aware of any changes in the state right so if a user gave that permission and now he no longer wants to be tracked what does that mean for you on the tech side that's that's uh there's a lot of heavy lifting there um and i think in order to make that decision because i would say that's the first decision to decide whether or not to ask in general right and that's something you can play around and test with is is to try and look beyond the conversion rate of that of that of that prompt because um

there's kind of there's going to be a there's going to be an unknown here what is happening in general for those users that even if they decide to opt in will this change their behavior those that decide to opt out all this change in the behavior and in general what about all those users that once they see this are just going to leave the app um for good um there's some you know i'm going to discuss in a bit kind of the the when and how to to implement that but in general it's very important to understand the upside what does this mean for my business should i even engage with that what is the impact on ltv um of a single kind of as a single user on average uh and in general uh what are the right metrics to test here right is this is this my my ltv is this retention or is this just the opt-in read one of the things that are harder to gauge is kind of the opportunity cost of developing this uh and optimizing it as i mentioned

earlier and that would be a lot based on um you know what's on your roadmap on the other side when you think about when and how to ask i think it's very important to know this that you cannot control this dynamically it's part of the submission process this message is part of the the plist part of once the app is being compiled it's hard to a b test that with with in a real environment um should you ask soon or not um it's a tricky one right so you'll be able to ask all of the users that start to play the game but those users are not engaged enough yet probably a lot will churn um and uh perhaps there's a deeper uh placement within the game maybe even after users paid maybe after users played for a couple of sessions a couple of days reached level 12. and um i think that's the homework part if you decide to to address that and

engage with that framework is investing in the right placement strategy and testing that should i ask users early on later on and for some cases maybe i should kind of segment if someone said uh no earlier on or or was about to say no then maybe i should try much much later um one of the i think uh easier things that uh it's easy to understand even now in the interim phase is uh kind of prompting users before that permission to track and trying to explain what is happening uh because that that pop-up the original pop-up the apple level pop-up appears once so maybe it's worth asking the user similar to how you want to rate my game or not so if you don't like the game you're not taking that user to the store but if you the user does like the game you do and these are done doesn't like the game or don't want to engage you need a different strategy here so you only want to show it to users that you care about uh and are more likely to allow tracking perhaps after they're

more engaged um the prompt itself um of of the app tracking transparency framework should happen uh at this stage in the interim phase only if you are uh uh perhaps testing this in a smaller environment but uh if you do ask all of your users this will impact your access to nfa as mentioned earlier and then in general there's going to be the the 30 40 that don't even have that toggle on perhaps you should consider a deep link flow to allow to request the track that's that's that's that's the advanced mode i'd say in general segmenting those users um that didn't like the prompt differently how do you kind of convince them down the road and then and and pick the right placement and how do you implement that within within your app i think is is part of the homework to be done now um in the interim phase um maybe you want to really test the full framework but maybe only four i don't know five ten percent of

your users because you're going to be losing access to the ifa for those of you so maybe it's on a certain day you test that uh certain geo uh and kind of gauge the message there uh but again if you test this across the board you're going to lose idfa to anyone that says no the main takeaways i'd say in the short time that we talked about i think is there's a lot of work a lot of development a lot of product work here uh and kind of prior to that researching and deciding whether or not to even invest in this and if you do kind of uh understand how you invest in the placement strategy within each game is going to be different how are you going to be controlling that flow for for those users um and definitely starting the the testing of the prompt design also researching what others are doing how will that work for you is that a good fit and again uh i'd say in the interim phase make sure that you understand the the the the implications of testing this at scale uh that means you're going to be losing

id access and this is something that perhaps you want to you want to test in a smaller environment while testing all the the other things that are leading to that question uh in in full speed that's it any questions thank you that was great we did have a handful of questions come in uh we may not have time for all of them but let's at least try and grab a couple of these um from sy pranith gunupudi wondering if you can share your thoughts on the impact of ad monetization and how it uh and how to work on it facebook has already said there's been a 50 drop in early tests and cold shutdowns in their audience network yeah um well i'll you know i'll let facebook speak to that but it seems that and definitely we don't have enough time to answer that but in general

um the the answer here is that at the whole kind of funnel of administration as a result of how your user acquisition will look especially with because advertising within games is mostly other games um will be impacted by this and this this allows us uh this allows us to uh have more time to invest in in the right tools so that's for facebook audience network i believe that um there's going to be more coming from them around this but in general if a certain platform relies on idfa heavily like the facebook audience network um it will have a big impact on that front but most most platforms out there are not are not really relying on idfa only because like i said 30 40 percent of users do not have their idfa available so there's technology in place to show ads to users that you don't know their idfas and is performing at scale for a while now so i'm not as

worried about that part okay great um i think we should wrap it up there but eve guinea thank you so much for your time and insights on ios 14. of course thank you so much for having me great thanks for joining us thank you you