Apple Search Ads recent move to SKAN

I hadn’t shared my thoughts on ASA’s recent move to SKAN yet.

But now that the decision has officially taken effect today, I think it’s still a good time to discuss what I expect from this.

Apple has decided to align their ad network aligned with the rest of channels by using SKAN but only limited to versions 1-3 which is in my opinion, an embarrassing decision. We must remember that SKAN 4.0 was launched in October 2022!!!! 🫠 If the creator of this attribution framework isn’t even able to implement the latest version in its own ad network, you can imagine how “ready” SKAN 4 really is…

But putting that aside, let’s talk about what we can expect from this pivoting decision and I will be quite straightforward with my opinion as usual:

👉You must expect a drop in all SKAN conversions that come from social media channels like Meta or TikTok.

Why?

Many users who see social media ads don’t click directly on them. Instead, they go to the App Store and search for the app. If that app is running ASA at that moment for the keyword they typed (usually a brand keyword), ASA will claim all the credit—either through CTA or VTA in SKAN.

And that’s unfair.

It’s legal, and Apple can do it. But it skews the data, making other channels look significantly worse compared to ASA when analyzing SKAN conversions.

On top of that, let’s not forget that SKAN already underreports conversions from TikTok and Meta (as I’ve proven multiple times in my posts) so 𝐒𝐨 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐨𝐝𝐚𝐲, 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐦𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐫 𝐚𝐝𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐧 𝐢𝐧-𝐚𝐩𝐩 𝐬𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐝𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐨𝐧𝐛𝐨𝐚𝐫𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐨 𝐚𝐬𝐤 𝐮𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐜𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐚𝐩𝐩. You will discover where the truth is ✌️

On the other hand, we have companies that only rely on ASA to advertise their apps and then they decide to start looking at SKAN instead of the numbers provided by AdServides API. In such case:

👉You must expect a drop when looking at SKAN vs AdServices numbers due to the inner limitations of SKAN 1-3 (limited to 24h of measurement). However, this is not a big problem unless you start a new channel. In that case, you’ll need to cross-check multiple data points to figure out what’s actually happening.

💡Final thoughts💡

This change is positive for the industry because we’ll finally be able to compare apples to apples. However, the execution—both in terms of timing and technology—is poor, and ASA’s inherent nature makes things more unfair.

Hope you liked this one! 😁 See you next week with a very COOL guide on how to handle all these data points. The timing couldn’t be better.
Enjoy your weekend! 🚀