Tweetstorm - an occasional series where we share a thread of relevance and interest from the torrent that is Twitter!
Apple's very public campaign to convince us that they really do care about us and our privacy has slipped on a couple of massive banana skins in recent weeks. First with the CSAM travesty (see the reference article at the end of this piece) and now with the discovery that blocking tracckers, largely from the competition, has driven up their market share (along with the value of your data to them)!
Chart of the Day: @Apple’s advertising business has more than tripled its market share in the six months after it introduced privacy changes to iPhones that obstructed rivals, including @Facebook and @Google, from targeting ads at consumers. *A Thread*
Search Ads now drives 58% of all iOS app installations that can be tied back to paid ads, according to @Branch, whose basket of data comprises 250 major apps including BuzzFeed, Instacart, Strava and Starbucks. That’s more than three times its 17% share a year ago
What has made Search Ads suddenly attractive is not any new feature but the fact that Apple has rendered the rest of the ad industry “blind” in the iOS universe, says @kochavaofficial, whose own data has Search Ads up 69% since June, while rivals are down 43%(!) on average.
One app spending more on Search Ads is SpotHero, but it declines to use Apple’s retargeting tool b/c it worries of being out of compliance with Apple’s own privacy rules(!): “Apple was unable to validate for us that Apple’s solutions are compliant with Apple’s policy.”
A lot more in this earlier article from April — in case anyone’s interested. ft.com/content/3cabd134-0271…
@egorka
The problem with this chart is that Branch (and SKAD) attribute most of the traffic from small campaigns to “other” or “unattributed” (not sure if unattributed is included in this chart or falls into “other”) except for ASA
This 100% of ASA traffic goes attributed while significant shares of Facebook / Google / Twitter traffic will not be attributed. This breaks the graph and does not let figure out the shares of anything but ASA correctly.
Alex Bauer
It’s a good callout. Facebook / Google / Twitter attributions happen via SKAdNetwork, which *is* incorporated into this dataset for each of the networks.
Egor
I am running ads on all 4 networks. 100% ASA is attributed to ASA on Branch. Only one campaign out of dozens on Facebook + Google is attributed by SKAD/Branch, the rest of traffic from there goes unattributed and I know for sure it is present in massive amounts
Pixel de Tracking
« market share » is a bit misleading, you would think it’s about budgets whereas it’s « only » about attributed installations down to the device. You still have SKAdNetwork for Google, Facebook and others to see the full impact of theirs ads (much more than your chart)
Not to say Apple does not benefit (it does, Facebook, Google and others have less data to optimize, hence budgets are shifting), but still
Alex Bauer
Except…this data *includes* SKAdNetwork 🤯. (The full methodology probably deserves a thread of its own at some point…)
Pixel de Tracking
Oh ok! Very interesting then
Thanks for answering
Paul Mohme
is a frenemy given the lucrative search partnership; others highly dependent on the $AAPL platform
Artur Jach 🇵🇱 🇬🇧
Frankly, Google have made their ad fortune on the pretext of promoting 'what's best for the users' so, actually, hats off to Apple for finding their angle.
jimmybot
so going to a different search website vs jailbreaking, finding, and installing your own apps are equivalent?
Pieter
Apple’s percentage is certainly up, but are they selling more ads or is this mainly the result of a collapse in the size of the market (ie. Apple is not selling much more themselves)?
Alex Bauer
They’re also selling a lot more in absolute terms:
K A T U R E B E
a better evil, maybe?
Cipollaccia™
That’s a good thing.
Miguel Santirso
…and some believed this was about privacy…
mxdanger
Search ads are inherently more private. You only get the ad based on the keyword of what you are searching at that exact moment.
danny
So there is definitively no graph in ASA to modify results based on user profiles (or similar identifier-less approaches, i.e. FLoC)? (I’m sure this has been tested via device-to-device comparison, but I just don’t know the answer)
Ian Cundell #GETVACCINATED ⚒
Could you do the same chart by value, rather than share?
Andy Taylor
Tripled the share of app downloads attributed to its ads*. Very different than market share.
✨ M'aya@FF14鏡月の騎士 【海外｜PLD ナイト
Yup. Many times I search for a specific app by name in the Apple App Store and see an ad for the app right above the organic result. I make sure to click on the organic result, but not all users do that.
The rich pay no taxes
So Apple search ads are in the App store when you search for a keyword. What is that- "we see you are searching for an app for an Apple product- have you thought of buying an Apple product?" "Um..."
western_man 🇵🇸🕊
Damn FT not sending their best
Mike Merna
But, but…I thought it was all about consumer privacy?
Ramandeep Singh
Apple is the only company that respect’s user privacy and their don't rely on ads for their survival as google and facebook do.
Thomas Bigum
... but for their own good. FB and Google work in a triangled business model, where businesses pay for the users' free product. The ladder is best for the consumers. If only they learn to not be affraid of relevant ads... which sadly never happens
Dan Barrett
Explain how it is best for consumers? I personally prefer to buy my products with $ instead of with my attention and the surveillance of my personal behaviors and communications. Consumers should have the choice to do that.
JKSAD u can do that. What he prob means is that no one is actually single handedly tracking u. Ur data actually has no value unless it's atached to millions of other people's data in a way that u can recognize patterns. This patterns recognition can be used for the users benefits
there are also potential bad use cases but in most cases it simply enhances the user experience, it's there for our own benefits we just need to introduce laws/rules against the ones that are not but people shouldn't be scared of this, i believe it's good
Henning von Vogelsang
A typical case of distorting facts by filtering out relevant context, in order to provoke outrage. Unlike Facebook ir Google, Apple does not create identifiable personal user profiles for advertising and it doesn’t sell social graph data to advertisers.
Darktionary
None of those points had anything to do with his. He also didn’t mention the speed of gravity.
𝗞𝗲𝗻 𝗖𝗵𝗼𝘄
Forcing the fishermen further upstream…
Robin Lord
Do we know how Branch is attributing app installs? Is it possible that some of the increase in app installs attributed to Apple is because the same ads are running but other touchpoints are now falling outside of the window?
Ben Pouladian
Power of the MOAT!
Annalisa Fernandez
Apple's plot all along: woo the media with an obscure privacy mantra, eliminate all competition and wall-in users, then enjoy an effective monopoly over advertising -- and data.
Strat Becker
Seems like it’s mostly at the cost of Facebook
Akashi
People who think that Apple cares about user's privacy 🤡
Mike Debruyn
Smart business move it seems, its not like the others are not doing them same on their platforms or would do if they could.
Andrew Jude Rajanathan
this is one MMPs worth of data and it’s not clear if all MMPs would report a similar graph / curve. Unless you’re able to state your market share vs your competitors?
Patrick McGee
This is why I also tweeted the Kochava data, cited Facebook on the issue, and quote two apps (I got in touch with 20+) that have increased their ad spend on ASA. Numbers at each MMP will be different but should be in the same direction
Henry
Feels like that chart popped up in a thousand places already. Skimmed the article. What is the share percentage a part of, i.e. what exactly does "total installs" represent?
Maurice Rahmey
I’ve been waiting for this analysis! Thanks for putting together. Can we get an article showing which advertisers in the .com space have been most impacted by Apple’s updates (i.e. SMBs) to shut up the critics saying this article lacks context since it only focuses on apps?
seeshell
Game …. Apple, Google, Facebook
#KochNetwork
Aman
Hmmm reminds me @MKBHD’s Video
Hans Peter Godiksen
What if.. users could control and monetize their data? Take a peek at @fractalprtcl 👉 Mainnet launching on Tue #FCL #Web3
James Lavis
ya sorry i don’t want them. i’m on an apple device they can advertise away
The Mint
What is even more weird is e-Commerce sites are not allowed to sell some digital products on their own apps on iPhones
Karl Wright Anti... Yes?
Felipe Pait
The fact that they are defending Facebook's dreadful privacy policies is more relevant than the attack on Apple.
Patrick Thornton
Anything to kneecap the sociopaths at Facebook is good.
trey
I hate apple. whenever I can afford a new phone I’m throwing my iPhone in the garbage
Balinor
Another showcase of how Apple takes advantage of their platform grip
Has
OS update introduces stricter privacy changed, where else do you think ad companies will go? Their market share will decrease because people hate having their info collected. Apple collects comparatively less user info. There is no need for competition in the ads industry.
Matthew A. Combatti
Is this news to cover up the security news, how their policies just stopped prevention of thousands of zero day exploits for Mac machines and phones? Apple products are currently one of the most unsafe devices to use at this time. Does no one pay attention to "real" news?
danny
could you source for those of us curious to read?
Adam Sculthorpe ➶ ➷
Slaughtering Facebook? Good, take it all, bankrupt them
Flint StoneTo anyone saying Apple doesn't collect user info, I invite you to look at Apple's own policy. Important is the very last sentence: Telling facebook they can't collect info means you can't use facebook. Telling apple they can't collect info makes your $X00 smartphone less useful
skarpaccio
Wow, why was facebook so materially better than google at advertising on ios?
Artemis Amazone
Has Apple paid triple its fair share of taxes to the public treasury ? NOT !
Reference Article
Big H
