A post-IDFA guide to user acquisition for indies
Christopher Farm
Monday 7th March 2022
Until mid-2020, developers knew how to grow their mobile games. A good game was by no means a guarantee of success, but the rules of mobile marketing and user acquisition (UA) were familiar and clear. And there was always time to make more games!
Apple's changes to its identifier for advertisers (IDFA) and particularly the release of iOS 14.5 changed the rules of the mobile marketing game beyond recognition.
With attribution of users taken in-house by Apple, a 24 hour data privacy threshold introduced and no real-time marketing events available, it became incredibly difficult to determine where games' users were coming from, what their value was, and what marketing campaigns were working. In fact, although new marketing data called SKAdNetwork (SKAN) had been introduced, Apple was passing this straight to ad networks, leaving mobile games studios in the dark.
The release of iOS 14.5 changed the rules of the mobile marketing game beyond recognition
The version of iOS released in September 2021, iOS 15, was better news for mobile games developers and publishers. Apple began sharing SKAN data directly with developers as well as ad networks, putting the full range of data in their hands for the very first time.
Making good use of this data is another thing altogether, which is why I still see the majority of mobile game devs operating in what I call 'Zombie Mode' while they wait for someone, somewhere, to help deal with all this data.
Hi, I'm someone. I work with dozens of people who spend a large part of their daily lives figuring out how mobile games can use SKAN data. And I won't lie to you, it's an ongoing process. There's no immediate antidote that will snap you out of Zombie Mode or
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