The departure of Apple’s Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) is almost a done deal-  it is now set for a final farewell by the end of April 2021. Indeed the impact is huge as we continue to talk and monitor the situation, yet all is definitely not lost as Apple’s move continues to shake up the industry. 

While Facebook continues to lobby Apple hoping for some kind of backstep, the rest of app marketing world needs to strategize and fully understand how to leverage this current climate and to move onwards and upwards. For starters, app publishers should start diversifying traffic across networks to reduce risk of a singular network struggle.

Should this start happening forcefully, app marketers will be spreading resources across more channels than ever before – so it’s a safe assumption that now is the time to up the game and power up team efficiencies in order to boom in a post IDFA world.  Indeed now is the time to perfect and excel creatives – concepts, tests and development to place winning creatives across all channels for best possible results. 

With app development now also being at the forefront, now is the time to consider using Firebase, a platform owned by Google aimed to provide developers a way to create and develop quality apps, and to nurture any user base via ads across both android and iOS  – with this in play, tracking ‘target Return on Ad Spend’ (tROAS) becomes an easy win in our new post IDFA era. 

The days of creating a ton of ad creatives, dumping them into the backend and hoping the winner would eventually be crowned… are long gone. Machine learning is the new normal and can deliver optimal results. Yet there is something to be said for ad volume here. The higher the number of ads means the longer time needed for ad performance optimization. Larger accounts will suffer as many ads (40% according to Facebook) get stuck in a learning phase – so surely it makes sense to reduce ad volume to whizz past the competition. It is important to note that ad volume limit is now segmented into four groups, ranging from 250 ads to 20,000 ads. Check where you fall before you embark on this journey.

With IDFA on its way out, trends will surge one way or the other, and app marketers  may very well find themselves in a sea of new competition. At this stage it might be a strong move to bring in experts dedicated to both creatives and UA who can help effectively navigate these different waters. The right third party can bolster your creative testing initiatives for high scoring playable, video and banner ad creatives for optimized performance in a new Facebook era, in turn directing more users efficiently for strong and scalable ROI and strongest possible results.