iOS17 Survival Kit: Maintaining ROI

iOS 17 is here.

Yousaf Yunes, CEO and Founder at YRV Dynamics has developed the following background and answers to help navigate the ups and downs of the latest iOS updates. First, what is iOS17 and how is it different than the iOS 14.5 & 15 updates?

What is iOS 17?

Once a year, Apple releases key iOS updates to all iOS devices. We’re currently at the 17th update to their technology. The latest iOS 17 update offers link-tracking protection.

Advertisers and pay-per-click platforms affix tracking parameters to the end of click URLs, these include your Google or Meta Click-ID. These IDs allow advertisers to retarget and serve personalized messaging to consumers. In this new update, Apple removes link tracking parameters from links in iMail, iMessage, and Safari. The silver lining with Safari is that it's only in private browsing mode.

• Pros: Gives users greater privacy when browsing the web. It's a welcomed addition to Apple’s privacy-preserving features.

• Cons: Digital marketers are showing signs of concern. The loss is not too significant at this time. However, link tracking automatically deprecates the tracking parameters if the links are shared via iMail or iMessage. Some email tracking will continue to be supported as they do not rely solely on parameter tracking — we’ll highlight this further in the iOS 15 discussion. Below is the iOS 17 link tracking removal in motion.

iOS 17 Survival Tips and the Previous iOS Updates

Apple Mail is roughly 58% of the iPhone market, and iMessage is minimal at 17% of the US market. However, Safari has a 90%+ adoption rate within iPhone devices. As with iOS 14.5, adoption will be slow; however, the adoption rate is estimated at 90% by the end of Q1. As mentioned, this will only apply to private browsing for Safari.

Black Friday/Cyber/Monday/ Holiday Season is the largest concern to make adjustments to advertisers’ digital mix to maintain peak ROI for their clients. We’ve included action items and previous fixes to help advertisers navigate changes with iOS 17.

When iOS 14.5 was released, it prevented users from being tracked across apps and sites owned by other companies. This was Apple’s first missile silo to advertisers. Digital marketers responded by:

• Targeting Android devices: this worked for smaller advertisers. However, larger advertisers were disadvantaged as it left out a whole universe of iPhone users. This was not sustainable as Meta developed other methods to work around iOS14.5.

• Event Prioritization in Meta: Identify the eight most valuable events. This lets the platform optimize according to the Purchase or the event objective. Machine learning funnels users accordingly in terms of optimizing the key events.

• CAPI: Conversions API does not use cookies or pixel tracking but connects via a server connection to circumvent data restrictions. This helped read the signals from the site to assist with event prioritization.

• Meta SDK: For proprietary app purchases/users, ensure the app has the Meta SDK: iOS 8.1+ or higher, allowing users to serve personalized messaging and features to your users.

• Meta Statistical Modeling: Used when the initial signals show a conversion most likely happened.

For iOS 15, the update was focused on iMail Privacy Protection. iOS 15 prevented email marketers from seeing whether their subscribers opened their email within Apple Mail app. There was little that could be done to circumvent the update. Compared to the first nine months of the year, Q4 open rates:

• Declined by 1.9% in 2019

• Increased by 0.8% in 2020

• Increased 59% in 2021 (post-iOS 15): the app drastically affected open rates, which alarmed advertisers. A key finding was that at 11 months since the update, open rates were 93.6% higher. iOS 15 was causing incorrect anomalies.

Email marketing services quickly pivoted to the following tactics:

• Combine open and click activity to identify unengaged contacts. Engagements via post-open rate became the KPI as open rate anomalies limited the usefulness of the data.

• Optimize email subject lines and preheader text — also add emojis

• Also, optimize email workflows based on click activity, not open rate KPIs

• Include SMS and email opt-ins when working users option for email or purchases. When possible, send an SMS as well.

iOS 17 Recommendations

Here are steps digital marketers can take to mitigate data loss from iOS17.

• Confirm CAPI and Google-enhanced conversions are being incorporated. There will likely be a decline in event attribution. Luckily Shopify deploys CAPI and hashed conversion data seamlessly between their shopping platform and Meta and Google. YRV Dynamics advises e-retailers and marketing specialists to recommend Shopify as the e-retailer of choice whenever possible.

• Take a closer look at MER (Media Efficiency Ration) vs. ROAS. ROAS will most likely decline as the android portion of the targeting reaches saturation. MER will be the focus as the North Star for sales. Many agency leaders, such as Sol8, have looked at MER as their optimization event instead of ROAS and included corresponding verbiage in their agency-client contracts. YRV Dynamics MER article can be viewed here.

• Conversion campaigns should not be the sole objective. Campaigns should begin adopting a cohesive smart funnel strategy. With a manual smart funnel set-up, campaigns must be optimized manually for ToFu, MoFu, and Bofu. This is described in our Smart Funnel medium article. This will especially be the case for larger client advertisers.

• Paid search and social marketers will need to leverage additional skill sets for their clients: creative optimizations, design, and email marketing. YRV Dynamics exercises all these skill sets for their clients. Clients have demanded more services from the PPC vertical since they were viewed as the key channel for ROI. iOS 17 demands require a larger ecosystem to leverage purchases instead of two to three paid channels. Consulting/optimizing lead magnets, social media management, building quality email lists (and leveraging quality leads accordingly), and community building should be in freelancer’s toolkits.

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