How advertisers can adapt to iOS 15 with LiveIntent

Director, product marketing

In the email world, no doubt the talk of the town is centered around Apple’s latest software update, iOS 15, which was officially released on September 20th. Email senders are universally grappling with changes to open rate, once a key metric for understanding customer engagement with your email marketing.

Despite this assault (disguised as a privacy move) on email marketing, we are confident that email will prevail as a vital mechanism for building relationships with your customers. It just means marketers need to hit the reset button to evaluate the success of their email marketing campaigns.

Advertisers who are buying email ad inventory with LiveIntent will also see changes due to iOS 15. But before we dive in, if you need more context on the features that Apple is planning to roll out, check our blog post explaining those features.

What do these changes mean for my email advertising campaigns?

It’s important to point out that there is no impact on LiveIntent’s core technology. Advertising campaigns will continue to reach high-value audiences, as they always have, and drive consumers to convert. So far we have seen MPP impact roughly 2% of advertising spend on our platform.

Reporting

The biggest changes we’re seeing are in general metric reporting. Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) will, over time, impact impressions and metrics derived by impressions:

  • Impressions will increase
  • CTR will decrease
  • CPM will decrease
  • Post-view conversions will increase

However, Apple’s changes will not affect metrics that demonstrate active engagement, such as clicks and post-click conversions. So while these changes will inflate impressions on Apple devices, you can still accurately measure when a consumer clicks on your ad, visits your website or mobile app, and converts.

Apple has also introduced a proxy server that masks which device type a consumer is using when served an ad. Unfortunately, this means you won’t be able to know if the Apple user is on their desktop, phone, or tablet.

Targeting

iOS 15 has impacted some targeting capabilities. Because Apple blocks you from detecting the user’s device type, this means you can’t use the device as a targeting parameter.

Secondly, Apple’s proxy server obfuscates the user’s precise location. While Apple allows its users to select whether they want to share an approximate or broad location, we don’t expect campaigns to target audiences based on ZIP code. LiveIntent’s testing of iOS 15 so far has shown us that state and country targeting is still possible.

What do I need to do to prepare?

We recommend taking this time to review your campaign reporting with your LiveIntent team so that you can swiftly adapt to these changes while maintaining performance. In addition, the LiveIntent Product team is releasing features that will allow you to isolate MPP traffic to help you measure the performance of campaigns with and without the impact of MPP.

If you’ve been incorporating post-view conversions as part of your performance reporting, our team will reach out to you to discuss how we can apply historical data to your specific campaigns.

Lastly, if you haven’t already, we recommend installing our LiveConnect tag and including customer email as a parameter with event data, such as purchases and sign-ups. Event data from your website is deterministic data owned by you and is not affected by these updates in email.

Fostering meaningful connections with consumers

Weathering the MPP storm is no small task. But, rather than burying our heads in the sand, we must meet this moment with innovative solutions designed for the future. Impressions were far from a vanity metric, but genuinely understanding consumer engagement with your brand requires a much bigger picture. Unlike some technology companies, LiveIntent doesn’t attempt to control your data or your relationships with customers. Instead, we’re here to help you foster meaningful connections with them, providing data at its most granular level and transparency along the way.

To learn more and get started with us, please reach out to your LiveIntent team, or contact us.