2024 was a big year for app advertising, marked by innovation and adaptation. Marketing teams embraced hybrid measurement strategies, connected TV gained traction as a performance channel, and AI transformed ad operations.
Privacy advancements, like Apple’s AdAttributionKit and Android’s Privacy Sandbox, pushed the industry toward an ID-less future, while new tools and trends set the stage for continued evolution in 2025.
Let’s dive into the industry trends that stood out.
Mixed measurement: SKAdNetwork meets MMP
This year we saw advertisers increasingly using multiple measurement frameworks to assess app campaign performance. UA teams grappled with balancing Apple’s SKAdNetwork (SKAN) with probabilistic measurement from mobile measurement partners (MMPs).
While SKAN provided essential attribution data in the post-ATT (App Tracking Transparency) world, its limitations — such as delayed reporting and aggregated data — pushed some UA teams to rely more on MMPs for a more granular understanding of campaign performance.
At Dataseat, we observed some advertisers adopting a hybrid strategy: using SKAN as the definitive measure for evaluating performance targets, while relying on MMP metrics for faster and more detailed optimisations. This multi-framework approach helped marketers balance privacy-centric attribution with actionable insights. However, it also introduced challenges in reconciling conflicting data from these two systems which don’t always agree.
Rise of the big screen: Connected TV as a performance channel
Connected TV (CTV) emerged as a significant channel for app UA in 2024, with 22% year-on-year growth to $30Bn forecasted. Within this trend we see performance advertisers increasingly keen on trying the big screen in app installs campaigns, and expect this to be a significant growth area in 2025.
This is partly fuelled by increasing availability of CTV-to-app attribution, now offered by many mobile measurement partners — meaning it’s now possible for UA managers to judge their CTV performance in much the same way as their web or in-app ads.
Overall, we can expect to see many more parallels between CTV and mobile as the two channels become increasingly complementary. Widespread “second-screen” behavior primes users to convert as they’re using mobile devices while watching TV. For example, our colleagues at the Verve Brand+ Marketplace recently helped a DSP slash average monthly cost per install (CPI) by 55% for apps advertising on Verve’s CTV inventory. These apps reported acquiring high-quality, relevant users with expected high lifetime value (LTV).
Additionally, while CTV now plays an important role in performance marketing, it’s also facing signal loss. This means an increased focus on ID-less targeting like contextual and cohort-based methods.
The AI Revolution in Marketing
Marketing has always offered some obvious use-cases for AI and automation, and in 2024 we saw some players reap huge benefits in this area — in part driving a resurgence in ad tech stocks with the likes of AppLovin, our own Verve, and others surging 2-3X year-on-year.
When looking at the use of AI in marketing, we can consider 3 key areas:
- Creative production, fuelled by generative AI which drastically reduces cost when creating images, video, and copywriting for ads.
Facebook alone cited over 1 million advertisers now using generative AI in creatives. During 2025 we should expect to see more ad platforms and agencies streamlining creative operations with AI, as well as more new startups vying to help them do so (e.g. AdCreative, Poolday).
- AdOps automation, where AI assistants can act as co-pilots for campaign managers and reduce the heavy-lifting required to execute media plans.
While most of the automation success stories in 2024 centred around creatives, we should expect to see further deployment of AI-based assistants in other AdOps workflows, such as: budget allocation, forecasting, inventory curation, fraud detection, and other optimisations. In self-serve platforms, chatbots will increasingly help ad platforms expand self-serve offerings.
- Performance, with machine learning continuing to improve campaign outcomes with better targeting and personalisation, as well as helping platforms improve bidding efficiency to reduce costs.
Regulation and the continued push towards privacy, ID-less
Looking at iOS: Apple doubled down on its commitment to ID-less advertising with the rollout of AdAttributionKit (AAK), which builds on the work started with SKAdNetwork (SKAN) to offer an advertising measurement solution that adheres to ATT’s strict privacy rules.
With Apple also being forced to offer third-party app stores in the EU this year, AAK’s announcement was well timed: since the new update also permits tracking conversions via third-party stores, not just Apple’s own App Store.
Despite these trends towards an ID-less future, probabilistic fingerprinting remains widespread within app advertising, as Apple still has not taken significant action to enforce its long-promised ban against practices that breach ATT such as fingerprinting.
With AAK now available, we expect Apple to enforce its anti-tracking rules more rigorously in 2025. Fingerprinting, when effective, functions much like device ID-based tracking. Given Apple’s significant investment in ATT since 2021, it seems unlikely they will continue to allow this practice.
Looking at Android: we saw mixed progress towards ID-less advertising during 2024.
We saw an unexpected U-turn on phasing out third party cookies on the web, meaning that user-level tracking will be around for longer than previously thought on the web. On the flip side, Privacy Sandbox for Android has continued to progress with no changes of plan, and many ad techs have reported success with early testing this year.
There is also fresh news that Google plans to permit fingerprinting in its ad tools next year. Unsurprisingly, this has been condemned by the UK’s ICO as incompatible with consumer privacy since users cannot consent to this like they do with cookies and device ID tracking.
Despite these mixed signals from Google during 2024, preparing for Sandbox remains a key strategic initiative for forward-thinking ad techs, and we are confident that the future of web and app advertising will be both ID-less and free of fingerprinting.
Conclusion
As we look ahead to 2025, the app advertising landscape promises even more innovation and challenges. Navigating the complexities of measurement, leveraging emerging channels like connected TV, and adapting to privacy-centric frameworks will be crucial for success.
At Dataseat (now part of Verve), we’re here to help you stay ahead of the curve. Reach out to us today to make 2025 your most successful year yet.
