Mobile data and analytics experts App Annie have shared the most popular SDKs following the release of iOS 14.5.
iOS 14.5 delivered significant new protections for user privacy which have drastically limited access to user-level data. A report from Flurry Analytics earlier this month discovered that 96 percent of iOS 14.5 users in the US are blocking ad tracking.
As to be expected, App Annie found that Apple’s own SDKs lead by unique iOS installs globally—taking the top six places. Google takes the next three spots with the company’s Firebase and AdMob SDKs, followed by Olivier Poitrey’s SDWebImage SDK to complete the top 10.
Filtering to the most popular advertising platform SDKs provides a bit more variety.
Google’s AdMob and AdX SDKs take the first two spots but are followed by alternatives from Unity, Facebook, Yahoo!, and others. More companies outside of the US appear in this list such as South Korea’s NHN ACE (Adlib SDK) in eighth place, Israel’s ironSource (ironSource SDK) at 11th, and China’s ByteDance (Pangle SDK) at 13th.
App Annie predicts that mobile ad spend will surpass $290 billion – a two-year CAGR of 21 percent – in 2021.
Google yet again takes the first two spots when it comes to the most popular ad attribution SDKs but the rest of the top 20 is controlled by entirely different companies from either of the previous most popular SDK breakdowns. The first non-US company, Germany’s Adjust, appears a little higher in this ranking at fifth place:
In “the new privacy norm”, App Annie says that – while attribution services are still important for informing marketing measures – publishers will need more information to form a complete picture. Market-level audience data will be needed to fill the gap.
Finally, when it comes to app analytics SDKs, Google once again unsurprisingly rules the roost. This time, the web giant takes the top five spots before Yahoo! manages to get a look in at sixth:
App analytics SDKs help paint a better picture of how users are using apps to help inform the development of features and improve marketing. App Annie notes how market-level engagement insights – such as average time spent per user and session duration – will once again be “needed to complement existing analytics due to opt-outs under iOS 14.5.”
iOS 14.5 brought significant changes that will require a rethink over how best to target users and understand behaviour. App Annie’s insights are helping to fill the gap.
(Image Credit: Apple)
