Crowd anonymity

Crowd anonymity refers to the level of data you get from SKAdNetwork 4 and is based on the number of installs from the marketing campaign. It’s Apple’s new term for privacy thresholds in SKAdNetwork version 3.

On a high level, crowd anonymity is easy to understand: as the number of app installs per ad campaign goes up, so too does the level of crowd anonymity. As crowd anonymity goes up, Apple will enable more data capture for measuring campaigns, meaning that advertisers can get more data about campaign performance and can improve their ad strategies quicker.

It’s important to note, however, that no amount of extra data will reveal people’s personal data: all data is aggregated and anonymized.

Crowd anonymity is a key part of Apple’s SKAdNetwork 4.0, which as highlighted in our official release blog states:

… will take 3 factors into account when determining the crowd size for its privacy-ensuring crowd anonymity calculation, which happens at the point of actual install:

• Crowd size for the app or domain displaying the ad
• The advertised app
• The hierarchical source identifier from the ad network

In previous versions of SKAdNetwork, advertisers were able to receive a postback that contained conversion values if their campaign met a certain privacy threshold. Now, with SKAdNetwork 4.0, marketers can receive different levels of campaign data based on which tier their crowd anonymity falls into. 

There are 4 tiers of crowd anonymity: Tier 0, Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3. Here’s how Apple pictures each of these tiers:

• Tier 0 refers to a low number of installs that does not meet Apples’ privacy threshold. Note, you will still get some data in postbacks for installs in Tier 0, but it will only be 2 digits of campaign ID.
• Tier 1 has enough installs to meet Apple’s privacy threshold, but is still on the lower end.
• Tier 2 and 3 meet the privacy threshold and at each tier provides more campaign data, in which you can encode information about targeting location, specific creatives, and more.

It’s important to note that Apple hasn’t explicitly disclosed the exact requirements to meet privacy thresholds or fit into a specific tier. That said, it’s clear that pushing more spend into fewer campaigns will enhance crowd anonymity and improve data return.

Also, note that the crowd anonymity score is calculated on the last click and assigned at the time of app install.

As a leader in mobile attribution and marketing analytics, Singular provides marketers the data they need to optimize their mobile campaigns and achieve the highest ROAS possible. As highlighted in our SKAN 4 strategy guide, here are the steps you should take to ensure a smooth transition to SKAN 4:

• Transition prep 1: update the Singular SDK in your app
• Transition prep 2: talk to your acquisition and monetization partners
• Transition prep 3: talk to your web partners
• Transition prep 4: share your source identifier hierarchies
• Transition prep 5: plan your coarse conversion value strategy
• Transition prep 6: build a framework to evaluate users at each of the 3 postback stages

The good news is that Singular will make SKAN as easy as possible for clients:

“For SKAN 4.0, Singular will display a coherent view of the data from all the postbacks that you are getting, providing a single number for revenue, installs, and events for each campaign.”

For further support in your transition to SKAN 4, you can get in touch today and we’ll help you every step of the way.