AppsFlyer's APAC chief on gearing up for the privacy-conscious marketing era

Brands in the Asia Pacific region are increasingly dependent on mobile marketing strategies to attract loyal customers and drive growth. The marketing landscape is rapidly evolving with challenges such as impending signal loss from third-party cookies and the rise of AI, creating relentless pressure to innovate.

With the end of cookies and restrictions on mobile device identifiers for ad targeting, companies are revamping their advertising strategies to collect first-party data through consumer touchpoints, forming partnerships to leverage second-party data, and experimenting with contextual and interest-based advertising.

It's an area of opportunity for AppsFlyer, one of the more established tech platforms in APAC over the last decade in the audience and CRM optimisation space. Over the previous year, it has doubled down on trying to help brands improve consumer relationships while ensuring user privacy by launching products focused on privacy-centric measurement, activation, and reporting.

Ronen Mense, the president and managing director for APAC at AppsFlyer, is a vocal advocate for a privacy-focused marketplace and has shared with Campaign how the platform allows advertisers to provide user-level data for third-party vendors without actually sharing the data.

The need for a privacy-focused marketplace

Almost all companies depend on first-party customer data and understand how critical it is to driving business growth. Collecting, collaborating on, and analysing first-party data is crucial for maximising monetisation, improving products, and enhancing customer experiences. 

However, companies are privy to limited data sets due to privacy-driven changes in the ad industry, which have limited data sharing between companies and reduced user-level data availability.

AppsFlyer saw the opportunity here and launched a new marketplace as part of its Privacy Cloud. The cloud, which functions like a data clean room, aims to help businesses integrate with smaller vendors and software plug-ins while ensuring security and compliance. 

The marketplace allows companies to analyse data without copying, sharing, or moving it, ensuring compliance as the data remains within the cloud. AppsFlyer’s existing platform handles extensive first-party data, providing insights into user journeys, app installs, user acquisition costs, and more.

Through the marketplace, startups can offer services and analyse customer data without lengthy security and legal processes. This streamlines innovation, allowing companies to utilise data effectively without compromising privacy.

The importance of data accuracy cannot be overstated because if data is inaccurate and fails to reflect the truth, it would undermine confidence in the product.

To meet regulations and international data privacy standards like GDPR, AppsFlyer has invested resources to ensure compliance with privacy regulations across all its solutions and teams.

“We strongly emphasise ensuring data accuracy, allowing customers and stakeholders to trust the insights and information provided. Trustworthy data empowers users to make informed decisions based on reliable information," explains Mense.

AppsFlyer has also acquired Oolo, an AI-powered user acquisition and monetisation platform, adding it to its marketplace. Oolo analyses live app data to forecast performance, identify growth areas, and detect ad revenue anomalies.

Oolo helps uncover issues and opportunities that might be missed, equipping monetisation and growth teams with tools to enhance accuracy and efficiency. It offers application programming interface access to ad networks, analytics, AI models, and software services without copying or sharing user data.

Mense explains that with the launch of the privacy cloud marketplace and the integration of Oolo, AppsFlyer enables safe data collaboration that diminishes the complexities and additional risks of sharing first-party customer data, which is critical for business success and growth. 

Given the volume of data marketers handle, Mense claims Oolo identifies necessary insights and information for marketers to optimise, plan, and improve their campaigns' efficiency.

As AI will be paramount in shaping the future of marketing measurement and data analytics, AppsFlyer hopes acquiring Oolo will help marketers optimise return on ad spend (ROAS) and real-time lifetime value (LTV). 

In addition, integrating Oolo within the Privacy Cloud framework enables secure collaboration by allowing companies to bring AI models and services to their data while minimising data movement and ensuring compliance with data protection regulations.

Mense feels audits are important for everyone, explaining that AppsFlyer perform thorough audits to identify and mitigate risks, educate the platform's teams on ethical AI practices, and maintain transparency by clearly informing its customers about AI interactions and data use.

The future of AI and data analytics 

Previously, marketers had to rely on predefined reports or data scientists to analyse data, which limited their ability to uncover new insights.

However, the rise of AI and privacy-preserving frameworks like Apple’s AppTrackingTransparency (ATT) and GDPR has seen the emergence of measurement tools to help overcome signal loss. 

One of these tools is creative optimisation, which enables marketing teams to leverage AI to quickly identify the most effective elements in their strategies and ad creatives and scale them in campaigns. 

Creative optimisation can help marketing teams make better decisions and create ad creatives that drive conversions and retention.

AppsFlyer has prepared for this by partnering OpenAI to integrate ChatGPT in its data clean room. This capability enables marketers to ask business questions directly and receive immediate insights, making data exploration more accessible.

This new feature aims to make data analysis more self-serve, allowing marketers to access and understand their data beyond standard reports.

The platform allows users to review and modify outputs before final analysis to reduce inaccuracies. This process keeps data secure within the system and prevents private information from being exposed or utilised to train external AI models.

The road ahead 

Looking ahead, AppsFlyer is looking to continue strengthening its platforms to address the challenges of a privacy-conscious marketing era. 

Through AI, AppsFlyer wants to ensure its attribution models provide a clearer picture of the customer journey and augment anti-fraud measures to protect marketing investments. AppsFlyer is also looking to expand its marketplace and technology partnerships.

Mense adds moving forward means upholding an unbiased and independent approach that prioritises customers' needs and satisfaction in every decision.

In addition, Mense also claims AppsFlyer’s customers and stakeholders trust the insights and information provided by the platform as the data is reliable enough to make decisions.