SNAP! Same Song, Different Channel

Late yesterday, Snap reported its Q3 earnings. This morning, we woke up to alarming headlines noting that Snap shares dropped a whopping 22% due to missing revenue expectations – which is being blamed on the impact of Apple’s iOS tracking restrictions.

After praising Apple’s consumer-friendly changes back in February, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel had this to say in yesterday’s statement: “While we anticipated some degree of business disruption, the new Apple-provided measurement solution did not scale as we had expected, making it more difficult for our advertising partners to measure and manage their ad campaigns for iOS.”

Sound familiar?

While the vast majority of attention has been on Facebook’s measurement woes, the devastation from Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) and associated policies is not limited to just one platform.

As we mentioned previously, Apple’s policy updates, whether altruistic or a veiled competitive play, are only the first of many changes we anticipate (cookies anyone?) that will continue to restrict data access and force sweeping changes in how advertisers track and measure campaigns. And while Facebook has been in the hot seat, as the 2nd largest ad platform in the world and a critical channel for DTC ecommerce brands, every online ad channel is grappling with the fallout from new policies and increasing privacy-driven limitations.

While I applaud all of the companies and industry organizations tirelessly working to land an alternative/unified identity resolution option that maintains privacy requirements while allowing platforms to continue user-level tracking, Snap and Facebook have made it abundantly clear that we don’t have time to wait.

Marketers cannot afford to stunt business by halting spend on these channels until the industry finds a way to sort itself out. The truth is, if these channels were performing well before iOS 14.5, then they are likely still providing value now. Brands can feel it. Performance isn’t failing, measurement is.

Fortunately, there is a solution. And, if you’re at all tapped into the advertising world, you’ve been hearing about it a lot lately.

Incrementality testing and experiments.

Designed and executed correctly, independent experiments can provide insight into media incrementality at channel, campaign, and ad set levels – on any platform. By measuring the true incremental contribution of media, anchored on source-of-truth transaction data provided by the brand, marketers can make informed decisions about budget allocation – even amid rising concerns about the reliability of platform self-reporting.

We’ve worked with many brands to run unbiased experiments on Snap, Facebook, TikTok, and a host of other popular platforms. They are using the results to confidently keep advertising on these channels where they know their prospects are spending time.

We developed our methodologies and experiment designs in anticipation of this very moment. We offer experimentation, like geo-testing or split-audience testing using CRM file data, that are based on first-party data and don’t rely on questionable reporting from the platforms. By mapping to your ecommerce transaction data, we ensure the results and recommended actions reported are always reliable.

Measured is committed to being the measurement provider brands can trust for technology solutions and expert advice to grow in this new, privacy-led era of advertising. Don’t let the noise and chaos around you distract you from reaching your objectives.

You can keep growing, confidently, and get the data you need to prove it.