As Privacy Diminishes Ad Attribution, Dentsu and Snap Beef Up Performance Measurement Alliance

As Apple’s ad insights busting App Tracking Transparency framework continued to depress Q3 revenues for platform companies like Snap Inc., the Snapchat owner is expanding its existing measurement partnership with agency ally Dentsu with a new focus on performance marketing. As Snap executives frame it, the global performance and measurement partnership promises to balance out the challenges Dentsu clients’ face with the cookieless future—and the present roadblocks set up by Apple’s SKAdNetwork. The new deal also highlights the tighter connection between social commerce and advertising, said Stef Smith, head of paid social at Dentsu. The one-size-fits-all approach to performance media is over as clients demand clearer results, Smith added. And privacy and brand safety are at the heart of marketers’ expected outcomes. “We’re in an age that’s focused on privacy and brand safety, without sacrificing efficiency,” Smith told Adweek. “This partnership emphasizes the vital role of privacy-safe solutions for advertisers across all social platforms, and helps build bespoke measurement solutions that mitigate signal loss for Dentsu clients while educating brands on the role and effectiveness of Snap in the consumer journey.” Hold On, We’ve Entered a Digital Marketing Time Warp Apple’s attribution impact Both Apple’s App Tracking Tranparency reporting system and the SKAdNetwork do several things that reduce the abilities of traditional ad-tech attribution. For example, under changes rolled out through iOS 14 and 15, the Apple Mail app’s Mail Privacy Protection prevents brands from knowing if a user opened one of its emails. The new iOS features also hide IP addresses so that senders can’t link that action to other online activity or determine a user’s location. Similarly, App Privacy Reports lets users see how often apps have been granted permission to access their information, and which third parties they have shared this with, over the last seven days. Additionally, Apple is also hiding IP addresses in Safari as part of its Intelligent Tracking Prevention privacy protocol. An expanded alliance While Dentsu and Snap have worked together for years, Apple’s moves require a significant shift in how they determine the ultimate online marketing question: did their ads hit their targets and lead to a consumer’s action? Like most ad partnerships worth noting, this one is all about scale. In addition to Dentsu’s global media buying depth, the deal also is premised on reaching and analyzing Snapchat’s nearly 300 million daily active users worldwide. From a tactical standpoint, Dentu agency iProspect, while shifting into full service, is keeping performance as its core focus. Dentsu believes marring Snap’s ad products, such as the use of augmented reality, will be enough to surmount privacy hurdles with utilities that add value to mobile users, particularly the coveted Millennial and Gen Z audiences. We’re all performance marketers now The performance and measurement partnership will offer Dentsu clients access to insights media ROI, which both sides attest to being heavily customized and privacy-centric. “All media has become performance media,” said Doug Rozen, CEO of Dentsu Media Americas. “This partnership will allow us to uniquely connect Snap’s powerful audience and engagement to critical business outcomes clients expect.” Other features rounding out the partnership include: Measurement Lab: Partnership between Dentsu’s Media Effectiveness teams and Snap’s performance experts to create new frameworks for how advertisers define media ROI. Performance Product Council: Measurement and ad product feedback sessions in which a joint Product Council will translate industry and client priorities into key development initiatives. Performance Customizations: Offering advanced measurement opportunities to encourage client adoption with the goal of empowering platform diversification for performance-based advertisers. Custom Performance and Insights Reports: Co-developed industry thought leadership as a culmination of joint learnings as well as bespoke insights sessions for clients. By centering the deal on performance within the realm of social media and social commerce, where users are willing to provide marketers their personal information to buy in-app items, Dentsu and Snap believe they’ve found a safe zone to understand when, how and why a consumer completes a purchase. “Performance marketing is immensely successful on Snapchat, with direct response advertising accounting for over half of our global revenue,” said David Roter, vp of global agency partnerships at Snap. “We are excited to expand our partnership with Dentsu to drive even more innovative measurement and media solutions for marketers; it’s the perfect time to bring these additional efficiencies to the market.”