• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, October 14, 2022

AppsFlyer's most recent mobile advertising report, released this week, reveals that Apple Search Ads tripled market share since the first half of 2020 -- even as other companies suffered from the shifts to consumer privacy.

The fifteenth edition of its Performance Index shows that media sources like Google Ads and Meta Ads continue to lose ground in the new ranking of SKAN, a framework created by Apple for privacy-preserving mobile app install attribution.

AppsFlyer’s Performance Index analyzed more than 500 media sources, 27 billion installs and more than 19,000 apps from January to June 2022. From this, the SKAN Index covered 450 million postbacks from more than 2,400 apps and 45 media sources.

In the first half of 2022, amidst the privacy changes, economic downturn and post-COVID cooldown, a reshuffling was seen across the ecosystem, with smaller players also trying to gain market share.

Apple Search Ads (ASA) -- which functions independently from SKAN and deterministically attributes users regardless of App Tracking Transparency (ATT) consent -- gained the most ground, tripling its market share since the first half in 2020. It also moved into the number one media source in the iOS rankings. 

App install ad spend budgets dropped 14% in Q2 vs. Q1 of 2022, after a 2% increase between Q4 of 2021 and Q1 of 2022.

The average app budget fell 12%--a slightly higher drop on Android compared with iOS, 13% vs. 9%. 

On the media side, seven of the top 10 and 14 of the top 20 media sources saw the user acquisition budgets drop in Q2 vs. Q1, including the top three players Google, Meta, and Unity.

Each of the top three networks lost significantly more than the average dip among the top 10 media sources. In a year over year comparison, Appsflyer can see that overall media spend changes in 2022 were four times higher than 2021, down 12% vs. down 3%.

In the midst of rising media costs and an economic slowdown, the use of owned media rose -- especially among non-gaming apps.

There was an 18% increase in installs driven by owned media on Android in the first half of 2022 vs. the second half of 2021, compared with a 2% increase in paid media.

On iOS, the shift to owned media is higher, up 30%. The average per account also shows clear gaps: while paid increased by 3%, owned media jumped 25%.

TikTok For Business rose significantly increasing its scale in 2022 on Android from Q1 2021 to Q1 2022. 

The rise of ByteDance’s social network is dominant in non-gaming, where it ranked third in the global volume ranking. 

The report also examines the gaming environment, but the non-gaming app space is pretty much dominated by Google and Meta. TikTok For Business gained ground, but it remains a distant third.

Because Google and Meta hold such a significant share in non-gaming, the rankings — where the companies maintained the No. 1 and the No. 2 positions — do not tell the entire story.

A closer inspection shows that Google lost a rather small piece of the pie, while Meta shed a more significant percentage.