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▶️ IDFA Deprecation: Scapegoat or Reality?

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▶️ IDFA Deprecation: Scapegoat or Reality?

Everyone's blaming IDFA for their failed game. How true is this really?

Joseph Kim
May 23, 2023
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Hello GameMakers,

Mobile gaming is dead! IDFA is making new game launches impossible!

Everyone’s blaming IDFA deprecation for everything. Every failed game launch attributes so much of their failure to IDFA. Of course, it couldn’t be the game itself; it couldn’t be bad projections, planning, teams, or anything else. It’s IDFA!

This mainstream narrative around IDFA has been infecting the industry for the past few years.

However, in private conversations with some very knowledgeable industry game executives and with sophisticated performance marketers, a very different narrative has been whispered.

The counter-narrative has been IDFA just isn’t that big of a deal.

What’s the real story?

In this week’s discussion:

  • Arguments for the counter-narrative around IDFA deprecation

  • How to tactically approach the new environment for UA and growth

  • The impact on games by genre - winners & losers

  • IDFA impact on M&A activity

  • Impact to growth teams

  • Current state of Apple vs. Google

  • Future trends on performance marketing on mobile


🐐 IDFA Deprecation: Scapegoat or Reality

🎧 Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or Anchor

Speakers:

  • Joseph Kim. CEO at LILA Games (moderator)

  • Eran Friedman. Co-founder and CTO at Singular

  • Levi Matkins. CEO at LifeStreet

  • Warren Woodward. CGO at Upptic

🗒️ Discussion Outline

0:00 Intro

1:05 The real impact of IDFA deprecation

8:47 Approaches to solving IDFA deprecation

16:18 Quantifying impact of IDFA deprecation by genre

21:48 Aren't we just all back to normal?

25:08 Has IDFA deprecation driven M&A activity?

29:08 Impact on UA teams from IDFA deprecation: big losses

36:13 Apple iOS vs. Google Play for UA

39:15 Operational changes to UA

41:01 The biggest future trends to watch for

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5 Comments
Yadu Rajiv
Writes Gamedev.in
May 23Liked by Joseph Kim

I'm not sure if its a problem with spotify etc? Or on my end. But the last post on the podcast I see is from May 16th. I use pocket casts, but I think it's the same on spotify/anchor too 🤔

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2 replies by Joseph Kim
Gabe Rocha
May 23

Great discussion! I agree that blaming IDFA for a game flop makes no sense. Of course it helped great games reach tons of people, but at the same time it also helped lots of greedy publishers reaching millions of people with sub-par shallow ugly terrible games as well. I sincerely don’t even bother opening the App Store to look for good games anymore, I follow specialized websites for finding the good games. Anyway, as it was said, now we are back to the old times where you must have a compelling game with good graphics and great gameplay in order to succeed, and that might actually be very good for the players.

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