This video walks you through how to get the most out of your iOS SKAdNetwork (SKAN) reports within Google Ads. We’ll look at the key details in these reports and how to use them to figure out your campaign performance, like how much you’re spending per install or per action.
Accessing Your SKAN Report
You can find your SKAN reports in a few places. Google Ads is one, but your App Attribution Partner might also have them, or you could use Apple or Google Analytics APIs. The exact look of the report can differ a bit depending on where you get it from. For this guide, we’ll stick to the one you see in Google Ads.
To get to it, head over to the ‘Insights and reports’ section in Google Ads and pick ‘Report editor’. Then, scroll down to ‘Goals and conversions’ and select the ‘SKAdNetwork conversions’ report.
Understanding Key SKAN Report Fields
Once you open the SKAN report, you’ll see a table. Each row shows data for a specific day, and the columns represent the different SKAN conversion values you’ve set up.
- SKAN Conversion Value of Zero: This means the app install happened, but there were no in-app actions recorded after the install that were linked to your SKAN setup.
- Non-Zero SKAN Conversions: These show installs where you did have in-app actions that you’ve configured in your SKAN schema. For instance, your setup might say conversion value 1 means someone created an account, and value 14 means they made an in-app purchase.
It’s worth noting that Google currently only supports what they call ‘fine value’ conversion reporting. This applies even if you’ve set up your schema using Apple’s ‘coarse conversion values’ from SKAN version 4.
To dig deeper into how your campaigns are doing, you can use these extra fields:
- SKAdNetwork Ad Event Type: This tells you how users interacted with your ad. ‘Interaction’ means they clicked or engaged with the ad, while ‘view’ indicates a view-through conversion (they saw the ad and then converted without clicking).
- SKAdNetwork Attribution Credit: This shows if a Google ad was the very last thing that led to the conversion. ‘Won’ means Google Ads was the final touchpoint. ‘Contributed’ means it was one of the top five touchpoints but not the last one.
- SKAdNetwork App Campaign Placement Type: This tells you if your ad was shown on a webpage or inside another mobile app. You can use the ‘App campaign placement’ field to see which app showed your ad.
You can add these fields to your report rows or use them as filters to get a more detailed look at your SKAN data.
Handling Unavailable Conversions
Sometimes you’ll see ‘unavailable conversions’. This means Apple didn’t show specific conversion value details because they didn’t meet Apple’s privacy thresholds. To help fill in these blanks, Google has introduced a new feature in the SKAN report. It uses Google AI to redistribute this ‘null’ data into your known conversion values, giving you a more accurate picture.
To use this, filter your report by ‘SKAdNetwork attribution credit’ and set the value to ‘won’. This makes sure the redistributed data is only applied to conversions definitely linked to Google Ads. You’ll then see these redistributed conversions spread across your defined SKAN conversion values.
Evaluating Key Performance Metrics
Let’s look at a sample SKAN report and how to calculate important metrics like Cost Per Install (CPI) and Cost Per Action (CPA).
Important Note: SKAN conversions have delays in their postback data and a 30-day window for conversions to be reported. Because of this processing time, it’s best to check your SKAN metrics about 30 days after the campaign runs. If you look at weekly or daily reports, you might not see the full picture of conversions for all ad networks.
Calculating SKAN Cost Per Install (CPI)
- Find your total campaign spend for the period you’re looking at.
- Add up the total number of conversions across all your SKAN conversion values (from 0 to 63). This gives you your total SKAN installs.
- Divide your total spend by the total SKAN installs to get your SKAN CPI.
Calculating SKAN Cost Per Action (CPA)
- Find your total campaign spend for the period.
- Identify the total number of conversions for the specific SKAN conversion value that matches your target action (e.g., account creation).
- Divide your total spend by the number of conversions for that specific SKAN conversion value to calculate your SKAN CPA.
Keep in mind that SKAN has quite short postback windows, often around one day. This can sometimes make CPA figures look higher than they might be otherwise.
That’s our quick guide to looking at your SKAN reports in Google Ads. We hope this helps you understand your iOS App campaign performance better. Don’t forget to check out our other videos for more on SKAdNetwork basics and improving your iOS measurement and campaign results.
