A new report by Appsumer and InMobi has delved into the mobile app advertising industry. This follows the mass adoption of Apple’s ATT policies in June 2021, allowing the study to delve into exactly how the policy changes have affected the market.

It seems that the changes have seen a positive reaction, with Apple Search Ads (ASA) seeing a five per cent year-on-year increase in share-of-wallet, reaching fifteen percent. This makes ASA one of the three largest advertising markets in the mobile industry, along with Facebook and Google.

Facebook saw a 4 per cent decrease in share-of-wallet, although still ended Q2 2022 with a 28 per cent share. Notably, Facebook saw a significant bounce back in share between Q4 2021 and Q2 2022, suggesting that the market is recovering following initial headwinds.
In contrast, Google’s share-of-wallet remained fairly stable across the period. This is partly due to the fact that the majority of the company’s mobile inventory sits on Android platforms, as opposed to Apple.

The report suggests that Apple may struggle with increasing its share-of-wallet due to the fact that its inventory is constrained by the volume of searches on the app store, and that costs could become unsustainable as advertisers flock to the platform. The report suggests that a DSP could help further their first-party data advantages on iOS.

TikTok pulls ahead of Snap

TikTok has pulled ahead of Snap in terms of both advertiser adoption and share-of-wallet, however advertiser adoption fell to 43.2 per cent year-on-year – a decrease of nearly seven per cent. The platform saw a share of wallet of 3 per cent, suggesting that while some advertisers are succeeding, others are struggling to gain a foothold on the platform.

Snap, however, saw its share-of-wallet halved to 2 per cent, while advertiser adoption fell three points to 32.7 per cent. However this number is an increase of almost seven per cent from Q1 22, suggesting that the company is making a bounce back of its own in recent months.

In short, it appears that the adoption of ATT policies has had a definite effect on advertisers, while those hoping to take advantage of TikTok's growing profile are having significant difficulty coming to grips with the platform, with some advertisers abandoning it entirely.

In July, we wrote that Apple's privacy overhauls - including ATT policies - could pose massive challenges to small and medium-sized businesses.