Myth: SKAdNetwork gives you deterministic attribution like the old IDFA days

Myth: SKAdNetwork gives you deterministic attribution like the old IDFA days

Misconception that ruins forecasts: 'SKAN tells me exactly which campaign drove which install.' It tells you almost the opposite.

SKAdNetwork is privacy-by-design probabilistic-ish aggregation with delays and thresholds. Postbacks arrive 24-48h late, get a randomized timer, and a campaign won't even report conversion values below Apple's privacy threshold (crowd anonymity). Below ~a handful of installs per campaign-day, you get nulls by design — not because nothing converted.

✓ SKAN gives campaign-level signal that's fraud-resistant
✓ Aggregated postbacks survive ATT opt-outs entirely
✗ No user-level, no real-time, no granular below threshold
✗ The privacy threshold silently zeros out your small/new campaigns

Design campaigns with enough volume to clear the threshold, or you're flying blind on the very tests you care about.

Verdict: use SKAN for aggregate trend, skip it for granular per-user attribution — that era is gone.
Best for: buyers porting IDFA-era expectations onto SKAN dashboards.