Developer insight: How to navigate privacy hurdles in social casino gaming apps

Since Apple rolled out its opt-in mechanism as part of the App Tracking Transparency (ATT) framework, the gaming app industry has been thrown into uncertainty. Users must actively give their consent to allow advertisers to measure data, presenting challenges to collecting accurate, trustworthy data to build brand affinity, improve user experience and limit fraud threats.

With the current global ATT opt-in rate for social casino gaming apps standing at 41%, developers are in need of adopting tactics that help boost this percentage.

Building brand affinity

When users engage with new games, their attention is typically focused on the game itself rather than the brand behind it. As a result, users don’t have a strong first connection with gaming apps and a prompt that requests tracking permissions is often viewed with more caution.

Appsflyer’s recent research revealed gaming apps have lower opt-in rates than their non-gaming counterparts. Game developers need to win user trust – with higher levels of trust, opt-in rates rise. One way to achieve this is by displaying a customisable ‘pre-ATT prompt’ before Apple’s notification.

Product Madness, a social casino game operator, trialled different customisations to identify the most effective prompt. Piyush Mishra, growth lead at Product Madness shared: “We experimented with different pre-popup layouts focusing on clarity of the message and a friendly design to increase the opt-in rate which actually improved during the A/B testing.” Furthermore, the tests uncovered that the timing of the prompt had a significant impact on users’ decisions.

Enhancing the user experience without compromising privacy

Pinpointing the right moment in the user journey to display the ATT dialogue is highly important. Showing it when the app is launched for the first time could mean game developers miss opportunities to demonstrate the value of their game beforehand. However, there are also technical considerations to weigh up. Game developers can control when ATT prompts appear and when mobile SDKs are initialised.

Product Madness decided to show the ATT prompt within 60 seconds of AppsFlyer’s SDK being triggered. According to Mishra, “we thought that pushing the ATT prompt to specific in-game events may affect the attribution process, as the AppsFlyer SDK is initialised when the app is open. We needed the ATT status at the start for other SDKs like Facebook, to enable them to collect the data based on it.”

Following its tests, Product Madness gained more accurate attribution data as soon as users launched the app and opted-in. Furthermore, displaying ATT prompts at this point in the user journey prevented disruption later on, enhancing the gaming experience. However, boosting engagement comes with additional risk.

Overcoming potential fraud threats

Google Trends data showed that interest in online casinos games hit an all-time high in the UK during the pandemic, while gaming app installations soared by 25% in the same period, according to AppsFlyer data. Given the increased engagement and the limitations of Apple’s new attribution protocol, game developers must be vigilant to defend against fraud.

Insights into user behaviours are essential for identifying anomalous data that points to fraudulent activity. The lucrative cost-per-install and cost-per-action payouts attract bad actors, meaning games developers need to rapidly adapt to emerging trends from fraudsters. Relying on Apple’s fraud prevention methods might not be enough to protect against these, so investing in multi-layered security will provide better protection. Only with transparent data on user actions can game developers effectively inhibit fraud.

Raising opt-in rates is hugely beneficial to game developers, making it critical that they review their methods to earn user consent. By customising pre-ATT prompts and optimising when they occur in the user journey, developers can ensure they continue to re-engage gamers, offer a strong gaming experience, and reinforce their defences against fraudsters, all while preserving user privacy.

Adam Smart is director of product for gaming, where he focuses on driving growth in the vertical through product development, go-to market strategy and business development. He brings a wealth of industry knowledge to the role, having previously spent more than seven years at Product Madness, a game developer.