June kick-started on a high note with the Mobile Apps Unlocked (MAU) in Las Vegas. Focused on the future of mobile application acquisition and retention, the conference emphasized on some of the biggest trends taking over the digital marketing space.

Although it’s been nearly a year since Apple introduced the App Tracking Transparency (ATT) in iOS 14.5, the mobile app landscape is still grappling with its massive influence on user acquisition.  While ATT protects consumers from being tracked by third-party apps, it impedes the collection of identifiers that advertisers essentially leverage for personalized targeting.

Coming from a world where marketers championed their audiences and campaigns through complete visibility, this creates a pressing business problem. With this paradigm shift in privacy centricity, brands ought to be smarter with building trust through the relationships with their customers and users. Less data signals now call for custom metrics for attribution that give specific signals to their solution.

Additionally, with diminishing attention spans, brands across the globe are unanimously struggling with the fallout of departed app users. And so, with user attrition becoming yet another key business hurdle, brands are at a pressing juncture to unlock the full potential of digital customer experiences. The conference brought together seasoned leaders and subject matter experts who proposed the need for sophisticated platforms that can drive measurable value, support segmentation, creative testing and deliver unique insights across the customer experience. Here, Machine Learning (ML) algorithms have proven to dramatically improve customer experience, maintain customer loyalty and increase engagement. This technology suits all mobile business apps that need predictions and insights from large data sets.

Although personalization is believed to drive customer experiences, it will be increasingly difficult to achieve without an integrated system that allows marketing to leverage first-party data. In light of this, user acquisition is now becoming more complex by the day, urging an inevitable focus on making the best efforts in sync with user retention and engagement.

However, experts believe that the wide gaps in strategy have been brought by the now obsolete retargeting. Tapping into potential solutions, the industry has identified the use of creatives as the apt pivot in this level playing field. With authenticity believed to aid relatability, data shows that authenticity has made attainability a lot more real. And it is in this tangent that brands are building their digital identity and presence for the current generation, through bite-sized creatives, better known as the TikTok style of engagement.

Finally, on the flip side of this booming new digital era, is the marketers’ heavy dependence on developers. Although it has been a familiar and ongoing struggle for brands since the dawn of time, now more than ever it continues to inhibit independent discretion of marketers. The vicious cycle of consumers demanding relevant content and brands becoming more reliant on dev teams, sprint cycles, and app store approvals to launch even the simplest of personalized and segmented campaigns, seems like it is here to stay.

But in all, MAU was a testament to the fact that the mobile application landscape has barely scratched the surface and a pioneering digital revolution for customers is waiting to be unleashed!