The 2021 Liftoff Mobile Ad Creative Index Report: New IDFA Rules May Prompt Ad Creative to Be Android’s for the Taking

Liftoff, a global performance-based mobile app marketing optimization platform, has unveiled its third annual report, The 2021 Liftoff Mobile Ad Creative Index Report. For the second year in a row, the report highlights the promise of Android for mobile marketers and features a surprising year-over-year flip in the value of the video ad format. Besides, after a year of significant user engagement changes, the cost of user acquisition for all types of applications has dropped dramatically.

The 2021 Liftoff Mobile Ad Creative Index Report analyzed nearly 400 billion impressions across 6.2 billion clicks, 275 million installs and 7.7 million first-time events in about 1,800 apps between January 1, 2020 and October 31, 2020. Highlights of the report are the following:

2021 May Be Android’s Year for Ad Creative 

With IDFA rule changes, the data shows that the coming year in ad creative may be Android’s for the taking.

Customer acquisition costs flow to Android, with costs to acquire a purchasing user three times higher on iOS. Over the past year, CPAs for traditional banner ads on iOS was around $36.77 -- 3.5 times more costly than Android’s $10.28 and the largest difference of any ad format. But conversions are the real tipping point, and by type of ad the two are evenly matched. In addition, interstitial ads and banner ads respectively perform 52% and 22% higher on Android devices. Native ads still convert more users on iOS, but with only a minor lead of 10%.

According to Liftoff’s data, about a third of marketers expect to increase their Android AD budgets in 2021. That would be good news for them.

"The rules for IDFA are not yet set," said Liftoff CEO and co-founder Mark Ellis. Marketers who are not thinking about Android should start to understand the capabilities of the platform and how they can achieve similar results. Marketers who continue to run ads on iOS should rely on the data to choose the types of ads that will benefit them and make informed choices.