SKAdNetwork

SKAdNetwork is Apple's system for telling advertisers that an install happened without revealing who installed.

When the IDFA is off, you still need to know an ad worked. SKAdNetwork, usually shortened to SKAN, is how Apple handles that. The ad platform and your app both report to Apple, Apple matches the click to the install privately, then returns a postback saying this campaign got an install, with no name and no device ID attached. By mid-2026 the industry has largely moved to SKAdNetwork 4, which adds signals like a rough source region and up to three postbacks over time.

Say you run three campaigns and get 200 installs across them. SKAN postbacks will tell you campaign A drove more installs than B or C and give you a coarse read on how those users behaved early on. What it will not give you is a row per person. Open your SKAN dashboard and notice the counts are grouped and delayed; that is the trade for measuring the users who said no to tracking.

SKAN protects privacy by hiding detail on purpose. Apple withholds numbers when a count is too small to stay anonymous, so low-volume campaigns can come back with blanks, and everything lands on a delay rather than in real time.

SKAN tells you the ad worked; it will never tell you who it worked on.