Overview

SKAN measures your iOS campaigns using Apple's privacy-preserving SKAdNetwork postbacks — no IDFA, no ATT consent required. Learn how SKAN works in AdShift and how to read the SKAN Overview dashboard.

SKAdNetwork (SKAN) is Apple's privacy-preserving attribution framework. It lets you measure iOS campaign performance without an IDFA and without requiring ATT (App Tracking Transparency) consent. AdShift collects the aggregated SKAN postbacks Apple generates, decodes them, and presents the results in the SKAN Overview dashboard alongside your other channels.

Go to Analyze → SKAN Overview to open the dashboard.

SKAN is only available for iOS apps. The app selector on this page is filtered to iOS apps only.

How SKAN works in AdShift

When a user installs your app after seeing an ad, iOS — not the AdShift SDK — generates a signed postback. The flow:

iOS user installs app → iOS generates signed postback → Ad network receives postback → AdShift receives + decodes postback → SKAN Overview dashboard

The postback contains an anonymized attribution record enriched with a conversion value (CV) — a measure of user quality during the post-install measurement period. AdShift verifies, decodes, and aggregates postbacks from every connected ad network into a single view.

Starting with iOS 15, postbacks can also be sent directly to AdShift in parallel (a "postback copy"). This lets AdShift verify that conversion values were not manipulated.

Measurement windows (SKAN 4)

SKAN 4 reports post-install activity across three measurement windows. A separate postback can arrive after each window:

Window	Period after install	What it reflects
Window 0 (W0)	Days 0–2	Early activity — the first and most common postback
Window 1 (W1)	Days 3–7	Mid-funnel activity
Window 2 (W2)	Days 8–35	Long-term value

Conversion values: fine vs coarse

Apple sends two kinds of conversion value, depending on how much traffic a campaign has:

Fine — a precise value from 0 to 63 (6 bits). Available only in Window 1 when there is enough install volume to protect privacy.
Coarse — a bucketed value of low, medium, or high. Sent when install volume is too low for a fine value, and available in all three windows.
Null — when volume is below Apple's privacy threshold, the CV is withheld entirely and arrives as null.

What each CV means (for example, how revenue or events map to a fine value) is configured in SKAN Conversion Studio. The SKAN Overview dashboard shows the decoded results.

SKAN Overview dashboard

The dashboard aggregates decoded postback data for the selected period and filters.

Headline metrics

The cards at the top summarise the selected period:

Metric	Description
Installs	New downloads and Redownloads, split out as two values
Touchpoints	Ad Impressions and Clicks from connected networks
Decoded Revenue	Total revenue (USD) decoded from the conversion values
Cost	Ad spend (USD) pulled from connected network accounts
CTI	Click-to-Install rate

Conversion Insights

Three distribution panels break down how your postbacks arrived:

Panel	Buckets	Tells you
Coarse distribution	low / medium / high	The quality mix of installs reported with a coarse CV
Window distribution	W0 / W1 / W2	When postbacks arrived across the three measurement windows
CV type distribution	fine / coarse / null	How many postbacks carried a precise value, a bucket, or were withheld by Apple

A high share of null CVs usually means campaigns are below Apple's privacy threshold — consider consolidating campaigns to increase per-campaign volume.

Grouped breakdown

The breakdown table groups performance by two dimensions of your choice. Available dimensions: Ad network, Campaign, Country, Conversion type, and Interaction type.

Column	Description
Postbacks	Total postbacks received
Installs	Decoded new installs
Redownloads	Decoded redownloads
Win Rate	Share of postbacks where this source won attribution
Revenue	Decoded revenue (USD)
Revenue / Install	Decoded revenue divided by installs
Avg CV	Average conversion value

Click any column header to sort.

Charts

The page also includes a trend chart, a touchpoints chart, a bar-chart breakdown, donut distributions, and revenue-per-user — all driven by the same filters.

SKAN vs Single Source of Truth (SSOT)

The mode toggle at the top of the page switches between two views of the same data:

Mode	What it shows	Use when
SKAN (All installs)	Every SKAN install reported by Apple	You want the full volume of iOS installs as Apple counts them
SSOT (Unified)	SKAN installs with duplicates removed where AdShift already attributed the install device-level	You want one deduplicated number across SKAN and deterministic attribution

In SSOT mode, a banner reports how many duplicate SKAN installs were removed because they were already attributed via another method. This is the same concept as the Single Source of Truth attribution mode in Analyze: Overview — it avoids double-counting an install that both SKAN and device-level attribution recorded.

Data freshness

SKAN data is updated daily. Apple releases postbacks on a delay tied to the measurement windows, so installs from a campaign continue to accrue postbacks for up to 35 days. Expect today's numbers for recent installs to keep rising as later-window postbacks arrive.

Filters

Filter	Description
Mode	SKAN (all installs) or SSOT (unified / deduplicated)
App	iOS app to analyse
Date range	The period to analyse
Ad network	Filter to a specific network
Campaign	Filter to a specific campaign
Install type	All, Download, or Redownload

All filters are remembered between visits.

Requirements

AdShift iOS SDK integrated — see dev.adshift.com for the integration guide.
NSAdvertisingAttributionReportEndpoint set in your app's Info.plist so iOS sends postback copies to AdShift for verification.
A published SKAN configuration so conversion values can be decoded — see SKAN Conversion Studio.