How Airalo transformed its iOS growth strategy with privacy-centric measurement

For growth marketers, navigating iOS user acquisition in recent years has been a challenge. A tightening privacy landscape has severely limited measurement visibility into lower-funnel performance. For many organizations, this reality turned marketing into a guessing game — stalling growth, complicating ROI justification, and creating friction between marketing and finance teams.

At Airalo, the world’s leading eSIM platform, iOS users represent a valuable customer segment. To sustain rapid global scaling, leadership couldn’t afford to fly blind.

Led by Head of Performance Allan Ma, Airalo successfully modernized its measurement approach, turning a fractured iOS environment into a confident, predictable growth engine. Here is the strategic shift behind the turnaround.

The cost of flying blind

While Airalo’s Google App campaigns successfully drove top-of-funnel volume, the team faced a structural blocker common to iOS campaigns. They could measure initial app installs, but they lacked visibility into lower-funnel conversions, like sign-ups and first-time purchases.

For senior leadership, this created a distinct operational challenge. Budget allocation decisions were being made on incomplete data, complicating stakeholder management. Without a unified data source, justifying iOS investment became an uphill battle.

Moving beyond proxy metrics to business outcomes

To address incomplete attribution, the team initially relied on data from Apple’s SKAdNetwork (SKAN), data with proxy metrics that estimated downstream revenue based on early sign-ups. However, this approach had clear limits. The combination of SKAN’s narrow reporting window and proxy modeling inherently introduced data noise, leading to slow, conservative decision-making.

Airalo’s strategic breakthrough came with a shift from these incomplete signals and proxy metrics to Google’s Integrated Conversion Measurement (ICM), which uses privacy-enhancing technologies like on-device conversion measurement using event data.

This transition provided a more comprehensive, accurate view of performance, giving the team the confidence to pivot their focus from app installs to core business metrics like new customer acquisition and first purchases. To maintain data harmony, Ma’s team synchronized their ICM performance data across Airalo’s internal attribution system and Adjust, their third-party App Attribution Partner.

“The biggest change was not just having more data but having more trustworthy, connected data,” notes Ma. “Once lower funnel events were flowing cleanly into Adjust and our internal reporting, it became much easier to understand what was actually happening and much easier to defend iOS investment decisions with confidence.”

The strategic dividend: Scaling with confidence

By closing the attribution gap, Airalo not only sharpened its internal decision-making but also built a stronger foundation for iOS campaign optimization. This expanded visibility into the user journey allowed the team to double their conversion rates and unlock a 100X improvement in reported customer acquisition cost efficiency, propelling Airalo past the 30 million customer milestone this year, a 50% increase year over year.

Ultimately, this new approach gave the clarity they needed to prove ROI and confidently scale Google as an iOS growth channel. Moving forward, Ma and his team will continue to optimize for core business outcomes. “The more we can optimize against quality signals, like first purchase with strong measurement and clean internal reporting behind it, the more effectively we can scale profitable growth on iOS,” says Ma.

The leadership playbook

Airalo’s success offers a clear playbook for marketers navigating the complexities of iOS user acquisition.

• Prioritize data strength. Measurement infrastructure is no longer just a technical back-end issue. It’s a foundational growth lever. Privacy-enhancing technologies like ICM close critical measurement gaps, feeding quality data back into your campaign algorithms. When you can actually see the high-value actions customers take deeper in the funnel, you can eliminate guesswork and allocate budget based on hard performance data.
• Focus on business outcomes over proxy metrics. Advanced measurement allows marketing teams to move away from vanity metrics, like app installs, and optimize for revenue-generating events, like first purchases. Shifting focus to these high-value signals tunes out the statistical noise, giving your organization a clearer, more reliable picture of actual ROI.
• Unify your source of truth to unlock scale. For measurement to be truly useful, the data from solutions like ICM must flow seamlessly into your organization’s core business intelligence and attribution tools. Aligning these data streams prevents cross-functional friction, ensures marketing and finance teams are looking at the same numbers, and gives leadership the confidence to invest in what works.