iOS AppTrackingTransparency and SKAdNetwork broke the fast iteration loop UA teams depended on. GazeIQ gives it back. Score every playable hook, video first-frame, and App Store screenshot for predicted attention before a single install event returns — so creative iteration keeps pace with UA budget.
The creative side of UA is compensating for the signal loss on the measurement side. When attribution gives you less, the creative has to do more — and you have fewer days of post-install signal to find out whether it worked.
Post-ATT, attribution on iOS is aggregated, delayed, and privacy-filtered. You cannot reliably tie a specific creative to a specific install in real time. That used to be the fastest feedback loop in UA — upload, spend, iterate. Now it is spend, wait, guess, iterate. Every day of creative uncertainty costs more than it used to.
Playables, video ads, and interactive previews have a brutal gate: the first 2–3 seconds of gameplay, offer, or value prop. Lose a viewer in that window and the creative is dead regardless of end-card quality. Most UA teams do not have a reliable pre-launch signal on whether their hook is strong — they find out by spending on it.
Once the ad earns the click, the App Store listing is what converts the browser. The first screenshot in particular — often rendered at a thumbnail size in search results — is disproportionately important. But most teams rotate screenshots based on intuition, not structural attention testing. A screenshot with a buried value prop or invisible CTA leaks installs all the way down the funnel.
A CPI range of $3–$15 on similar audiences is almost entirely a creative problem. Weak creatives drag blended CPI up, strong creatives pull it down. Without a pre-launch signal, you are averaging across both and watching UA budgets stretch less far than they should. The fix is filtering the weak ones before they launch.
Five capabilities that map to the specific shape of mobile UA creative — hook-led video, playables, App Store screenshots, and the spend-to-learn cycle that SKAdNetwork has quietly broken.
Upload the first-second frame of your playable, video, or interactive ad in Instagram Story context. Get a dedicated Attention Score on whether the hook lands — gameplay action visible, value prop clear, brand mark recognizable. This is the single highest-leverage score in mobile UA because it predicts the downstream install funnel.
Drop your first and second App Store screenshots into Meta Feed context. Headline salience and CTA visibility sub-scores surface whether the value prop survives the thumbnail rendering Apple uses in search results. Catch invisible-CTA screenshots before they ship to production and start quietly leaking installs.
Attribution is broken. Creative iteration does not have to be. Pre-testing gives you a deterministic, pre-launch signal on every creative variant in under 8 seconds — no post-install attribution required. You iterate on a creative quality signal, not on delayed and aggregated post-install events.
The attention score is a strong predictor of which creatives land near the floor vs. ceiling of your CPI range. Holding your in-market creatives at Attention Score 78+ and killing new variants under 65 without launching tends to tighten the blended CPI distribution materially — which means UA budgets go further per install without any bid or targeting changes.
Mobile UA runs across Meta app install campaigns, Google UAC, and programmatic DSPs. GazeIQ scores creative in Meta Feed, Instagram Story, and Google Display contexts from a single dashboard — so one pre-testing workflow covers the channels that actually matter for app install.
Three concrete scenarios where pre-testing changes how a mobile UA team spends the same budget — without relying on SKAdNetwork to tell them what happened.
A hypercasual studio produces 12 variations of a playable hook — different first-action animations, different brand placements, different headline overlays. Historically they launched all 12 and let SKAdNetwork postback windows sort winners (a 10-day wait). Scoring the 12 hook frames in GazeIQ ranks them in 2 minutes; the team launches the top 4 with materially higher confidence. Blended CPI lands 18% below the prior month average on the same audience definitions.
A subscription fitness app's first App Store screenshot scores 52 in GazeIQ — the '7-day free trial' value prop is in the lower-third where it gets cut off in search thumbnails, and the dominant attention zone is a generic workout photo. The team re-designs the screenshot with the trial offer in the upper-third and a higher-contrast CTA stroke. The score lifts to 81. Organic conversion rate on the listing climbs roughly 22% over the next 30 days — improvement compounds with paid UA.
A fintech onboarding app has a Meta CPI range of $4.20–$13.80 across 20 active video creatives. Scoring all 20 reveals a clean pattern: creatives scoring 80+ on Attention average $5.10 CPI; creatives scoring 60–70 average $9.40; creatives under 60 average $12.50. The team pauses all sub-70 creatives and uses the attention score as a pre-launch gate. Blended CPI stabilizes at $5.80 — a quarter of what it was at the high end.
Typical CPI reduction after pre-testing filters out sub-65 hook frames on Meta and Google UAC
Higher install rate on App Store listings where the first screenshot scores 75+ on headline salience
Typical SKAdNetwork postback wait you skip by iterating on attention scores instead of install events
“One mobile gaming UA team we spoke with was shipping hook variants at high cadence but waiting 7–10 days for SKAdNetwork postbacks before knowing which ones to kill. After adding attention scoring as a pre-launch step, they cut their weekly UA creative loss by roughly a third and tightened blended CPI by about 20% without any changes to bidding or audience setup. The subscription paid for itself in a single week of recovered waste.”
Hypothetical scenario illustrating typical mobile UA outcomes. Individual results vary.
Score your first UA creative and App Store screenshot in under five minutes.
Drop in your playable hook, video first-frame, or App Store screenshot. Use Instagram Story context for 9:16 vertical, Meta Feed for the iPhone screenshot ratio.
Get a 0–100 Attention Score plus sub-scores on CTA visibility, headline salience, visual hierarchy, edge avoidance, and clutter — with principle-based fix recommendations.
Hooks scoring 75+ go into UA rotation. Screenshots scoring 75+ ship to the App Store listing. Anything under 65 gets fixed before launch. SKAdNetwork signal loss stops slowing you down.
SKAdNetwork collapses post-install attribution into aggregated, delayed, privacy-protected buckets. You cannot rapidly iterate on creative based on in-app events anymore — by the time you get directional signal, you have spent weeks of UA budget. Pre-testing with attention scoring is a deterministic, pre-launch signal that does not depend on post-install tracking. You know which creative is structurally sound before iOS's privacy framework gives you anything. That is how you keep iterating at speed in a signal-constrained world.
Yes — the first 2–3 seconds of a playable or video ad is where the install decision lives, and that is exactly what our thumbnail/first-frame scoring is for. Upload the hook frame in our Instagram Story context (9:16 vertical) and get an Attention Score, heatmap, and sub-metrics on whether the gameplay action, brand mark, or value prop wins the first fixation. Most UA teams score the hook, the mid-point action, and the end-card CTA separately.
App Store screenshots are one of the highest-leverage assets in mobile UA — they convert browsers after the ad has already done its job. Upload them in our Meta Feed context (the 9:19.5 aspect ratio aligns closely with the iPhone App Store screenshot ratio), and use the Attention Score plus headline salience sub-score to evaluate which screenshots read clearly at the thumbnail size Apple actually renders. First screenshot in particular should score 75+ on CTA/value-prop visibility.
The CPI volatility in mobile UA is almost always a creative problem — same audience, same bid, different creative gets radically different click-through and install rates. Attention pre-testing gives you a pre-launch signal on which creatives are structurally set up to land closer to the floor of your CPI range. Teams we see typically hold their best-performing creatives at Attention Score 78+ and kill anything new that scores under 65 without even launching. That alone tightens the CPI distribution and lets UA budgets go further per install.
Pre-test your next UA creative or App Store screenshot in under 8 seconds. Heatmap, attention score, specific AI fixes — no install events required.
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