7 Top Mobile Attribution Platforms and Tools for 2024

Effectively measuring app success can be mobile advertising attribution crucial in navigating digital ads, making it essential to select an ad platform that enables mobile attribution. This empowers you with the insights needed to optimize campaigns, improve user acquisition strategies, and drive sustained growth. Mobile attribution tools are more effective for marketing campaigns than Google Analytics because they explain why mobile users behave in a certain way.

mobile advertising attribution

What mobile attribution model is best?

In the longer term, teams usually export the data available inthe https://www.xcritical.com/ mobile attribution tool, through integrated reporting optionsor an API, and plug the data directly into their data warehouse. Mobile apps have become an essential part of our lives, and businesses are leveraging their power to drive growth and profitability. However, creating a mobile app is just the first step in a long journey.

  • Attribution is the only way mobile marketers can inform decisions in order to optimize their marketing spend.
  • And while ongoing changes from industry leaders have disrupted the normal flow of things – innovative industry experts are already providing useful solutions.
  • But finding a partner that will help you attribute your marketing spend to tangible results can mean everything for the success of your app.
  • The technology was really accurate but also really intrusive regarding users’ privacy.
  • This coincides with smartphones being the main way of accessing the Internet; in 2022, almost 60% of web traffic was coming from mobile devices.

#SHIPPED 2024: Product Updates Driving Mobile App Growth

For this reason, mobile marketers need an attribution tool with complete network coverage. Such attribution is based on specific device configurations (not the actual fingerprinting). Last click, or last touch, attribution gives credit to the last touchpoint before the conversion occurred and is therefore easy to understand and implement. It can also help identify which channels are driving the most valuable traffic. This article aims at providing an extensive overview of the mobile attribution framework, including all the methodologies and technologies employed, and their benefits and drawbacks.

What is the Advanced Mobile Measurement (AMM) Program?

mobile advertising attribution

As the number of available marketing channels grows, it becomes even more important to pinpoint which ones drive results. It involves analyzing data about user behavior such as app installs, in-app purchases (IAPs), clicks, and impressions, and then tracking the source of that behavior back to specific marketing efforts. In mobile app marketing measurement, «attributed to» means assigning or giving credit to a specific marketing channel or campaign for driving an install or engagement.

Enhances user acquisition strategies

Indeed, it is a statistical technique which uses, instead of ID matching, other parameters in order to connect the click on the ad (or the view, if view-through attribution is enabled) with the first launch of the app. These parameters are collected when those two actions occur and in a way that does not compromise users’ privacy. Mobile attribution is a little bit of a muddled web, but that doesn’t change the fact that it is a crucial addition to any mobile marketing stack. If you’re putting most of your spend into video ads, for example, you need to know if that’s actually where your user base is coming from. In the case of hyper-casual developers who do a lot of cross-promotion, mobile attribution can tell them what percentage of users are coming from their other games and which games are producing the most installs.

Mobile ad attribution helps evaluate the cost-effectiveness of campaigns by analyzing essential metrics such as customer acquisition cost and return on ad spend. Advertisers can alter their campaigns by making these improvements to focus on the most profitable channels, ensuring optimal budget use. App tracking provides valuable data that allows for targeting based on user demographics, behaviors, and preferences, ensuring that the ads reach the right audience for the product.

Similarly, navigation patterns and feature adoptions helps to monitor whether users are getting the most out of your app. Tracking their journey and utilization of certain features allows developers to better understand what the public find helpful. Data points illustrating the user journey enable advertisers to design more effective campaigns and optimize their budgets by gaining insights into what works best. Adjust puts emphasis not only on measuring in-app behavior but also on bot protection and user privacy.

For example, if a customer does a lot of their research online but then buys something in a store, the store may not get any credit. Somehow I’ve avoided the technical details of the online ad industry for most of my product career. There’s always been some marketing person nearby who know this area inside and out. But I’m at a small startup with limited resources, and we needed to get going with ad attribution.

Developers often submit data within months after the first attribution such as in products with a strong long-term retention or monetization models that involve subscriptions. In these cases, purchases can happen many months and years after the app’s first launch (which is a long funnel). For example, it won’t be possible to register a first-purchase event in a monetization model that involves a trial and subscription (the minimum trial duration is 3 days) . To summarize all of the above, IDFA plays a key role in solving the problems of purchasing and attributing ad traffic. It is the one thing that makes this connection between an advertising click and new users in the app. With the release of iOS 14, IDFA will become unavailable for most users, which will change the laws of mobile marketing.

mobile advertising attribution

Even so, it will be very difficult to maintain consistency with historical data. These factors can possibly lead to faster consolidation of the mobile market (both horizontal and vertical). These big players will keep the traffic moving within their ecosystem, advertising their apps to their users.

If you use a temporary attribution model, any attribution to Network B would move back to the previous source of attribution once that week is over. The network would still be paid for those reattributions, but the reattributed users’ ensuing session and event data would be reflected under the previous source, whether it be organic or another network source. This is the term that refers to the time frame during which the advertiser expects to receive the desired result from the ad campaign (installs of clicks or else). This time frame should be planned according to the marketing goals you need to achieve. This metric is used in mobile attribution analytics when it comes to apps.

mobile advertising attribution

For instance, the first and last touch is credited at 40%, while the remaining 20% rate is split evenly among the middle points. The first and last touchpoints in many campaigns are the most significant. This makes the U-shaped model useful for those interested in seeing essential information about the customer journey.

He was a part of the reviews team at Gadgets 360, India’s best technology website where he created content across different formats. During his stint with NDTV he reviewed nearly 300 gadgets including smartphone, tablets, and wearables. Aditya was also an anchor on Daily 360 that used to be streamed live on the Hop Live app. Additionally, the Google Privacy Sandbox has just gone into beta-testing – meaning further changes will be on the way sooner rather than later for Android marketers. In addition, Google updated their Google Play services in late 2021, announcing that the Android Advertising ID (AAID) will be erased when a user opts out of personalisation using advertising ID in Android Settings.

Ultimately, the goal of mobile attribution is not to tell you what happened, but to provide insights on what to do to make more of what you want to happen, actually happen. While on Android, Google’s advertising ID (the GAID) is still available, Privacy Sandbox for Android is coming probably in early 2024. There’s still the Google referrer, which is helpful, but Privacy Sandbox will be essential for fully understanding mobile attribution on Android from 2024 and on.