Table of Contents
- Attribute your app installs to marketing campaigns
- Set up marketing source attribution for your Android and iOS app installs
- Target mobile experiments with custom tags
Marketing source attribution is used to identify the sources, like search or an ad campaign, that bring traffic to a website or app. In this article, we'll show you how to track the marketing source for each of your app installs, so you know which campaigns are most effective at driving installations.
On the web, marketers most commonly track attribution information through tagging the campaign’s URL with a query string parameter, like a UTM, and then analyze the information gleaned from UTM parameters using an analytics tool. Optimizely enables testers to target based on UTM parameters via Audiences.
While URL query string parameters are common on the web, mobile source attribution is slightly varied. In this article, we will cover how a marketer working on an Android or iOS app can use and collect source information to understand which of their campaigns are best at getting visitors to install their app and then converting down the funnel.
Marketing source attribution for Android (Google Play)
Prerequisite
- Configure the InstallReferrerReceiver in your app
In Android, the process is similar to the web.
- Campaign URLs have a special query parameter called referrer (for example, referrer=value). The value of the referrer parameter is a URL-encoded string of information about the campaign the user clicked on. These URLs will typically redirect a user to the Google Play store to download the app, or if the app is already installed, launch the app (optionally deep-linking to a particular view).
Example:
The referrer parameter in a URL (referrer parameter is bolded)
https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...l=en&referrer=utm_source%3Dadwords%26utm_medium%3Dcpc
- When a user clicks the ad, they are redirected to the app page on Google Play. Google Play records the referrer parameter and associates it with a unique identifier for the mobile device.
- The user downloads and installs the app. The first time the app launches, the install referrer receiver sends a unique device identifier to a Google Play API. Google Play responds with the referrer recorded in step 2.
- The app can use the install referrer information to hand that information off to an analytics tool or using the information for targeting in Optimizely.
Essentially, the Google Play store acts as an intermediary between the ad campaign and the newly installed mobile app to make marketing source attribution possible.
Marketing source attribution for iOS (Apple App Store)
When it comes to passing marketing source information between ad campaigns clicked and newly installed apps in the Apple Store, there is no concept of install referrer. Instead, there are mobile source attribution vendors that have made many options available for marketers who want to do marketing source attribution for their iOS app installs.
There are mobile source attribution vendors, and many of them share similar features, such as:
- Maintaining relationships with major ad networks (such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, and so on). Each vendor has a different set of relationships, so make sure that the networks you use are connected to the vendor you choose.
- Tracking and recording any clicks on your campaigns. Additionally, the vendor will collect a set of heuristics which uniquely identify the user’s device - this process is known as fingerprinting. Each vendor does this a bit differently, see here for an explanation of how AppsFlyer and MobileAppTracking handle fingerprinting. The attribution vendor can use the fingerprint heuristics to reconcile with clicks on your ads and figure out which ad click resulted in an app install (thus completing the install source attribution cycle).
- Additionally, every major ad network makes a tracking package available, so using the ad network’s tracking package may be suitable for apps advertising on a small number of networks.
To get started, the app developer installs the vendor’s SDK in their app.
When the app launches for the first time, the vendor’s SDK makes a call to the vendor’s API, transmitting a similar set of fingerprint heuristics for the user’s device.
All vendors give you some level of reporting on install attribution in their web interface. Some of them let you trigger a “postback” (essentially an API call to an endpoint you specify) which can inform your analytics platform that an install occurred as a result of a particular campaign. However, you want to get access to that campaign attribution on the device itself. This is done through a process called deferred deep-linking. As of this writing, the only two attribution vendors which have this capability are AppsFlyer and Tapstream.
Sample AppsFlyer / Optimizely iOS integration
To integrate AppsFlyer and Optimizely, the goal is to get access to install source attribution information and use it for targeting your experiments. Use a Custom Tag as the carrier for this information.
Prerequisites
-
Install AppsFlyer iOS SDK
-
Configure marketing campaigns in AppsFlyer
Getting attribution information from the AppsFlyer SDK
When an app is installed, AppsFlyer uses the onConversionDataReceived method for an app install event. Essentially, this method will receive install attribution data from the AppsFlyer API and make it available via the installData object. See here for a full description of the implementation process.
The installData object is a dictionary of key:value pairs which describe the installation source. Here’s an example of the information you might get access to:
{
"af_status" : "Non-organic",
"is_fb" : true,
"media_source" : "Facebook Ads",
"agency" : "nanigans",
"campaign_name": "nanigans_US_18-25",
"campaign_id" : "6012743935279",
"adgroup_name" : "Adgroup-1",
"adgroup_id" : "6012743942279",
"adset_name" : "adset-1",
"adset_id" : "6012743935479",
"ad_id" : "6012743943079",
"af_sub1" : null,
"af_sub2" : null,
"af_sub3" : null,
"af_sub4" : null,
"af_sub5" : null,
"install_time" : "2014-05-22 14:12:37.208",
"click_time" : "2014-05-22 14:08:08"
}Registering Custom Tags using AppsFlyer attribution data
When you have access to the information contained in AppsFlyer’s installData object, you can hand that data off to Optimizely in the form of a Custom Tag. For example, perhaps you want to run a test that targets only your users coming from Facebook ads. Looking at the installData object, you have access to a media_source key whose value is the ad network where the user came from. Create a custom tag called marketing_source. Call the setValue:forCustomTag: method as follows:
[Optimizely setValue:[installData objectForKey:@"media_source"] forCustomTag:@"marketing_source"];This creates a custom tag named marketing_source whose value is “Facebook Ads” (“Facebook Ads” is the value of the key named media_source in the installData object).
Initialize the the Optimizely experiments in your app by calling startOptimizely.
Targeting Optimizely mobile experiments using Custom Tags
afer you create the marketing_source tag in your app, target your mobile experiments to only those users who come from a particular ad network:
- Edit the mobile experiment you want to target using your new custom tag.
- Click the Options menu in the top right corner and select Targeting.
- Add a Custom Tag targeting attribute for marketing_source = Facebook Ads.
Users who click on Facebook ads are included in the experiment, and others are excluded.