Mobile Attribution: Its Crucial Role in Mobile Marketing

This type of attribution is often used to measure brand awareness and it’s not particularly common in affiliate marketing or other types of performance marketing. To put it another way, mobile attribution is similar to ad attribution in that it connects an install to a person watching or engaging with a specific ad from an ad network. Marketers can sensibly grow their paid advertising efforts by properly tracking where installations are flowing from. It is a procedure for connecting the actions or conversions of the user of a mobile device, such as registering or creating a profile, with a specific campaign or a traffic source.

Hence the term “universal.” Universal SDKs have already done the heavy lifting, connecting advertisers to the entire mobile ecosystem through integrations with 1,000s of media sources. If you’re like most mobile marketers, you’re constantly testing new ad networks to expand your reach and improve the bottom line. For https://www.xcritical.com/ this reason, mobile marketers need an attribution tool with complete network coverage. Great mobile attribution measures cross-platform journeys, is customizable, and crucially, provides insights for marketing optimization. The linear attribution considers all touchpoints and interactions users made with your app.

What are some common marketing attribution models?

Attribution models are only as good as the data they are based on; sometimes, the data can be inaccurate or incomplete, leading to incorrect or misleading results. Mobile Attribution assigns a value to a specific marketing action (such as clicking on an ad, downloading an app, or making a purchase) that resulted in a conversion (i.e., someone who became a customer). It allows you to measure their campaigns’ effectiveness and determine which channels are generating the most conversions. Mobile Attribution is a way of determining which marketing channels are driving results. It allows you to track your users’ journey from the very first click to conversion.

  • Nevertheless, the main difference is that web attribution is done on the web while app attribution is done in mobile applications.
  • As a developer,
    you ship your app to your end users with the attribution SDK included.
  • Linear attribution shows you the impact of all your content and messaging during the ‘consideration’ phase of the buyer’s journey.
  • This allows it to generate the fingerprint from the install and track clicks with the matching fingerprint, with the last click attributing the install.
  • However, it misses the worth of each touchpoint in the journey and can lead to marketers making uninformed decisions by focusing on the last click conversion only.
  • Most marketers use app attribution tools or MMPs for conversion tracking.

The biggest difference is that websites only get information from browsers, so web tracking is based solely on the information available through the platforms used to access the internet. Mobile apps, on the other hand, collect data directly from the devices, which allows for more intricate and accurate monitoring. If you’re not working with an attribution provider, you’re probably spending countless resources and man hours trying to make sense of your media data with too many dashboards and/or Excel spreadsheets.

Platform

App developers integrate the SDK into their app’s code, much like if they had a car and a manufacturer gave them a new part for a bit of an upgrade. This creates a line of communication between the app and Adjust, through which we can provide attribution data in real-time. With this information, the attribution provider can determine whether the user is new or existing. If the user is new, the attribution provider will attempt to match the user’s install to their engagement on a particular ad. This exchange of information can happen in several ways, but the most common is for the app to integrate the attribution provider’s SDK.

what is mobile marketing attribution

Based on this data, you can see what messaging and marketing strategies work best and adjust your tactics accordingly. Apple informed app developers that “fingerprinting,” a probabilistic attribution mechanism, is prohibited unless users give specific authorization. However, the future attribution mechanism on iOS will be powered, at least partially, by SKAdNetwork, a privacy-preserving deterministic architecture for mobile app install attribution.

What do attribution providers do?

Now you can easily identify your best-performing campaigns, understand what you did right and build a successful marketing strategy. When done correctly, mobile attribution can help you better understand which campaigns are driving results and convert those insights into better-performing future campaigns. This issue will only likely increase with the upcoming rollout of Apple’s AppTrackingTransparency (ATT) framework, which changing how apps can track user activity. Some people don’t like this change because it restricts what apps can do. Marketers who can adapt to these changes will be well-positioned to continue driving results for their campaigns. One common criticism is that it doesn’t account for other touchpoints’ role in the customer’s decision-making process.

what is mobile marketing attribution

All of Adjust’s features are available through a single platform with unrestricted access. This makes it easier for clients to get back to what they do best — focusing on campaigns and growth. MMPs help marketers grow their mobile apps with solutions for measuring and marketing attribution definition optimizing campaigns and protecting user data. This is particularly useful for marketers as it allows them to understand exactly what motivates their users. Marketers also get insights into their customers’ lifecycle and can identify high lifetime value (LTV) users.