Those days are long gone when users searched online or retail stores for a game they loved to play on PC or PlayStation. In the past, there were fewer options to choose from. Nowadays, there are thousands of game apps. The practice is also true for any other mobile apps like eCommerce, online teaching, messaging, social media, etc. Today apps reach out to all the places where the target audience is, and the best media is ads. But how do you know if your ads are performing well? The answer is mobile attribution data analyzed by MMPs to create a user journey map linking each touchpoint. Read on to uncover some trusted and reliable MMP platforms that the leading mobile app development companies use.
What Is Mobile Attribution?📉
Mobile Attribution is an online marketing data analysis technology that connects the dots between cause and effect in the mobile app industry. For example, you are running a Facebook or Google Ads campaign to promote a game app that your team has developed. Now, let us consider that you see an increase in the install numbers of the app. In the marketing industry, you can not just correlate that to the ad campaign. You need to collect several data on the ad (cause) and the user’s response (effect) and attribute them to one another through data points. Mobile ad campaign attribution discovers intriguing facts about your mobile app that drives users for installs, referrals, product purchases, service subscriptions, etc. Once you know what intrigues your users most, you can invest in that part of the mobile app to keep the customers engaged. This marketing technique aims to maximize app revenue by either increasing installs or guiding the user to make a buy decision through the sales funnel.
Why Do You Need Mobile Attribution?
Mobile app marketers and mobile app development leads need to use this marketing technique for the below-mentioned reasons:
Improve Retargeting Strategies
Mobile ad campaign data attribution can reveal vital data points like broken chains in a user journey where the user landed on your app’s page to install but did not do so. You can extract such reports to improvise the user journey and retarget users to acquire new customers or subscribers.
Prevent Ad Fraud
A mobile measurement partner tool can perform an in-depth analysis of ad campaign data to unearth fake clicks or installs. The MMP provider will report those sources so that you can take steps to stop ad fraud.
Test Sales Funnel’s Effectiveness
Let’s consider you also pay for any sales funnel strategy to drive product purchases or subscriptions. You can easily test its efficacy when marketing data analysis reveals that the sales funnel also a part of the users’ journey.
Calculate ROI
In reality, you are investing in your app’s development when you pay for ad campaigns. Hence, company investors might want to know the return on investment (ROI) on such spending. Mobile advertisement attribution data helps you with ROI data.
Increase Brand Engagements
When you know which app features and services delight the users and drive referrals for more installations, you can specifically improvise those elements or advertise those aggressively. It will ultimately increase your brand’s online presence and engagements.
Invest Wisely and Earn Better Revenue
The paid ad campaign is a costly marketing component. Hence, you only need to run ads on the correct platform and user base where it will fetch results. You can only do this when you have mobile ad data attribution data from your MMP service provider—eventually, the revenue increases as the marketing cost decrease.
Mobile Attribution Models
#1. The first-touch model says that the starting touchpoint on which the customer clicked and ultimately converted to a sale or install will get the attribution credit. #2. On the contrary, the last-touch model will credit the final ad on which customers clicked to buy an item from your app or install an app. It is the most commonly used attribution model among mobile app marketers. #3. There is also the multi-touch attribution model. It assigns a weighted percentage of credits to each media or platform that drives the user to install or buy an app through several steps.
What Do Mobile Measurement Partners Do?
#1. MMPs provide a single integrated advertisement software development kit (SKD) for all the ad publishers and networks for data collection. Hence, you need not install separate SDKs for various ad networks and burden the mobile app with unnecessary codes. #2. MMPs are the single source of unbiased data for mobile attribution. These platforms deliver a clean report that shows ad campaign performance in simple language, what went wrong, where to improve, etc. #3. Some MMPs may provide tools to block ad frauds like SDK spoofing, click flooding, click spamming, install hijacking, click injection, ad stacking, and so on. Here are some of the best MMPs for successful mobile ad campaigns.📱
AppsFlyer
Appsflyer is one of the leading tools to track mobile ad attributions. It comes with advanced features like retargeting attribution, multi-touch attribution, configurable attribution windows, etc. Such features enable mobile app marketers to accomplish their marketing targets effortlessly. The MMP tool comes with three different subscription plans fit for a wide category of businesses like micro, small, medium, startup, and enterprises. You can start with the Zero plan if you have a limited ad budget. It covers services like a 30-day free trial of paid add-ons, deep linking, customer redirection, smart banners, basic marketing analytics, etc. Appsflyer is excellent for advanced reports like retention reports and cohort analysis. You can also personalize these reports based on source, country, raw user data, and app version. Moreover, you can easily export these reports to data visualization and business intelligence tools like Power BI.
Adjust
Adjust is another trusted name in the ad campaign attribution niche. It offers a comprehensive solution above and beyond attribution management. Acquired.io, one of the leading data aggregation platforms, is now with Adjust to offer a single and easy-to-use marketing dashboard for all mobile ad campaigns. It is a fully automated marketing analytics product branded as the Adjust Automate trade name. It lets you create self-running workflows for bid management, marketing budget allocation, etc. Another factor that will move you to consider this MMP tool is active modules for ad fraud prevention. First off, it blocks malicious codes and scripts from entering the client’s ad campaign ecosystem as a first defense. Adjust have also bagged Unbotify cyber security through company acquisition. Thus, the MMP platform also eliminates ad fraud-bots that somehow enter the client’s app as fake users or subscribers.
Branch.io
Branch.io is also a popular attribution and linking platform for mobile app marketers. If you value app insight and customer experience of using the app, you must try Branch. It helps you utilize existing sales channels for user delight and increase revenue. A report on Branch integrated apps suggests that the marketers who use this mobile measurement partner platform can expect up to 3.5 times more customer lifetime value (LTV), up to 48% year on the year growth rate of their mobile apps, and up to 200% increase in mobile app revenue earning. The tool offers links to engage the target audience of your mobile app. Such link-based activities drive the potential leads to install or buy the app. Therefore, Branch is not a mere tool for conversion analytics. It also assists you in driving purchases, subscriptions, and mobile app installs.
Localytics
Do you want to connect with your app users in a more meaningful way? Do you want to boost user engagements with your mobile app by delivering personalized ad campaigns? You can try Localytics, the next-generation mobile app marketing and analytics tool. This MMP software is capable of handling complex ad campaign data from various ad networks and a diverse set of customers of the following niches:
Retail and eCommerceTravel and HospitalityMedia and EntertainmentFinancial Services and InsuranceTelecommunications
Localytics also lets you integrate other third-party data connectors or analytics tools. For example, link Movable Ink with the tool to deliver customized images or videos that the user prefers.
Kochava
Some app marketers might say that Kochava is a new player in the marketing data attribution ecosystem. But this MMP platform is heavily underrated compared to its capabilities and marketing technology offerings. Kochava is racing to become a common name for app data attribution by offering a multitude of app marketing services. This mobile measurement partner service provider has already developed an in-house app traffic index for ad campaign runners and app marketers. You can now easily pick high-quality marketing networks, low-fraud online marketing channels, and reliable customer bases for your next ad campaigns. You save a lot of productive time by referring to the Kochava traffic index. Besides marketing attribution analysis services, Kochava also offers value-added services like A/B multivariate testing for marketing strategy experimentation. Also, you can easily increase app engagement by sending push notifications to your mobile app users through Kochava. Its Unified Audience Platform helps you identify your customer segments, organize audiences according to their app interactions, activate app customers, and optimize marketing campaigns. The best selling point of this tool is you can use most of the basic features for free if you share app traffic data with Kochava.
Singular
Singular is a full-service marketing platform with distinguished functionalities for marketing analytics and attribution. As a part of its MMP services, it offers curated products like Mobile Attribution, Deep Linking, SKAdNetwork Attribution, and Fraud Prevention. Its app attribution services let you measure ad data on almost any ad campaign channels like SMS, mobile apps, websites, TV, referrals, and emails. Furthermore, it can generate reports on re-engagement and acquisition across different ad platforms through web-to-app, cross-device, and deep-linking attributions. For marketing performance analysis, it connects touchpoint attributions with external data connectors. Thus, you get rich and elaborate performance data on every keyword, campaign, creative asset, and ad publisher.
Tapstream
The Tapstream development team markets the product as a complete toolkit for mobile app marketing. Some of the world’s leading mobile apps like Hootsuite, WebMD, Microsoft, Twitch, SPRING, etc., use this MMP service provider for mobile attribution. To report on client’s app marketing campaigns and drive conversions, Tapstream offers a set of products, like Analytics, Deep Links, App Invites, and Campaign Landers. Being an app marketer, you can use the Analytics module to measure an ad campaign’s success and discover traffic sources. Then, you can use the Deep Links tool to direct existing or new users to paid in-app content and grow revenue on every conversion. Further, you can get new users by designing custom landing pages for app purchases or install campaigns. Finally, you can leverage the App Invites module for user incentivization when they refer the app to others.
Tenjin
You can also give Tenjin a try when you need to optimize your marketing budget or access user-level data for ad campaign enhancements. It has separate service modules like:
User Acquisition to drive app install or purchasesAd Revenue Dashboard to visualize ROI, LTV, and ad revenue in one placeDataVault Platform & Science which houses millions of user-level data that app marketers can use to improve their apps and services
Depending on your marketing campaign budget and strategy, you can get an Advanced or Pro subscription from Tenjin. However, if you are a new app developer or a novice app marketer, you can start with the Free plan of basic services.
Final Words💻
Now that you are aware of the top-performing mobile measurement partners, you can take your pick effortlessly. Most of the above tools offer a standard service: analysis of mobile attribution data and reporting app performance. However, you might find some tools offering additional features, ease of use, affordable pricing, scalable subscription packages, etc. So choose the one that suits the strategy of your mobile app’s growth journey. In addition to an MMP, you also need protection from click frauds that make your mobile app marketing campaigns go beyond the budget without fetching the result you are looking for.
