Resource Label: App marketing

Grow faster: How ‘Dual Integration’ unlocks vastly more value than vanilla mobile attribution

Peanut butter is just peanut butter. And chocolate is just chocolate. But if you have the creativity and insight to combine them, you create a magical mystery confection that makes your mouth cry out for joy and high-five your stomach. You get, perhaps, dual integration.

Imagine the peanut butter is marketing campaign data.

Imagine the chocolate is attribution.

Put them together, and the result is not magical and not mysterious: it’s marketing science that unlocks ever-increasing but previously hidden value. And that’s just one of the secrets revealed in our No Bullsh!t Guide to Mobile Attribution.

But what exactly is dual integration? And how does it work?

Dual integration technology

“Simplistically, dual integration technology is connecting marketing data with outcome data,” says Singular VP of Client Services Victor Savath. “On the marketing side, we’re talking about information on campaigns, publisher, creative, and sub-campaigns. On the outcome or attribution side, we’re talking about user or customer install and event data.”

Ultimately, you’re combining spend data with mobile attribution data.

But … at as granular a level as you implement your marketing spend.

That means every outcome, or attribution, is enriched with campaign information. Now you know not only that you acquired a new customer, or user, from Ad Partner XYZ. You also know what campaign it was from. Where the campaign and the customer intersected. And what specific creative cued the conversion.

When you combine these two datasets, you get true granular ROI, says Savath.

“It’s not about whether or not a network performs, it’s what is performing within a particular network,” Savath told me yesterday. “Sometimes we see that marketers are quick to dismiss performance marketing, or a particular ad network, because the results are all blended. But granularity highlights the pockets of value. For example, in one network … one specific set of creative might work very, very well, while another does not. With granularity, you know.”

Alternatively, some publishers or traffic sources that an ad network uses for your campaigns might be horrible: poor quality or even fraudulent. But other traffic sources are amazing. Seeing this close up means that marketers can optimize for the best-performing publishers within an ad network. That unlocks potential pockets of profitable growth.

The problem?

Most marketers aren’t able to get to that point.

Missing out on magic (or marketing science)

There are many different types of granularity: creative, publisher, network, campaign, region, with metrics from both the network and attribution side. But what matters the most is ROI granularity … which is inherently matched to your ability to tie both sides of the equation together.

The problem is that most marketers don’t have a tool that connects and aligns all the data properly.

And that means they’re making future resource allocation decisions based on limited information.

“For example, if you’re just using vanilla attribution data, you might say that a certain publisher is generating revenue for you,” Savath says. “The problem is, you’re not exactly clear at what specific cost you’ve achieved this revenue.”

Dual integration might show you that A, B, and E campaigns are really working well with a certain ad network, while C and D are not: they’re complete duds. That insight may mean the difference between writing off an ad network as a total loss versus optimizing your efforts with that partner.

And, of course, achieving much better results.

The big aggregated campaign picture alone has its own challenges, of course.

“Alternatively, if you’re just using spend data, you don’t understand your outcomes at all,” says Savath.

Magic isn’t hard. It’s science

The best part is that with Singular, dual integration isn’t any integration at all. At least, not on your part.

Singular does it for you. And it’s not a back-end thing, it’s a built-in thing.

Most attribution solutions provide tools to create tracking links, or make them in bulk, or allow marketers to import them. The problem is that most marketing managers build tracking links in a vacuum, without knowledge of how a partner will report spend back to you. With Singular, there’s no manual link building … Singular removes the whole element of manual creation of tracking URLs from the measurement workflow.

“Instead, Singular creates the links for you and automatically embeds campaign, creative, publisher, ad network, and other data into your tracking links,” says Savath. “Since our marketing data is informing what the link structure should be, you have automatic alignment between marketing data and attribution data. And thanks to Singular’s deep integrations to thousands of ad networks and marketing partners, your URLs will always have the right parameters and the right values.”

ROI versus IOR

Thanks to the performance-based nature of much of modern mobile marketing, marketers are not so much calculating return on investment as investment on return. In other words, they get the attributed results of their marketing and determine how spend and marketing activity relates to those results.

While there’s definitely a big place in performance marketing for spending based on results, only being able to look at marketing data this way creates serious challenges.

One of the biggest: data reconciliation problems.

“Singular’s approach is matching conversions to spend versus matching spend to conversions,” says Savath.

Get the full Guide for much more

The full No BullSh!t Guide to Attribution contains much more insight on how to do attribution right, focusing on seven core topics:

  1. Mobile Measurement Partners (MMPs)
  2. Data combining
  3. Granularity
  4. Reporting
  5. Fraud prevention
  6. Data retention & accessibility
  7. Pricing

Mobile ad fraud: 6 ways fraudsters win via dirty tricks, nasty scams, illegal tech, and cutting-edge camouflage

Ad fraud is a game where losing can look like winning, our Singular Fraud Index says. That’s why you need the latest intel — and the best fraud protection suite in the attribution industry — to protect you.

And understanding the enemy is the first step in winning the fraud war.

Or at least … not losing it.

At our recent UNIFY conference, IronSource’s Vice President for Growth Yevgeny Peres unpacked the science and data behind how fraudsters win. This was new intel to some of the world’s top digital marketers (not an easy task) and showed attendees how fraud was happening live in their campaigns right from the most innocuous, trustworthy, and high-quality apps.

Now we’re sharing the insights with you.

How fraudsters win: Outsourcing fake clicks to real people

“Assuming you have a phone and you’ve engaged with ads and you have some apps installed, fraudsters have access to your phone: your device ID,” says Peres. “And that device ID … once a fraudster has it, it’s not that complicated to start using it to manipulate attribution.”

Here’s how it works.

Peres demonstrated with a mobile app on a phone that he connected to desktop technology to read and display all internet traffic. The app, a household name and top-60 grossing app, is perfectly legitimate and aboveboard. It would look like a quality publisher and a quality traffic source to any advertiser.

But it happens to show banner ads.

And fraudsters have managed to get their banner ads displayed on the app.

One of them is running code in Javascript behind the image. That code contains a long list of click URLs and opens multiple iFrames: mini virtual web browser windows. The URLs are tracking links, potentially from multiple tracking and attribution vendors, but they’re wrapped links that obscure exactly what they are and where they’re going.

The result: many advertisers, including multiple UNIFY attendees, see potential customer activity on mobile web that turns out to be completely fake.

“This was in-app banner traffic that’s going to be reported by tracking companies as if it were mobile web,” says Peres. “[These were] various websites that were not open on the phone … you would assume you’re buying from these guys when actually it was driven from the app.”

In one fell swoop you have multiple forms of fraud:

  1. Ad stacking: multiple ads stacked where one appears
  2. Click spamming: 50 clicks fired for one banner view
  3. Domain spoofing: clicks are reported as coming from sites that no-one ever visited
  4. Fingerprint manipulation: device fingerprints are faked to look like real devices

“This looks like great quality … but there’s zero intent,” says Peres.

How the fraudsters win: SDK spoofing

“The first thing to understand about SDK spoofing is that it’s much bigger than you think,” says Peres.

SDK spoofing requires some serious technical chops. If fraudsters have access to real device IDs, they could simply engage in click spamming. But why wait for people to install an app or convert in a campaign randomly or organically?

In SDK spoofing, fraudsters employ code in one app to send fake install and conversion signals on behalf of another app: an advertiser’s app.

Fraudsters can vastly multiply their ill-gotten earnings by faking conversion events.

“If I know what the tracking company’s SDK reports on app open, I might as well intercept that, replace the device ID, play around with the other parameters, and send it again,” says Peres. “A couple minutes later, I can orchestrate a beautiful KPI curve … I can [even] inflate organics to make sure this channel [looks like it] has an organic uplift.”

How the fraudsters win: Click spamming

The good guys in adtech have access to hundreds of millions if not billions of device identifiers. The bad news: so do the bad guys.

That’s a problem.

“All we need to do is gain access to a campaign and start running a script and fire a click every morning, randomly,” says Peres, mimicking a fraudster’s thought process. “[You’re] hoping that one of these guys will generate a conversion … that’s probably a $50K income a day, just doing that.”

On an ad exchange, once you gain access to a device ID you can do whatever you want with it, technically speaking.

“Once you have access to it, anyone can report a click,” Peres says. “It’s how the design of our stats-serving ecosystem is … that’s the bad news.”

How the fraudsters win: No incrementality analysis

Fraudulent activity isn’t just something on top of your standard organic marketing results or even just your paid marketing campaigns.

Some fraudulent channels eat organics.

Some fraudulent channels eat other paid channels.

“It’s very important to understand the difference between channels that are incremental to you and channels that are not,” says Peres. “This is the biggest challenge for a marketer.”

Marketers may perceive fraud as a 20-30% problem, but much of it is not incremental. It’s cannibalistic. That means that marketers absolutely must test each channel for incrementality, ensuring that each channel really does independently drive business results.

How the fraudsters win: Fraud looks so juicy good

Some fraud has excellent camouflage. Here’s one example: check out the average revenue per user (ARPU) for these two campaigns.

Campaign 1 and 2 have identical cost per install (CPI) and near-identical impressions, plus near-identical real clicks. But campaign two is a video ad that is either auto-redirecting to the App Store or Google Play after every view.

“When you look at the funnel, the CTR is almost 100%,” Peres says. “This is by the design of their product where they report a click for every completed view … so once the video is over, they have to report a click because they redirect the user to the App Store.”

The ARPU looks great — better than a clean campaign — so it’s very tempting for marketers to keep spending there. Especially if they’re not closely checking the other parameters such as the impossibly-high click-through rate.

This is an example of something that completely breaks the mobile advertising model, says Peres.

“These channels … if they’re manipulating attribution, their media costs are very low,” he says. “Other DSPs are competing with these guys. You have a 1% CTR rate for playing a clean game; these guys on a single impression generate 50 clicks. That’s 5000X stronger. That’s something you cannot outbid no matter which data scientist you hire.”

How the fraudsters win: Marketers don’t monitor key indicators

There are many key indicators that marketers who care about limiting fraud need to pay attention to, says Peres. Here are some of them (watch the full video for the complete list).

Good ad fraud prevention enables you to see:

  1. Channel metrics versus attribution metrics (look for discrepancies)
  2. Percentage of clicks without a device/advertising ID (Android should be about 1%; iOS should be about 20%)
  3. Percentage of view-through attribution (VTA) versus click-through attribution (CTA) conversions
  4. Number of clicks per device ID (high is suspicious, shockingly)
  5. Number of views per device ID (again, high is suspicious)
  6. Percentage of clicks without a prior view … in some cases, 65% or more of clicks happen without a view: this is suspicious
  7. Very low eCPM
  8. Short, very regular, very long, or otherwise improbable or unnatural click to install times
  9. Attribution analytics versus iTune Connect and Google Developers Console numbers
  10. Incrementality

That’s not a small number to keep track of, but savvy marketers who don’t want to get burned by fraud will need to stay on top of these key indicators.

Summing up: One thing you must do

Fraudsters are smart, they’re technical, and they’re always working hard to separate you from your hard-earned ad dollars.

They also hide in plain sight, as sub-publishers and lower-tier ad networks or sources of supply.

You need a partner who stays on top of ad fraud for you.

“My single advice is … make sure you work with a tracking company that invests a lot on research,” Peres says. “Singular obviously invests a lot on research and has a lot of knowledge there … they update their SDK a lot, the security of their SDK. Make sure you have the latest version of the SDK and keep updating … it’s a must, every time it comes out.”

Our investment in mobile ad fraud prevention protects you from donating to organized crime … and shooting your paid promotion campaigns in the foot.

Ad Monetization Reporting & True ROI Made Easy

Since launching Singular 4 years ago, we’ve worked tirelessly to become the de-facto Marketing Data Platform for the top mobile brands around the world. Our clients use Singular to unify their core marketing data sets into a single source of truth. And we take pride in helping them sort through the complexities of the ecosystem and uncover insights to help grow their business.

Singular is dedicated to helping marketers uncover ROI across their entire customer journey. A lot of marketers have a single source of revenue, in the form of in-app purchases, but many others have an additional source of revenue called “Ad Revenue” (similar to how a little company named Facebook makes their money 😉). As a result, ROI shouldn’t solely factor “App Revenue”, but must also “Ad Revenue”.

At Singular’s first annual growth marketing summit, UNIFY, our CEO Gadi Elishav announced the launch of our Ad Monetization Reporting. This product addition is in direct alignment with our vision is to help marketers uncover their business’ unique customer journey and understand every touch point within that journey.

Singular’s Ad Monetization Reporting collects, aggregates and standardizes your ad revenue data from all of your monetization partners into a single reporting view. We’ve taken the same approach and technology that Singular is known for with our new Ad Monetization Reporting. For customers who also use Singular attribution – we will soon provide deeper insights into granular ROI, accounting for both Ad Revenue and In-App Purchases, commonly referred to in the industry as True ROI. We’ve already integrated the most popular monetization partners, and are consistently adding new partners.

 

This is a game-changer for User Acquisition and Monetization teams alike:

  • User Acquisition teams can finally account for Ad Revenue in their ROI formula.
  • With the ability to see the true ROI figures – User Acquisition Managers will be able to make better decisions about the actual performance of their campaigns and channels and scale their marketing efforts efficiently and more intelligently. Channels and campaigns that you thought had a specific ROI could look completely different once we factor Ad Revenue into the ROI calculation.
  • A centralized snapshot of all your Ad Revenue enables better insights and scaling app ad revenue down to the placement level.
  • Streamline work with finance, and have a true end-to-end view of your marketing profit and loss.

Are you interested in next-level Ad Monetization Reporting and analyzing more accurate ROIs? Let’s connect! Reach out to your Customer Success Manager today or contact us.

Apple Aims to Protect Data Privacy with SKAdNetwork

Wondering what Apple’s new privacy enhancements mean for you?
Watch our on-demand webinar iOS 14 & IDFA Changes: What you need to know

Quietly rolled out by Apple on March 29th, 2018 with their iOS 11.3 release, SKAdNetwork is an API that validates advertiser-driven mobile app installs. In Apple’s documentation, it’s stated that SKAdNetwork’s objective is to help marketers to measure the success of an ad campaign while maintaining user privacy.

What’s different about the SKAdNetwork API?

SKAdNetwork is a class that belongs to the StoreKit framework; Apple’s In-App Purchase Payment System that manages transactions for In-App Purchases. After installing the app, Apple shares only 5 items with the advertiser: ad network ID, transaction identification, ad campaign ID, app ID installed, and attribution code to link all.

Source: Apple Developer Documentation

There are two key postbacks associated with SKAdNetwork:

  • Initiating Install Validation: This Informs an ad network when users install and launch an app after viewing an ad. Ad networks initiate validation by providing signed information, including a campaign ID, when displaying the ad. Later, if the ad results in a conversion, Apple notifies the ad network with a postback that includes the same campaign ID.
  • Verifying an Ad Conversion: When a user installs and launches an app as a result of your ad, you receive a postback request that validates the installation. The request is sent to the ad network URL provided in registration.

What does this mean for advertisers?

It’s still too early to predict how SKAdNetwork will play out. Adding to the mystery, Apple has been very hush-hush about their motives and the rollout of SKAdNetwork. However, we think there are a few possible ways this could play out:

1. Apple doesn’t actively push SKAdNetwork, it doesn’t garner significant adoption, and nothing changes in the mobile marketing space.

One possible scenario could be that Apple doesn’t actively push SKAdNetwork to advertisers, resulting in minimal adoption. In this scenario, there wouldn’t be any significant change in the way that app marketers manage their attribution.

2. Apple pushes SKAdNetwork and Google follows suit with their own version.

Another scenario is that Google follows suit with its own version of the ad network API. This scenario could play out a few different ways:

  • Apple and Google don’t build out a robust attribution solution, which results in a lack of adoption by app marketers. Apple has made its mark in the world thanks to being an extraordinary and innovative hardware company, but they have never been accountable for providing analytics and insights to app marketers. If Apple and Google do not develop all the features that are necessary for an end-to-end attribution solution, (e.g. data extraction, all postback types, flexible attribution windows, easy BI integrations) then the industry will not adopt their solutions.
  • Apple and Google develop all the functionality needed for a robust attribution solution, leaving third-party mobile app attribution providers to potentially die-off in their current form. Who can compete with the operators of the mobile app stores we attribute from anyway? However, advertisers may still lose out in this scenario because they might encounter more complexities coming from running attribution on two separate platforms. The winners in this scenario would be third-party mobile app attribution providers that offer value-added services such as connecting multiple networks into a single view and aggregating all necessary features into a single API.

3. Apple pushes SKAdNetwork but Google does nothing.

In a third possible scenario, Apple could actively push SKAdnetwork to advertisers, while Google doesn’t follow suit with their own version. This would still result in complexities for advertisers who would need to manage attribution programs in silos across different OSs.

In this scenario, marketers would turn to attribution providers who could help them gather data from multiple sources, standardize it, and aggregate it into a single ROI dashboard.

So what’s going to happen?

It’s unfortunately too early to say, but one thing is clear: Apple wants to enhance users’ privacy. Apple has clearly positioned itself as a top privacy-conscious company and will continue to hold this stance as data privacy becomes more top-of-mind in the industry.

Frequently asked questions about the GDPR

The European Union General Data Protection Regulation — GDPR is top of mind for many businesses, especially for those that engage in online advertising. This new privacy-driven regulation requires that all companies collecting, accessing, and processing personal data for EU residents must comply with new standards that will be enforced starting May 25, 2018.

Understandably, we’ve been getting many questions related to the GDPR over the past few months. To help shed light on the questions you may have, we’ve compiled the top FAQs for the GDPR.

General GDPR FAQs

1. When is the GDPR coming into effect?
May 25th, 2018.

2. Who does the GDPR affect?
It applies to all companies processing and holding the personal data of European Union residents, regardless of the company’s location.

3. What constitutes personal data?
Any information that can be used to directly or indirectly identify a user. It can be anything from a name, a photo, an email address, bank details, posts on social networking websites, medical information, device IDs, or a computer IP address.

4. What are the penalties for non-compliance?
Organizations can be fined up to 4% of annual global turnover for breaching GDPR or €20 Million. This is the maximum fine that can be imposed for the most serious infringements (i.e. not having sufficient customer consent to process data or violating the core of Privacy by Design concepts). There is a tiered approach to fines; a company can be fined 2% for not having their records in order (article 28), not notifying the supervising authority and user about a breach or not conducting an impact assessment. It is important to note that these rules apply to both controllers and processors — meaning ‘clouds’ will not be exempt from GDPR enforcement.

5. What is the difference between a data processor and a data controller?
A controller is an entity that determines the purposes, conditions, and means of the processing of personal data, while the processor is an entity which processes personal data on behalf of the controller.

6. Do data processors need ‘explicit’ or ‘unambiguous’ data subject consent – and what is the difference?
Consent must be clear, unambiguous, and provided in an intelligible and easily accessible form, using clear language. It must be as easy to withdraw consent as it is to give it. Explicit consent is required only for processing sensitive personal data – in this context, nothing short of “opt-in” will suffice. However, for non-sensitive data, “unambiguous” consent will suffice.

7. What about users under the age of 16?
Parental consent will be required to process the personal data of children under the age of 16 for online services; member nations may legislate for a lower age of consent but this will not be below the age of 13.

8. Does my business need to appoint a Data Protection Officer (DPO)?
DPOs must be appointed in the case of (a) public authorities, (b) organizations that engage in large-scale systematic monitoring, or (c) organizations that engage in the large-scale processing of sensitive personal data (Art. 37). If your organization doesn’t fall into one of these categories, then you do not need to appoint a DPO.

9. How does the GDPR impact policy surrounding data breaches?
Proposed regulations surrounding data breaches primarily relate to the notification policies of companies that have been breached. Data breaches which may pose a risk to individuals must be notified to the Data Processing Addendum (DPA) within 72 hours and to affected individuals without undue delay.

10. Will the GDPR set up a one-stop-shop for data privacy regulation?
The discussions surrounding the one-stop-shop principle are among the most highly debated and are still unclear as the standing positions are highly varied. The Commission text has a fairly simple and concise ruling in favor of the principle, the Parliament also promotes a lead DPA and adds more involvement from other concerned DPAs, the Council’s view waters down the ability of the lead DPA even further. A more in-depth analysis of the one-stop-shop policy debate can be found here.

Source: https://www.eugdpr.org/gdpr-faqs.html

GDPR FAQS for Singular Users

1. Is Singular a Data Processor or Data Controller?
Singular is a Data Processor — we do not determine the purposes, conditions or scope of how data is collected. You, our customer, who will often determine these will be defined as a Data Controller under the GDPR, but you should consult with your legal team to make such a determination.

2. What data does Singular collect and is it affected by the GDPR?
When using Singular for mobile attribution, Singular will track device data such as advertising IDs, IP addresses, and other device identifiers. We may also collect user-level events that advertisers send us through the Singular SDK. Under the GDPR, all of the aforementioned data is deemed as personal data and will be treated appropriately per regulations set by the GDPR.

3. How does Singular use personal data?
We use the personal data identified above for two purposes: a) to determine the attributed network, campaign, etc. b) provide our customers with analytics and reports based on the data we collect for them such as retention, ROI, etc.

4. Does Singular transfer this personal data anywhere?
By nature of providing mobile attribution, we need to report attributed installs and events to the marketing channels you’re running with, per the agreement you, the advertiser, has with these marketing channels. As a Data Controller, you are always aware of what data Singular sends to said marketing channels, and can be assured that Singular will never share your data with any other entity.

5. What are common GDPR-related requests that advertisers may get from users?
Under the GDPR, data subjects have several rights that need to be honored:

  • Right to Access and Right to Data Portability – both of these rights speak to the user’s (data subject) ability to request all data that has been collected on them in an easily readable format.
  • Right to Erasure speaks to the user’s ability to ask for their data to be deleted and is also commonly referred to as Right to be Forgotten.
  • Right to Rectification speaks to the user’s ability to request for their data to be corrected or completed.

6. How does Singular allow Data Controllers to honor such requests?
To easily comply with requests related to the GDPR, we’ve built several new REST API endpoints to accept requests in a programmatic and scalable manner. The API documentation is provided in our Developers Portal.

7. Are you compatible with the OpenGDPR initiative?
Yes. We are fully compatible with OpenGDPR.

8. Is Singular’s SDK GDPR-compatible?
Yes, Singular’s SDK is GDPR compatible. We are also releasing an additional update soon to further support explicit methods for opt-in (for when a consent is explicitly provided), opt-out and unload options in the SDK to give you more control for user privacy.

9. I’m not using Singular for attribution or event tracking. Does GDPR apply here?
If Singular doesn’t collect personal (user level) data for your mobile app users, it is not technically a Data Processor in the GDPR context.

10. Do you have an updated Data Processing Agreement I can sign?
Yes, please reach out to your Customer Success Manager to get our latest DPA.

11. What else is Singular doing around the GDPR?
Built by security experts, Singular has always been security and privacy driven by design. We treat encryption, security, and privacy as core principles that determine how every new system is defined and built, and these are inherently embedded in the platform.

At Singular we welcome the EU’s initiative for increased transparency, ownership, and trust around personal data processing activity. We remain committed to these principles when working with our customers as their data processor. As such, we have made extensive investments to ensure that both Singular and our customers meet GDPR compliance standards, which you can read more about in our article “Hello GDPR: Stay Compliant with Singular”.

Disclaimer: The information provided by Singular is for informational purposes only and not for the purpose of providing legal advice. Please contact your attorney to obtain advice on specific issues or questions.

3 app attribution “gotchas” to watch out for

Mobile app attribution is one of the cornerstones for growth-oriented apps and a critical layer in the mobile marketing stack. Roughly 80% of the top 500 mobile apps on iOS have implemented an attribution solution, according to a study by mobile app analytics software Mobbo.

Briefly, mobile app attribution allows you track the source of incoming app installs or engagements. To identify the channels of user acquisition that work best in the long-term, attribution also measures in-app events that occur after the download, also known as post-install events.

Yet when it comes to mobile app attribution, there are “gotchas” that can trip up even the most seasoned digital marketers, leading to wasted time, skewed or opaque analytics and under-performing campaigns.

 

App opens vs. app installs

Marketers have to keep in mind that mobile app attribution systems define an “install” as the first time the app is opened on a user’s mobile device. But actually, a mobile app open is just the earliest time a third-party attribution platform can track a new user, so they take this first open and call it an install.

The reality is that the only systems that know about actual installs at the precise time of app install are the app store owners, Google Play and Apple.

As a result, discrepancies often exist between the statistics in your attribution platform and App Store dashboards. For instance, a user might have installed the mobile app on Tuesday, but launched it a few days later on Friday. The App Store dashboard would attribute the install to Tuesday, while the attribution platform would attribute the install to Friday.

Or if a user installed the app, but never launched it — attribution platforms wouldn’t register the download, while App Store dashboards would.

(And, of course, we’re not even talking about the situations when a self-attributing network claims an install via view-through attribution but the install is actually more directly caused by a click on another ad network’s ads. More on that later.)

While marketers should seek to reduce mobile app install data discrepancies wherever possible, it’s important to recognize that a host of reasons make minor data discrepancies inevitable. Marketers, then, are tasked with identifying thresholds for acceptable levels of discrepancies. When a discrepancy between two data sources — for instance, your attribution platform and your network dashboard — exceeds a certain threshold, it usually means something is wrong and needs fixing.

 

What’s my app attribution window?

The Attribution Window is the amount of time that can pass between a user’s click or view of an ad and their install. Consider the example of a user who clicked a mobile ad on the 10th of December, but didn’t install the app until the 13th of December.

If the attribution window is set for 3 days or more, the install will be attributed to the ad. But if the attribution window is set for only 1 day, the install will not be attributed to the ad. Instead, it’ll look like an organic install.

Data discrepancies can also arise when the attribution window in your attribution platform is not aligned with the attribution window in your network. In many cases, networks will set as a default an attribution window that is different than the attribution window in your attribution platform. It is advisable to first work with an attribution platform that allows you to customize your attribution window and second, to ensure that you have the same attribution window set up in your ad network and attribution platform.

 

Whose click is it anyway?

Advertising networks don’t know about user interactions with ads on other ad networks. As a result, the same mobile install might be attributed to two or more ad networks.

Consider the following example: yesterday the same user clicked on a Facebook ad and then a Google AdWords ad before installing the mobile app today. In this instance, Facebook will take credit for the install in the Facebook dashboard, while AdWords will also take credit for the install in the AdWords dashboard.

Attribution platforms that operate according to a “last click” attribution model will “de-duplicate” the conversion and attribute the install to AdWords activity. That means you know which ad network had the last and presumably most important impact, but it also means a discrepancy can arise in the number of Facebook-driven installs that appear in your attribution dashboard and the number of installs that appear in your Facebook dashboard.

To monitor such discrepancies, marketers should work with attribution providers like Singular.

Singular displays both figures: the statistics reported by the network and the statistics reported by our attribution solution alongside each other. Now marketers don’t have to toggle back and forth between their attribution platform and their network dashboards to see what’s actually happening. In addition, using Singular, marketers can customize which source they want to use as the source of truth and set alerts when discrepancies between sources exceed a given threshold.

 

Summing up …

In sum, mobile attribution is complex … with plenty of “gotchas” that can create major headaches when attempting to perform data analysis and optimizations based on inaccurate or misleading data. In order to succeed, marketers must stay cognizant of the intricacies and leverage partner tools that are both transparent and make it easy on marketers to spot broken campaigns and illegitimate data.

Need some help?

Give us a shout and book some time. We’ll be happy to listen and suggest options.