Google’s Integrated Conversion Measurement opens a new chapter for mobile

Tighter privacy rules and disappearing device IDs have already rewritten mobile measurement. Google’s Integrated Conversion Measurement (ICM) pushes that transformation into overdrive. At Singular, we see Integrated Conversion Measurement as both evidence and catalyst of a broader reality: ID‑level attribution is giving way to privacy‑first, modeled measurement. Marketers who adapt now will compound learning and growth while everyone else plays catch‑up.

What is Google’s Integrated Conversion Measurement?

Integrated Conversion Measurement provides more real-time, comprehensive, and accurate attribution for your Google App campaigns in your third-party App Attribution Partner interfaces. It incorporates innovative technologies, such as on-device conversion measurement using event data, to improve measurement accuracy, all without compromising user privacy. The result is event‑level insight even when user‑level identifiers are missing.

It covers:

  • iOS 14.5+ users who declined App Tracking Transparency (ATT).
  • Android users in the European Economic Area (EEA).

Because Integrated Conversion Measurement feeds data through Google Ads directly into Mobile Measurement Partners (MMPs), you can surface richer conversion details without ripping up your stack.

Why Integrated Conversion Measurement deserves your attention

  1. Wider Device Coverage
    Integrated Conversion Measurement injects fresh event‑level signals from both Android and iOS where data used to be dark.
  2. Privacy‑First On-Device-Measurement
    Signals stay on‑device until aggregated, so you gain accuracy while upholding platform and regulatory standards.
  3. Fast Enablement
    If you’re already integrated with an Integrated Conversion Measurement‑ready MMP (that’s us), turning it on takes minutes…not months.

Singular and Integrated Conversion Measurement

Integrated Conversion Measurement will be available directly in your Singular dashboard.

Our advanced data analytics and optimization will feed Integrated Conversion Measurement signals into probabilistic and cross-device attribution, giving you even more granular insight and reporting; letting marketing teams act while competitors still refresh dashboards.

In June 2025, Integrated Conversion Measurement will be available directly in your Singular dashboard on iOS and Android.

To enable on iOS:

  • Implement on-device conversion measurement using event data, available June 2025 via the Google Analytics for Firebase iOS SDK v11.14.0+, or GoogleAdsOnDeviceConversion SDK (available via CocoaPods or Swift Package Manager).
  • Update to Singular iOS SDK version 12.7.0 or later.
  • Ensure the “Include Integrated Conversion Measurement Attributions” option is enabled in the Singular partner configuration for Google Ads (available June 2025).

To enable on Android:

  • Ensure the “Include Integrated Conversion Measurement Attributions” option is enabled in the Singular partner configuration for Google Ads (available June 2025).

Closing thoughts

Perfect data is a myth, but responsive, privacy‑aligned insight is a competitive moat. Google’s Integrated Conversion Measurement proves that attribution isn’t disappearing, it’s evolving.

With Singular, you can harness every new signal, optimize faster, and keep winning as the measurement chapter turns. Get in touch with a Singular representative to learn more about Integrated Conversion Measurement, and how Singular can deliver you smarter insights and faster growth.

Introducing the iOS 14 Resource Center: Everything you need to know to future-proof growth

Since the day Apple dropped their announcement regarding the deprecation of IDFA and the implementation of SKAdNetwork, we’ve all been at the edge of our seats trying to figure out what is next for mobile acquisition on iOS.

As mobile marketers, we face tremendous change and uncertainty, and to top it all off, we have NO idea when iOS 14.5 will actually be released.

What we do know is that having a day-1 strategy in place, understanding how your MMP is handling the situation, and learning as much as possible beforehand, will provide a significant competitive advantage in the post-IDFA world. While we can’t predict the exact date of iOS 14.5 (although according to Tim Cook it’s any day now), Singular is committed to making the transition to SKAdNetwork as seamless as possible.

Ever since Apple hinted at the death of IDFA back in March of 2019 with the release of the first SKAdNetwork beta, we’ve spent almost every waking hour focused on learning the intricacies of this brand new measurement framework. We’ve published a slew of blogs on how to test SKAdNetwork, how to uncover actionable analytics, breaking down developments from Apple, and insights into the readiness of the ecosystem. We’ve hosted webinars with top marketers and ad partners that discuss their SKAdNetwork solution, how to prepare for IDFA deprecation, and more. We’ve written guides on how to tackle marketing measurement in iOS 14 and how marketers are adapting their UA strategies. We’ve created the Mobile Attribution Privacy community to bring together industry players to ask questions, share insights, and ultimately collaborate on solving for the future of marketing measurement.

Why? Because we wanted to help the mobile ecosystem; from app developers, demand-side platforms, supply-side platforms, and even other MMPs with this transition, so we as an industry are as prepared as possible.

We’ve created Singular’s iOS Attribution Resource Center for exactly that purpose. We’ve rounded up all our important insights, how-tos, and thought leadership into one easily accessible resource center.

Along with the resources we’ve made available, Singular’s iOS 14 solution is the perfect recipe for continued success, despite the massive shifts our industry is undergoing… Singular’s SKAdNetwork Attribution and Analytics solution handles everything from postback collection to conversion value management to arm you with superior analytics to continue to best invest your ad dollars. And to ensure you have peace of mind and avoid disruption to your business,  Singular is 100% compliant with app store policies.

So, what are you waiting for? Stop spending 7 hours a day Googling how to get ready for iOS 14 or trying to understand how to maximize insights with SKAdNetwork… All the answers are right here!

 

Welcome to mobile attribution’s first-ever recession: What you need now

What do modern marketers need from mobile attribution in 2020?

There’s not a lot of history to guide mobile marketers on what to do in a global pandemic and a worldwide recession. Mobile is now a massive part of our lives and our industry, but it’s still incredibly young: barely more than a decade old. The App Store wasn’t launched until 2008, and smartphones didn’t achieve 50% penetration until 2014. Mobile attribution itself is just eight or nine years old, and the mobile growth stack as a whole is a very recent invention. 

That means mobile, mobile marketing, and mobile attribution have never gone through a major economic recession or depression. 

It also means that we have few precedents to understand how they’ll react and that we don’t fully know how all this will impact modern marketers. The good news for mobile marketers is that COVID-19 has made mobile even more important for business, for connection, and for almost every other activity we engage in. That bodes well for mobile continuing to not just be a viable space, but doing well and possibly even growing, even if the wider economy shrinks.

The bad news is that if the quarantine and shutdown efforts shrink the wider economy enough, even a good news story will turn negative. Mobile can’t grow enough to stay in the black if the economy craters too hard.

Ultimately, like everything else in 2020, expect change.

What we’ve seen from mobile attribution

We know the historical impact. Singular customers have demonstrated the result that mobile attribution which unifies spend and return in a single platform can have.

One retail customer boosted sales 2X with attribution. Another boosted sales 72% with 24% less ad spend. A gaming customer doubled installs. Another saved 15-20 hours a week in data management. A delivery customer grew conversion rates almost 200%. The average customer that leverages Singular’s granular insights boosts conversions 2X.

All pre-Coronavirus.

All before the shutdown boost in app installs. Before working from home and a massive jump in gaming, retail, and social. And before we saw retention rates suffer from COVID-19 mobile trends.

What about now?

 

Mobile marketing: key challenges TODAY

Mobile marketing in general is hard. Mobile user acquisition at scale is one of the more challenging tasks in our modern economy. 

That was true long before anyone ever heard about COVID-19 or there was an inkling of Coronavirus, a shutdown, or a virus-driven economic recession. In 2019, mobile marketers told us the key challenges in their jobs included managing scale, understanding cross-platform measurement and incrementality, unifying siloed data, fraud detection, and more.

None of those challenges magically disappeared in the last four months. But now we have a whole new set of problems to join them. Finances are tighter. Funding is less certain. Monetization is less dependable. All bets are off when hundreds of millions of people globally are out of work or locked into their homes. 

In addition, post-Coronavirus, you’re probably getting fewer resources. You likely have less budget. You might have fewer people. And even if you’re in one of the categories that are way up, your CEO is worried about long-term financial stability and is therefore probably more risk-averse than ever before.

All of which is to say: for marketers, driving exponential marketing impact has never been more urgent or important. 

And, most likely, it’s never been harder. 

What you desperately need from mobile attribution now

It’s pretty simple, isn’t it? You need exactly what you needed before, but more.

And less.

You need the same boost in performance that got Home & Shopping a 73% increase in ROI on 24% less ad spend and a 15% decrease in cost per purchase. You need double the installs with 22% less cost. You need more automation and less busywork so you can save 15+ hours/week. You need 85% more growth with less time spent on marketing data management.

How?

Straight-up, it starts by being smarter than your competition. The best of them are marketing scientifically. They might be saving literally six figures monthly thanks to deterministic fraud prevention. They are probably using custom dimensions to tailor attribution and marketing analytics in real-time automatically to their specific vertical, business model, and company KPIs. They also use creative analytics to instantly tell which ads get the highest click-through rate and the best conversion rate across all their ad partners … without having to calculate a single parameter.

It is all about exposing opportunity and minimizing risk.

You need a fast and painless way to measure marketing activities at very granular levels in order to quickly identify top-performing channels and make optimizations. You need to reveal previously inaccessible insights on performance, so you can quickly shift budgets away from under-performing initiatives and optimize top-performing channels. You need to monitor marketing budgets across campaigns in real-time to effectively track performance to goals and avoid overspending.

Report: 7 things your mobile attribution doesn’t do (but should)

Right now, every last dollar has to count. Everything that can be optimized must be. And anything that can be automated needs to be. If you’re not using Singular to boost ROAS and manage spend, now’s the time to try. There’s a free option for SMBs, and there are amazing plans for enterprise and at-scale marketers.

Here’s what you need now more than ever (get the full report here):

Make marketing data simple

  1. Automatic collection and combining of your most important datasets
  2. No more tedious data transformation tasks
  3. Marketing data that matches every time across all your ad partners
  4. Unified upper-funnel campaign data with lower-funnel attribution data
  5. Standardized and normalized data
  6. Comprehensive ROI reporting at all dimensions
  7. Accurate, timely and actionable insights
  8. ETL to get your data wherever you need it, ready to go

 

Unlock granular and aggregate analytics

  1. Pockets of profitable growth identified quickly
  2. Less wasted spend
  3. High-level snapshot of all your data at once
  4. Ad creatives side-by-side with metrics 
  5. Creative clustering to automatically group similar ads across sets and partners
  6. Holistic view of ad monetization
  7. Better decisions about campaign performance and channels 
  8. Easier scaling of marketing efforts efficiently and intelligently

 

Customize data views automatically

  1. Unique analytics for your unique KPIs
  2. Easy custom grouping of data by dimensions that matter (to you)
  3. Simple breakouts by geo and market
  4. Automated custom reports
  5. Business unit breakdowns
  6. Funnel stage breakdowns
  7. Custom metrics including aggregated metrics and calculated metrics
  8. Custom events

 

Connect cross-platform web-mobile journeys

  1. Unified cross-platform journeys
  2. Connected spend/return on every dollar on every platform
  3. Touchpoints for custom MTA models
  4. Digital and non-digital platforms
  5. Retargeting

 

Prevent fraud

  1. Deterministic, not probabilistic fraud prevention
  2. Proactive, not reactive days, weeks, or months later
  3. Real-time
  4. Transparent: you and ad partners get user-level decision logic
  5. Built-in, no extra cost
  6. Customizable, not hard-coded
  7. Most powerful in the industry with documented savings for named clients in the six figures per month

 

Activate near-real-time segments

  1. World-class audiences capability
  2. Precision generation of specific audiences
  3. Automated distribution of audience segments across all media sources
  4. Regular and automated syncing of audiences
  5. Highly customizable

 

Inspire trust

  1. Used by top-10 global companies
  2. Trusted by the best data-driven marketers on the planet
  3. Used by top brands who are winning in their categories

For more details, get the full report or talk to us

It’s about survival. And it’s about winning

Your category has a lot to say about your results right now. Gaming’s up. Retail’s up. Business services and social media are up right now too. But travel has challenges — with some recovery. And other categories are feeling the impact of COVID-19.

So you might be focused on just surviving right now.

Or you might be doing fairly well, all things considered, and focusing on beating the competition. 

Either way, you need to simplify marketing data and rationalize different datasets from partners. You need clean data that’s standardized and collected for you to make your team more efficient, and to make testing new partners relatively easy and painless. You need to expose full funnel performance metrics that are custom to your business. You need to optimize each channel and each campaign, and shift budgets from poor performers to top performers.

Ultimately, that’s going to result in positioning yourself best in tough economic times, if they persist, as well as in recovery, as it continues. 

Get the full report here!

Evaluating the true impact of web-to-app conversions

In this first article in a series on cross-device attribution, we describe why marketers should leverage the web as a meaningful acquisition channel, even with app-only products.

Introduction

Traditionally, mobile attribution providers have outright avoided the web. Or, they’ve offered limited solutions built with problematic assumptions and mobile-centric design that lack the technical depth to properly address the web as a meaningful acquisition platform—even for entirely mobile apps.

This is changing. As advertisers get smarter, tools get smarter, and vendors are looking to expand and provide better solutions as they continue to compete with each other in the busy SaaS MarTech space.

Interestingly enough, while the above is clearly relevant for products that contain both mobile and web—whether it’s mobile web or desktop—it’s also becoming more relevant for “pure” mobile apps that aim to acquire users through mobile search, web-based registration flows, and other web-focused acquisition strategies.

Why web?

Almost all user acquisition teams today end up running campaigns on the web. For products that support both mobile and web, running web ads that lead to your web-based product typically yield higher conversion rates, which then provide easier paths for having users download your app. However, even app-only products end up having ads showing on mobile web inventory, with links typically leading to app stores. This leads to poor conversion rates.

However, arguably the biggest missed opportunity by not running paid ads or other types of web campaigns is Search. Search is a great way for people to find your app or website. And, the ability to optimize your acquisition by understanding how different campaigns, keywords, and content work is vital to maximizing your budget.

Sadly, most mobile attribution providers are as their name suggests—focused on mobile. Solutions are very limited and lack the technical depth to support the variety of user flows between web and mobile.

Web-to-app tracking: just one use web/mobile case

Web-to-app tracking is a great use case to start with, as we begin to unfold the variety of user journeys between web and mobile. The term commonly refers to the situation where someone visits a web page while using their mobile device.

Perhaps this web page is the full-blown product. It could also be a simple landing page. In both cases, users see a link to install the app. Most often, this appears as a banner at the top or bottom of the page.

cross device attribution


In most cases, marketers would rather let the user
convert first, for example by making a purchase of the product they originally searched for. This would intuitively increase the chances of a user wanting to download a new app. In some cases such as mobile gaming, the user’s intent is higher (they’ve reached this page after their search), and direct download may be ok.

The first scenario of a user converting on the web requires the attribution provider to support web attribution. We’ll get back to this later. 

Let’s focus on the second use case, where the user came in from Search or from a web ad, to then click a link and download the game. The important question we ask ourselves as marketers here is what do I know about this user? Which campaigns did they come from? Which ad groups or ad sets, and how much did I pay for them? What are the keywords that work better for me, and what terms result in higher click-through rates?

All of these questions are what a capable attribution provider should answer.

When tracking web-to-app conversions, the ideal report is one that allows you to focus on a specific channel, dive into each and every campaign, and understand what the campaign is yielding in terms of app installs, post-install conversions, and eCPI and eCPA for different components within the campaign or the campaign as a whole. This allows us to compare it to other paid campaigns and activities. 

There are even more fundamental questions such as:

  • How should I create the right links?
  • What UTM parameters should I use and how?
  • Can I link a UTM parameter to an app install? 

Unfortunately, traditional tools today lose this context and as a result, reporting options are either not showing any context previous to the web page visit, or a very limited one.

Fortunately, the solution needed to solve the problem isn’t that complex. But it does require an understanding of both web tracking—how partners work and what UTM parameters should contain—and mobile. And, most importantly, how to tie the two together.

What’s next?

In the following articles we’ll dive deeper into the mechanics of how web-to-app tracking works, as well as continue to more advanced topics such as web tracking and the Holy Grail—cross-device attribution.

cross device attribution


If you’d like to learn more about Singular’s web-to-app and cross-device capabilities, please reach out to
schedule a demo.

What Singular is doing with the Mobile Attribution Privacy working group

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

 

Will we soon be living in a post-IDFA world? It’s hard to say, but there are some reasons to prepare for it, which is why Singular has established the Mobile Attribution Privacy working group.

In 2019 so far there have been over 1,000 privacy breaches exposing over 146 million records. That’s just one reason why privacy and data security are becoming increasingly important, both from a regulatory standpoint and a customer trust point of view.

mobile attribution privacy

As I shared with you a few months ago, Singular has already started making steps towards a more privacy-safe attribution model.

Recently, we met with representatives from companies including Lyft, AirBnB, Twitter, WB Games, Jam City, DraftKings, Oracle, Branch, Unity, the Mobile Marketing Association, LUMA Partners, and many others as part of a Mobile Attribution Privacy (MAP) working group. Our goal as advertisers and vendors: talk about options for measuring marketing while serving the privacy needs and desires of customers and users … even if the IDFA goes away.

Post-IDFA: what we talked about

In our first meeting, we talked about whether this was mobile and web, or mostly just mobile. The consensus: we’re going to keep this primarily focused on mobile attribution.

We also talked about Google advertising ID, and whether that should be part of the conversation. Though it seems that Google would be much less likely to abandon their primary identifier than Apple, we decided that we should look at global solutions for both Android and iOS.

One of the things we unanimously agreed on: we need to be focused on the needs of people: users and customers. If something doesn’t matter to users, it shouldn’t matter to us, and conversely, if it does, then it needs to be a core concern for marketers and marketing technology vendors.

This is one of those things that sounds simple but is actually complex.

For example, Apple cares first and foremost about their users, but to get these users to the iOS platform they need content providers to thrive and have an economic incentive to build for it. As one participant said: “People choose a phone based on where they can play Fortnite.”

And while big content creators could survive removal of device identifiers (by switching to something else – like an email address), many smaller ecosystem players would struggle to survive, as this will greatly deteriorate people’s ability to know who their users are and where they came from.

Broadening the conversation

Two interesting ideas that have legs came up. And they’re both ways to broaden the conversation.

One is to bring this discussion to the IAB, the Interactive Advertising Bureau, and perhaps create a working group focused on Mobile Identifiers. The IAB, after all, is dealing with other privacy-related topics. Another is to view this area as an extension to the GDPR and CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act) legislation. Both are valid suggestions, and we’ll be looking into both options.

And finally, we spoke about multiple device identifier options:

  • Auto-rotating (short-lived) IDFAs
    If the IDFA auto-rotated, say weekly or monthly, Apple would limit how long you can track any particular user. This should permit proper advertising attribution. One question yet to answer: can an app developer stitch the rotating IDFAs together as long as the user is active within their app? Some would consider that app activity as a “meaningful relationship” which may permit doing so; others might consider it a violation of privacy.
  • Google Play Referrer equivalent
    Google has an excellent mechanism for passing referrer context into Google Play that the app can then query upon installation. Again, this would enable attribution. The obvious problem here is that enabling this type of link tracking makes it impossible to prevent vendors from appending a device ID, click ID, or other form of identification that could be connected to a specific person.
  • SKAdNetwork
    This is somewhat of a similar concept: you pass info to the App Store, but it’s not exposed to the installed app. The data is controlled by the operating system, and the amount of data you can pass along is greatly limited. In its current form this feels immature, but that could change with serious interest from major players.

And the conversation continues

Ultimately, we’re going to continue the conversation. We’re also going to broaden it to new players, and we invite anyone who is an interested party to be part of the next meeting of the Mobile Attribution Privacy group, either in person or via videoconferencing.

If you’d like to be part of the Mobile Attribution Privacy (MAP) Coalition, please join us in the MAP Slack group. There, you’ll be able to connect with other industry folks who are working to move the digital marketing community forward in this new, more privacy-safe world.

 

Singular & Segment: New partnership integration allowing for frictionless customer onboarding

I’m extremely happy to announce that Singular is now an official integration partner of Segment.

Segment is a customer data platform that many companies use to collect and action their customers’ data. When new relevant data comes from any source that a publisher has connected to Segment, they can now push real-time data streams from Segment to Singular.

That could include information such as customer purchases and revenue, mobile events like push notifications, or custom events that developers define for themselves.

Integration: easier than easy?

The integration also enables Segment customers to immediately adopt Singular attribution with almost zero migration effort.

Using Singular attribution is the best way to measure ROI from the campaign level all the way down to the creative level. It also allows you to benefit from Singular’s fraud protection and audience management solutions to boost and optimize your marketing.

The new integration capability is server-to-server, which means that mobile app developers do not need to add code or Singular’s SDK to their mobile apps. In other words, it can be instantly available.

That’s critically important to many customers because it means no switching costs and no engineering work. Not having to put an extra SDK in your app can also help slim down your install size, shield you from security and privacy concerns, and make your app more stable.

Capabilities: what can you do?

What can Singular customers do with this integration?

In just one example, advertisers can now receive real-time data about purchases that mobile users make via other platforms. That allows Singular to combine this data with details about customer acquisition cost, marketing campaigns, and ad creatives to provide continually updated ROI and customer acquisition cost data for customers, campaigns, and ads.

In much the same way, brands can track results from push notifications such as opens, actions taken after opening, and determine both cost and return of messaging.

And, of course, brands can attribute mobile app installs using Singular’s industry-leading attribution, fraud detection, and audience management tools.

Singular: first mobile attribution company

Singular is one of the first partners for this new integration program, and we couldn’t be happier to offer it to our customers.

For Singular, this is yet another way for us to unify accurate marketing data from an important partner in the mobile ecosystem, which gives marketers more visibility into what they’re doing, and what impact it is driving.

“Our goal at Segment is to allow our customer to quickly and painlessly connect all their data,” says Segment CTO Calvin French-Owen. “Singular is the first mobile attribution company to custom-build their integration using our Developer Center, and we expect great results for Segment customers and Singular customers.”

We’re very happy to be the first to offer this new integration method and are looking forward to ensuring our customers have a successful and simple integration.

If you have any questions about this, please feel free to contact your customer success manager.

Or, if you’re not a Singular customer yet, talk to us about getting a demo.

Mobile attribution webinar: Your Top 27 ‘No BS’ questions answered

We know, it’s sad. You missed our mobile attribution webinar last week. We missed you too!

But we have a solution. Two of them, in fact.

First, if you missed our “No BS Mobile Attribution Webinar” last week, it is still available on-demand. We had fun doing the webinar, and we think you’ll enjoy listening to it as well. But second, if you don’t have 30 minutes to spare, it might be faster to read the answers we provided here.

First, a quick recap: content & speakers

Mobile attribution can be confusing, and it can seem pretty detailed and technical sometimes. That’s why we hosted the attribution webinar with friends from Vungle and Liftoff. And we had three experts, who are also providing the answers you see here …

Barbara Mighdoll
Senior Director of Marketing
Singular

David Bennett
Sales Engineer
Liftoff

Rina Matsumoto
Performance Optimization Lead, US
Vungle

OK. The mobile attribution webinar questions (and answers)

1) What is mobile attribution?

Rina: Mobile attribution is the way mobile marketers understand from which marketing channels their app users are acquired.

It’s incredibly important to know which traffic sources are bringing not only users but high LTV users into your app. This will allow you to invest your marketing budget in the right sources.

2) From Andrew at Flipboard: “Can you please touch on challenges and capabilities for tracking attribution from a mobile app?”

Barbara: Well, this is a fairly broad question that could be taken in so many directions, and since we are just starting the discussion I’ll keep this high-level.

Mobile attribution at the core is the bridging together of advertising and mobile technologies. The challenge to attribution is being able to keep up with this constantly evolving technology, and I’ll also add the constantly evolving ecosystem threats like fraud. However, when done right, the insights from mobile attribution allow marketers to execute and evaluate their mobile marketing campaigns with proper app conversion metrics.

2) What are tracking links? How do they work?

David: There are multiple types of tracking links, impression tracking links and click tracking links. These links are used to gather data around what partners are driving impressions and clicks for you. They also allow us to track what users are downloading your app after seeing an ad.

This helps you assign attribution.

The tracking links also help us route users to the App Store, the Google Play store, or other app marketplaces. In the case of re-engagement or retargeting campaigns they can also be setup to route users directly to your app. In general, they make data collection for digital marketing possible.

As for how they work, they send information to your MMP when impressions are shown or when ads are clicked. The information that they send contains device data as well as a few other key pieces of information. Since they contain device data it allows you to track when users are installing your app because of your advertising efforts and what actions they are taking in your app because of your advertising efforts.

3) What is deep-linking? Why does it matter?

David: Deep-linking is a technology that allows you to link to your app directly from your ads [editor’s note: whether in an app or on the mobile web]. For re-engagement campaigns this means a smoother user experience.

This is important because it allows you to minimize the number of steps that your users have to complete in order to reach the desired event. This usually leads to better performance and increased ROI.

Barbara: Just to add a quick comment here, I think this technology has become a pretty standard part of an attribution stack, and because of that most users now expect when they click on an ad with a particular CTA, the app will open in the correct location.

3) What are postbacks? Should I be getting them?

Rina: Postbacks are the way networks receive in-app data from clients, whether that’s installs or post-install events like in-app purchase or tutorial completion.

These postbacks will be key depending on your network’s buying model or optimization methodology. So it’s important to consult your network partners on what postbacks they’ll be needing.

David: This enables you to share user behavior with your advertising partners.

4) What is a SAN?

David: Self attributing networks such as Facebook, Google, and Twitter inform your attribution partners which installs and actions they drove.

5) What is granularity? Why do marketers need granularity?

Barbara: Granularity describes how deep a marketer is able to analyze their data.

For example, basic granularity usually includes drilling down to the app & source level, while sophisticated marketers are able to go deeper into the campaign, publisher, keyword and even creative levels. With this level of detail, marketers can decide when they should shift budget. They also can better inform how to spend their time optimizing – and know exactly where to optimize.

Advanced marketers who have been able to achieve scale and see massive growth are the ones who are able to optimize at deep levels of granularity. For example, as part of our Marketing Intelligence Platform we offer creative reporting where we are able to pull in your ad creative so you can easily match your data to your ads.

One of our customers who started utilizing these creative level insights saw ROI increase 40% within 2 months.

Rina: I agree with Barbara. Granularity helps you understand what types of users were acquired and how they were acquired. Are these users from iOS 11? Were they acquired from a specific type of creative?

It’ll also help in investigating any issues with discrepancies and potential campaign or fraud issues, by being able to drill down to specific parameters.

6) Why do marketers need to combine customer-level mobile attribution data and campaign-level marketing data?

Barbara: This is a great question, and one that we address frequently because the complexity of this is often misunderstood.

Before I jump into the why marketers need to combine this data, I first want to touch on why combining it is even a challenge.

Marketing data is only available in aggregate like ad spend, while attribution data is available at the user-level like app installs. By nature, aggregate and user-level data do not fit together – it’s like trying to assemble a puzzle with pieces from different sets.

This means that marketer’s datasets are often left incomplete and inaccurate. Left this way, marketers do not have the ability to dig into granular levels of insights. And this is a core problem Singular solves – we redefined how attribution data matches campaign data with the experience we’ve acquired over 4 years of mapping this ecosystem.

So to answer why marketers need to combine these two datasets, the answer is pretty simple: to unlock ROI at granular levels like the campaign, publisher, keyword and creative-levels.

Rina: User level data are data points like device type, OS version, and country. Campaign level data are data points like publisher and creative information. Only once you marry this data do you have a full understanding of your marketing campaigns.

7) Can I see where ad networks are running my ads? If so, how?

Rina: At Vungle, we try to provide as much transparency to our advertisers as possible. We share publisher site names with all of our clients to give full transparency into their campaigns.

This transparency allows advertisers to better understand their user base and buy more intelligently on our platform.

8) What are the most critical reporting needs in mobile attribution?

Barbara: First of all, discrepancy and transparency are critical. No matter how your attribution provider is getting install and cost data (i.e. via API or tracking links), there are bound to be discrepancies between your provider and your ad networks. Being able to analyze these discrepancies is extremely valuable to avoid making decisions based on incorrect data.

Shameless plug:
One of the advantages of using Singular, is we allow you to compare data sets side by side without having to toggle between dashboards. And using our transparency feature, marketers can select their preferred source for each metric, then easily locate discrepancies in their data, while even setting-up alerts when discrepancies exceed a threshold.

In addition, ROI (return on investment) is the single most important metric for mobile marketers. However, most attribution providers are only able to provide ROI insights at the source level because they are unable to reliably match cost and campaign data with user level data. True ROI data empowers you to optimize your advertising by the quality of users it’s driving, instead of just install and revenue data. It’s also a must-have if you want to scale your programs while maintaining or even improving efficiencies.

David: In my experience at Liftoff, when there are some discrepancies in between different reports the first two places that we would look are fraud and tracking issues. If the discrepancy is due to fraud we revamp what we are doing and work hard to protect our customers.

If the discrepancy is caused by tracking issues we work with our customers and their attribution providers to get tracking functioning as expected.

9) What kinds of ad fraud are most common? How can I avoid them?

Barbara: Today there are two main forms of fraud: fake users and attribution manipulation. Fake users involves bots, malware and install farms to emulate clicks, installs and in-app events, causing advertisers to pay for activity that is not completed by a real user.

Attribution manipulation is an especially dangerous form of fraud since it not only costs marketers their spend but also corrupts performance data, causing marketers to make misguided acquisition decisions. The two most common types are click injection and click spamming.

David: Click fraud is a major form of fraud that we are seeing right now. It can be anything from click farming to click spamming to click injection to ad stacking. These types of fraud are meant to drive a high number of clicks, reduce the CPC of a campaign and possibly steal attribution from users that could convert organically.

Another example of fraud would be install-fraud through something like install farming or click spamming to steal install credit. These types of fraud are done to drive a higher number of installs to reduce the CPIs of a campaign. In order to combat both click-fraud and install-fraud Liftoff recommends focusing campaigns on actions that users perform through CPA goals or KPIs or through setting ROAS goals or KPIs.

Other ways that we help our customers avoid fraud are blacklisting suspicious traffic, blacklisting traffic from suspicious sources, we even go so far as to reject anonymous traffic, or traffic that doesn’t have advertising IDs or IP addresses associated with the devices.

10) How can I avoid ad fraud?

Rina: Attribution partners and ad networks will have their own technology to prevent and detect fraud.

Something that you can do as an advertiser is take a look at ROAS data, which can be useful to spot install fraud or fake users. However, click fraud or attribution manipulation will typically snipe organic users that usually have high LTV.

At Vungle, we recommend marketers take a closer look at their CTR/CVR and click to install time distributions to find any anomalies. Any abnormally high CTR or low CVR can signal that the clicks aren’t real. A click-to-install time distribution that is skewed beyond the one hour mark is also an indicator that most users didn’t download after a real click that redirected them to the store.

11) Should I pay extra for fraud protection?

Barbara: The biggest mistake marketers can make is to think that fraud is a “nice to have” feature, or that they can “block fraud manually”. Even traffic that looks great i.e. good retention, high ROI can actually be fraud due to attribution manipulation. That’s why we at Singular offer fraud prevention for free.

Also be careful of the actual type of fraud prevention your provider has. With fraud costs so high and growing every year, you need to ensure that your attribution platform not only detects fraud but proactively prevents fraud in real-time.

And by this I mean some attribution providers do not offer actual prevention, but only detection. That means they offer “alerts.” where you then have to manually look at the data and fix it in retrospect. Be on the lookout for prevention types including IP blacklists, geographic outliers, hyper engagement, install validation, and time to install analysis – and the more included the better.

12) How can I ensure brand safety in my mobile advertising?

David: We have customers that worry about brand safety and focus on targeting specific verticals and avoiding others. This is done by setting up either blacklisting or whitelisting for specific types of apps. An example of this would be to blacklist violent apps.

13) Getting app installs is great, but it’s just the first step. What are the most important post-install events to measure?

David: App marketers need to determine which post-install events are the best indicators for future conversions and revenue. Once these events have been determined, these become the events that should be tracked and used to set goals for your campaigns.

These events might be adding an item to your cart or reaching level ten in a game. The idea is that these events indicate a high LTV.

Rina: Understanding short-term metrics as a proxy to determine long-term LTV is the key for performance marketing.

Often times ROAS in the short term is strong indicator of high LTV.

If users often monetize later in their user lifetime, looking at other benchmarks like level completions or retention could be the solution for campaign optimizations.

14) Data is critical to mobile marketing success. Why do I need API access to my attribution partner’s datastream? What kinds of data should I have access to?

Barbara: One of the critical elements to pay attention to if you are in the search for a new attribution provider is data accessibility. After all, your data is only valuable if it’s readily available and in a usable format. This is especially important for marketing organizations with centralized internal reporting.

Regarding what kinds of data you should have access to, there are two types:

  • Aggregate
    This includes LTV, retention, or other in-app KPIs grouped by any number of segments (app, media source, campaign, ad ID, etc).
  • User-level/device-level
    Why do you want this? Just one example: you may need to join that device-level data with offline or proprietary data and perform internal analysis on that combined dataset.

15) Do I have to use one attribution solution across all my apps?

David: The short answer is no … but the long answer is a lot more complicated but really comes down to how many tools you want to worry about integrating and how many tools you want your employees to have to learn.

The more attribution solutions you use across your portfolio the more complexity you add to your portfolio.

Barbara: Yes, complexity is the issue. Do you want to have multiple dashboards? Different workflows?

16) Measuring installs is great, but we do have attrition. How important is uninstall measurement?

Barbara: Uninstall measurement is a useful metric when it comes to understanding your users.

Uninstall data by itself is interesting, but its best used in conjunction with other lower-funnel events to understand the behavior of your users and of your marketing activities.

Aside from the insights, uninstall data can be provided to partners to be used in campaigns for retargeting audiences.

17) Can I use attribution to know how much ad revenue I’m generating from each mobile app user? Or from each network?

Rina: Analytics providers are starting to develop features to ingest ad revenue data to be able to track true LTV of acquired users. As ad revenue on the user level data becomes more readily available, I expect this feature will be widely used by developers.

Barbara: The short answer is yes. It’s a developing technology that we have some customers using right now. The best thing I can say is … talk to us!

Next steps: mobile attribution master class

Quick-witted readers may be wondering: How did 27 questions turn into 17? The answer: via the magic of multiple queries within each one.

But you may still have unanswered questions.

The solution: get a copy of our 7 things your mobile attribution tool doesn’t do (but should) report! Alternatively, get a full demo of Singular’s mobile attribution capabilities. 

The ‘No BS’ mobile attribution webinar: 27 questions answered (plus yours!)

You’ve heard about mobile attribution. You’ve wondered about mobile attribution. Maybe you even use mobile attribution. But you still have questions.

Like: Why?

Or: Who needs that?

And: Aren’t all mobile attribution solutions basically the same?

We get it. It can be confusing, and it can seem pretty detailed and technical sometimes. That’s why we’re hosting a webinar (with friends from Vungle and Liftoff) on November 6. And we’d like you to attend.

Why? Keep reading.

 

What you won’t get from this webinar

What we won’t do is feature talking heads making long droning speeches. We don’t like those kinds of webinars either.

We also won’t do a fancy sales pitch on Why Singular Rocks or How Singular Is The Total Best, Dude. That’s not our style, and we suspect that it’s not really yours, either.

What you will get from this webinar

Quick, to the point answers on key questions about mobile attribution.

Which questions? Keep scrolling …

Who you’ll get answers from

We’ve selected an attribution expert from Singular, an advertising expert from Vungle, and a mobile app install expert from Liftoff to provide all the answers.

They are:

Barbara Mighdoll
Senior Director of Marketing
Singular

David Bennett
Sales Engineer
Liftoff

Rina Matsumoto
Performance Optimization Lead, US
Vungle

And I’ll be moderating (John Koetsier, VP Insights, Singular.)

And finally, the mobile attribution questions

We have a lot of questions that we’ve seen people ask. Here’s a quick overview:

  1. What is mobile attribution?
  2. What are tracking links? How do they work?
  3. What are postbacks? Should I be getting them?
  4. What is granularity? Why do marketers need granularity?
  5. What is a SAN? Are SANs really self-reporting? What does that mean?
  6. Why do marketers need to combine customer-level attribution data and campaign-level marketing data?
  7. What are the most critical reporting needs in mobile attribution?
  8. What is server-side measurement? When does it make sense?
  9. What kinds of ad fraud are most common? How can I avoid them?
  10. Can I see where ad networks are running my ads? If so, how?
  11. How can I ensure brand safety?
  12. Should I pay extra for fraud protection? What about viewability tracking?
  13. Why do I need API access to my attribution partner’s datastream?
  14. What kinds of API access should I have?
  15. Do I need access to raw log files? Why?
  16. What are the most important post-install events to measure?
  17. Do I have to use one attribution solution across all my apps?

That is actually 27 separate questions, even though we’ve organized them into 17. But it’s pretty likely that there are some that we haven’t seen. Or thought of. And one of them might be yours.

 

 

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.

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.