Mobile Attribution guide - Part 1 : Attribution Modelling in Mobile World

Let's have a look on how attribution works

Attribution- Specifically talking about the Mobile, attribution refers to measurement of user events which  are the results of marketing activity. Or it can be defined as A method of assigning credit to a particular marketing interaction, brand touch point or channel in order to quantify the contribution   that are made by them towards a desired business goal (like Turnover, Profit, Customer retention, sales volume, revenue etc)

Examples- App Installs, product purchased(IAP), Level completion(in gaming), app launch etc

Traditional online advertising attribution techniques- Uses  (1) Cookies (2)Pixels(or tags) (3) Appended URL

Mobile attribution techniques/Universal Mobile App Attribution- (1) Google Install referrer (2) Identifier matching (3) Fingerprint MAtching (4)Open  URL with click id (many more are used like location tracking etc but these 4 are the major ones used by mobile tracking companies like Adjust, Appsflyer, MAT, Apsalar etc)

Mobile attribution is very complex if compared to the traditional attribution. For this presentation,  we will focus on Mobile attribution. First we will go through why attribution is needed through a sample conversion in the coming paragraphs/pictures (Major Players: Adjust, Apsalar, Appsflyer, Kochava, MAT/Tune etc)

There are several methods for attribution but it depends on 4 factors- Not all these can be tracked together through a single method (discussed in next slides)

1.Platform/App store- iOS/Apple iTunes  App Store, Android/Google Play Store, Amazon Appstore for Android, etc.

2.Engagement type- Click through vs View Through

3.Conversion type- Installs ve events

4.Flow - Web to app or App to App

Click Based Attribution

Install attribution is based on pre-determined timeframes which is also known as lookback windows. Below are some of the windows used in attribution

1.7- day standard- Network X serve the ads to user A. User A clicks on it within 7 day window, it will get the credit for that install (assuming that no other ad network is running ads simultaneously)

2.24 hour device fingerprinting attribution- Lets say if the device id or referrer is not available, the tracking is done using the device fingerprinting method. It can only record accurate data in very short window and hence the window is 24 hours

3.Facebook, Twitter and Google- Facebook- Fixed 28 days, Google- Fixed 30 days (non configurable window) while Twitter offers configurable windows of 1/7/14/30/90 days

4.Configurable window- Gives networks and advertisers great flexibility- networks need more window while advertisers can do an apple to apple comparison when running different ad networks under the same window. Its best used when we are running time bound campaigns

View through Attribution

Some agreements allows giving attribution credits even when ad is viewed and not clicked. Generally click is more powerful and it wins always. FB and Twitter charges on 24 hour window

Click Vs. Impression attributions?Winner?

Let's say , we are running campaigns with 2 different Ad networks. Network A has the click through window of 7 days and view through window of 1 day while Network B has only click through window of 15 days, no view through.

Here network B wins because it has the last click within the lookback window and also click wins over view even if it is within the window

In the next post, I will explain the different types of attributions used in the Mobile industry and how they work.