Motivation
Attribution has always been a central part of mobile performance marketing. Connecting actions that the user performs in relation to the ad (views, clicks etc) with actions that the user performs inside the advertiser’s app allowed ad networks to operate more efficiently by identify the key user features needed for the user acquisition process, thus improving ROAS and optimizing budgets.
Attribution on web properties is currently a simpler process due to the open nature of web standards. Cookies can be placed inside the user's browser once they click on an ad in the publisher's website. The cookie can then be checked on the advertiser's landing page thus connecting the advertising actions (viewing the ad, clicking on it) with future actions that occur on the advertiser's website (registration, sales etc). Thus the cookie becomes a common source of information that both sides can access.
Unfortunately the app ecosystem is much more opaque, apps cannot share common information unless both of them are active on the user's device (which of course is not the case for the advertised app given that it has not been installed yet). Furthermore, the user's journey from the publisher's app, where the ad is shown, to the advertiser's app, the final destination, contains a dark tunnel, the play/app store. Any information that the publisher would like to transmit through the journey gets lost once the user reaches the app store. This is the point where Attribution SDK in the mobile ecosystem come into play. The SDK on the advertiser's app side works together with the tracking server on the publisher's side to connect the two user data points by using a heuristic algorithm to determine if the user that clicked on the ad a minute ago is the same as the user that just opened the app.
Swaarm's SDK not only collects the data needed for attribution but also allows you to collect business data regarding your app. Queries like "how many users registered from the ones that installed it" or "what's the average spend in app for users that we acquired with campaign X coming from city Z" can easily be answered by collecting the right events.
Integration
Integrating the Swaarm SDK is a 10 minute task for an app developer. The library has to be added to your list of dependencies and then the events can be tracked.
To find out how to integrate on iOS please click here
To find out how to integrate on Android please click here
Once integrated, tracking an event is just one line of code:
SwaarmAnalytics.event("event_type_id", 123D, "custom value")
The method takes 3 parameters:
Event Type Id - the name of the event that you wanted to track as defined in Swaarm's Events under the "Advertiser Event Type Id" field. This can be "registration" or "first_time_deposit" etc.
Aggregated value - this is a numeric value that Swaarm will hold for you and can aggregate in the reports. Could be the amount of coins the user purchased, how many tasks they completed etc.
Custom value - this is a free field that can be used to store any additional information about the event. For a registration you might want to put the user's id or the email. For a payment you might want to store the package that the user selected. You can even send JSON and then analyse it using our SQL Lab.