How to track app downloads with traditional advertising

Quite simply, yes. All major affiliate networks either have their own internal app-based tracking capabilities, have partnered with an app-analytics company to provide a solution or have integrated with multiple app tracking services depending on client preference. Lack of tracking technology is no longer a reason to excuse the vast gap in app-trackable affiliate programs, which means we need to look deeper for the reasons why this blind-spot continues to exist.

The most obvious example of this is if a publisher app wants to use a traditional network affiliate link to send a user to an advertiser. This journey will normally involve the user being redirected out of the publisher app and into another app for web-browsing. This is not only a clunky journey but one that is fraught with tracking challenges. The blind-spot of app tracking, may not be that blind at all, particularly where advertisers are concerned.

Many advertisers see the acquisition of an app customer as very valuable in the first instance, but not something they want to continue to pay for ad infinitum, which runs against the traditional CPA model. Mobile Action offers app developers a lot of great free tools. Like Sensor Tower, if you link your iTunes or Google Play accounts, you can see download and revenue data for your apps, right in your dashboard. Get email reports on your apps and integrate third-party analytics solutions.

Overall a pretty good solution for developers on a tight budget. We like: Great free features on the tracking and ASO side of things. Integrate your in-app analytics platform of choice. Not so aggressive in trying to get you to upgrade to the paid plan. If you have an iOS app, then you should be using their app analytics or connect it to one of the platforms listed above…period.

We decided on the ones above because they are free or affordable, and because they provide the most needed features while supporting at least the App Store and the Google Play Store. With this round-up you should be able to save some time in choosing the app downloads tracking tool that is right for you.

Define your objectives before launching your app, and track your success! Please tell me where is loop? These impressions, when viewed in coordination with a traditional ad campaign, can help to identify how the website is performing in terms of visibility during an offline advertising campaign. Here is an example of an offline ad going live and the impact it had on impressions of the website in Google at the launch of the ad.

This helps to demonstrate that the offline ad is generating visibility online, as the volume of impressions spikes once the ad goes out.

If the website is not set up or is not in a position to capture the impressions and clicks that are being generated from an offline advertising campaign, then you may have missed the boat. Making sure this is in position is done through search engine optimization, potentially pay per click, and other online avenues. Google Trends provides a valuable look into search interest.

This means, how much are people really searching for a particular keyword. In using Google Trends, we can research the volume of search interest for any given branded term over time. However, unlike SEO which primarily focuses on Google app store optimisation is not a one-size fits all game.

Similarly to traditional SEO search engine optimisation social links are also incredibly important, as is the authority of the app developer. I could write for days on how to set this up, but my general advice is this:. Similarly, promoted tweets are another highly effective way of driving mobile app downloads when set up correctly.

Start off with a small budget testing various different keyword segments, and scale up what drives the best cost-per-acquisitions. Again, this technique is so under talked about. Marketing your app should not be some after-thought, but instead built into your app, if possible. As long as every user refers an average of one new user, you have linear growth. Arguably, this is the biggest hurdle any marketer or product manager faces.

While a number of attribution providers are able to track basic app install campaigns, when complex user flows like those above are involved, it becomes more difficult to achieve match rates you can rely on. Legacy attribution providers often rely on fingerprinting to match users from the mobile web to an app store install, but this method leads to discrepancies and misattributions. Fingerprinting works by tracking as much information about the browser upon the click before redirecting to the appropriate app.

At a high level, fingerprinting stores unique user properties such as IP address, user agent, etc. Then, when a user installs the app, those properties are compared to properties read directly from the native app. It will also break in the scenario where the user connects or disconnects from wifi, changing the IP. After years of being in development and testing, Branch introduced a completely new way of measuring attribution that nearly eliminates the need for fingerprinting: Attribution.