What is mobile attribution?
Mobile attribution is the process of determining which campaigns, channels, and media partners deliver specific app installs. It ties all app installs to particular marketing efforts. These insights make it possible to measure and optimize user acquisition campaigns and overall marketing performance and understand how in-app events can bring users further down the funnel.
In short, mobile app attribution is all about understanding the user journey and what led them to interact with an app. It’s common to use mobile attribution software to determine which campaigns, partners, and channels deliver each mobile app installation. These tools track where users first learn about an app and use multiple identifiers to measure the pre-and post-install journey.
Mobile attribution models
Marketers can choose from different models of mobile app attribution, depending on the type of insights they’re looking to collect. These models are:
- First click: The first click, or touch, gets credit for the attribution.
- Last click: The last click, or touch, gets credit for the attribution.
- Multi-touch: Some level of value is assigned to all touches a brand has with a consumer before they convert. This model can be helpful to see the entire user journey.
- Linear: Equal value is assigned to every touch a brand has with a user, no matter how big or small the touch may be.
- Time-decay: Value increases for recent touches with the consumer and value decreases for earlier ones.
- View-through: Attribution is driven by a user viewing an ad without clicking on it.
How mobile attribution works
Mobile attribution marketing follows a distinct process from start to finish. This process typically looks like the following:
- User clicks on an advertisement
- The user’s ID is saved to the network
- User installs app
- User opens the app for the first time
- Attribution launches
- Attribution software collects data
When marketers look at engagement metrics for a marketing campaign, the data can look like a funnel, meaning it’s broad at the start and narrows at the end. As an example:
- 800 people see an ad for a certain app
- Of those 800 people, 75 people click on the ad
- Of those, 40 install the mobile app
- Of those, three people are still using the app two weeks later
Main data points of mobile attribution
For mobile attribution platforms to work effectively, they must collect specific data points about the user. When a user clicks a link, visits the app store, downloads an app, and opens it for the first time, the attribution provider collects the following data points:
- Advertising ID: The string of letters and numbers identifying every person's smartphone or tablet
- IP address: A unique address that devices use to communicate with one another over the internet
- User agent: The line of text that identifies an individual’s operating system and browser
- Timestamp: The time a user clicked the link
- First install: When the app was activated the very first time
These data points can tell a marketer if the user is new or existing. If they’re new, the next step is to match the install to their engagement with a particular ad or link.
Benefits of using mobile attribution
When done correctly, mobile attribution can lead to many business advantages. Some benefits include:
- Learn where users are acquired. Tracking installs and conversations is a major part of mobile attribution. Understanding the journey a user takes from the moment they click an ad to the actions they complete in the app provides data on how and why the app was installed.
- Accurately compare campaign and network performances. Insights into what brings users to an app make it possible to measure success per campaign and network. For example, if campaign X brings in more app installs than campaign Y, but users from campaign Y end up making in-app purchases, campaign Y was a better investment.
- Generate more insights from data. Mobile attribution gives marketers a look into performance analytics to track and measure various KPIs across ad networks.
- Reduce ad spend. Taking advantage of mobile attribution lets marketing teams discover which ad campaigns and channels are and aren’t generating results. This makes it easier to cut the ones that aren’t working and invest more in the ones that are.
Mobile attribution vs. web attribution
With mobile attribution, the software tracks a user based on their user ID, which is typically tied to their Apple ID, Facebook login, or Google Play account.
With web attribution, elements like the user’s cookies and pixel tags are used to keep tabs on their journey.
Mara Calvello
Mara Calvello is a Content and Communications Manager at G2. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Elmhurst College (now Elmhurst University). Mara writes customer marketing content, while also focusing on social media and communications for G2. She previously wrote content to support our G2 Tea newsletter, as well as categories on artificial intelligence, natural language understanding (NLU), AI code generation, synthetic data, and more. In her spare time, she's out exploring with her rescue dog Zeke or enjoying a good book.
