5 Smart ways to use Mobile Measurement Partners (MMPs) to grow your mobile apps

A mobile app attribution tool or measurement partner (MMP) is a must-have if you run mobile app campaigns. It allows you to easily view and optimize the ad campaigns’ performance of multiple channels and networks at once with a single SDK.

In this post, we'll share five ways you can better utilize Mobile Measurement Partners (MMPs) for your app growth.

[ Highlights]

- Curious about your user journey from the web to the app? Get a unified view of your web-to-app marketing performance
- Quickly and easily create target audiences that performed specific events to maximize conversions and LTV
- Build a convenient and complete data pipeline with raw data
- Prepare for the iOS 14.5 update and apply SKANs to tackle privacy concerns
- Check actual performance through last-click-based performance measurement as well as next-generation marketing performance analysis such as MTA and MMM

Check the unified web-to-app user journey on one page 

Just because you're running mobile app campaigns doesn't mean the web isn't important. Due to the nature of the limited app store product page, it is common to see richer content and incentives on the mobile web before a user lands in the app store. When you access the mobile web, you can easily find smart app banners that encourage you to install the app or take action in the app, such as "Get more from your app."

To understand the entire user journey from web to app, you must use a mobile app attribution tool that offers a web SDK. Most mobile app attribution tools are app-centric, meaning they can only analyze app installs and in-app events, and you'll need to utilize a separate analytics tool for the web. In this case, only in-browser conversions will be attributed to web campaigns, and any other web-originated app installs and in-app events will be analyzed as organic/unattributed, which can lead to an underestimation of the performance of web campaigns. It leads to the fact that you might not be able to see the true, complete user journey marketing performance.

After using unified web-to-app analytics, Airbridge customer d.code, a fashion pre-order platform, found that users who acquired from web campaigns had a higher conversion-rate" class="glossary-link" title="Conversion Rate">conversion rate than those from app install campaigns. Marketers could allocate more budget to web campaigns to improve conversion rates.

Leverage app attribution tools with unified analytics from web and app SDKs and see accurate marketing results.

👉 For more information on increasing web-to-app conversions and tracking, check out our whitepaper "Web-to-App Marketing Guide."

Maximize your conversion rate and LTV with the target audience

User acquisition (UA) is essential in mobile app marketing. Still, another important goal is to increase retention and maximize customer lifetime value (LTV) by ensuring that acquired users continue to act and engage in the app. One of the main strategies to achieve this goal is to run retargeting ads or remarketing for users who have taken specific actions, such as signing up as a member. You need user data who performed particular events, such as installing and opening an app or signing up. Mobile app attribution tools can help you create and export a user group that satisfies specific criteria with specific properties efficiently.

The app itself already has user behavioral data, but you might need to ask your development team to create and export the target audience. If your development team is on a tight schedule, you may have to process the data yourself. But when you use a mobile app attribution tool, user behavior data is collected and stored through SDKs, allowing you to create and export target audiences easily. You can also automatically upload your audience data with specific ad channels and third-party solutions to create custom audiences. You can run high-performing retargeting or detargeting campaigns with this target audience data and custom audiences.

Leverage first-party data from mobile app attribution tools to create target audiences and maximize user conversion rates and LTV.

Build a convenient and complete data pipeline with raw data

Mobile app attribution tools collect touchpoints and conversion data via tracking links, APIs, referrers, SDKs, and more for attribution. They process and manipulate it to assign credit to the touchpoints that contributed to a conversion based on an attribution model. You can see the results in the attribution tool's dashboard and download the raw data directly for deeper analysis or data internalization.

Airbridge's customer, Queenit, a fashion e-commerce service, uses Airbridge to export data and build a data pipeline. After collecting data, they exported all the data to automatically load it into storage in a 3rd party platform, making it easy to build its data pipeline.

Suppose you need more in-depth analysis and data pipeline building beyond the dashboards provided by the mobile attribution. You can utilize the app attribution tool’s raw data export and integration in that case.

Apply SKAN easily to cope with iOS 14.5 updates

The iOS 14.5 update introduced the App Tracking Transparency (ATT) policy, making Apple's SKAdNetwork (SKAN) a crucial solution for measuring iOS campaign performance. If the user consents to the collection of the Identifier for Advertiser (IDFA)) - ATT opt-in - you can find the attribution results as before. However, if the user does not consent - ATT opt-out - you can check the campaign’s performance only when the campaign is executed through SKAdNetwork. As of March 2022, only 6% of users have opted-in to ATT policies, making it essential to use SKAN when marketing to iOS users.

App attribution tool can help you run SKAN campaigns more efficiently by preparing for the iOS 14.5 update and SKAN utilization. It provides insights to app marketers unfamiliar with SKAN and offers a function to set the conversion value you need for iOS marketing. The app attribution tool also allows you to analyze your overall marketing performance, including performance on Android and iOS, as well as the performance of SKAN campaigns, all at once.

👉Read more about SKAdNetwork 4.0: Major changes app marketers should know

In addition, Airbridge lets you use SKAN immediately with a simple setup by installing the latest Airbridge iOS SDK. You can check the performance of Android, iOS, and SKAN campaigns at a glance in one report without any additional development. We also provide the function to set up the conversion easily with presets that collect best practices. If you need to prepare for the iOS 14.5 update and SKANs, Airbridge can help you.

Check actual performance through last-click-based measurement, as well as integrated marketing performance analysis

To analyze ad performance, you need to use an attribution model that provides a baseline of which touchpoints contributed to which conversion events. App attribution tools typically provide performance data based on a last-touch attribution (LTA) model.

It becomes more difficult to measure based on a LTA model in situations where user-level data collection is limited. Now is the time to consider multiple methods to weave a full picture of the user journey in this privacy-centric era.

Attribution tools respond to this trend by offering multi-touch attribution (MTA) as an alternative to last-touch attribution or marketing mix modeling (MMM) to analyze marketing performance properly while protecting privacy.

While the performance measures will vary depending on your business and marketing strategy, the following Unified Measurement Stack can help you analyze your performance from a balanced perspective to grow your app service and optimize your marketing. For example, MMM analysis during the marketing strategy setting stage can help guide trends and plans for overall marketing channels. When you're running ads, MTA and incrementality analysis can help you see the effectiveness of your ads across channels to verify, validate, and monitor efficiency. Lastly, you can use the analytics from the LTA model for detailed creative and campaign-level strategy.

If you were only checking the performance based on LTA in your app attribution tool / MMP and wondering if this is your actual marketing performance, check out our comprehensive marketing performance analysis with multi-touch attribution and marketing mix modeling.

👉 For more information on attribution models that determine ad performance, check out Airbridge Handbook 01 - Attribution.