Meet the first release of the coming fall. Here’s a brief overview of features and changes. 

AppMetrica already works with major advertising networks, such as Google AdWords, MyTarget and Yandex.Direct. In total, our list contains of more than 140 partners. Now we have added Facebook ads to our catalog.

We continue updating our reports. Last time there were a new expanded cohort analysis, and today we present a re-interpreted version of the report on traffic sources - User Acquisition and combine all information on users in the Audience.

Now it becomes easier to track installs received via Branch deferred deep linking service. Thanks to AppMetrica & Branch integration you will be able to get all the necessary information about the Branch campaigns (clicks, installs, opens, custom events) in a convenient form, and analyze Branch performance along with other advertising partners.

When launching an advertising campaign on a desktop site, via e-mail or offline one problem will be relevant for many projects: how to lead the user to the correct store for installation?

After all, the application is available immediately for several mobile platforms and published on Google Play, App Store and Windows Store. There are three destination URLs but only one can be used for placement!

In this post we will take a look on AppMetrica brand new cohort reports. These are Retention Analysis report, and Cohort Analysis.

Tracking URLs are mainly used for monitoring paid installs and evaluating the performance of advertising partners. But ads aren't the only place where users find download links – other traffic sources include social networks, blogs, and promotional websites. You can analyze conversion rates for these channels as well, by replacing direct links with tracking URLs. In today's article, we'll show you how to make tracking URLs perform for you.

Now ad networks and agencies can monitor campaigns that their clients are tracking in AppMetrica.

The journey to perfection is an endless pursuit. Unfortunately, none of the analytics systems currently available is truly universal. With this in mind, we would like to offer some tools that will help you get information tailored to the needs of your team.

World of mobile performance marketing is really buzzing now. Traffic partners offer lots of cost models (CPI, CPA, CPE, combined etc.), medias and formats.

Install attribution platforms became a crucial component of app promotion process. Trackers are in full response for controlling the conversion process and keeping it transparent, and should provide creditable reports.

Professional marketers want tracking platfroms to be more flexible and open. Listening to that AppMetrica launches Advanced Tracker Settings - feature for full control over our attribution policies.

Last week AppMetrica opened SDK Version Report. This allows our users to see statistics on AppMetrica SDK version used in their applications.

Global Mobile Internet Conference (GMIC) Bangalore

16 - 17 November 2016, Bangalore, India | Program

Major conference dedicated to the mobile market. In 2015 GMIC Bangalore attended by over 4600 participants from around the world. This year there woud be two stages: Thought Leader Stage and Developer Stage, and and still - reports dedicated to the Internet of things and start-ups competition.

AppMetrica team will be there. Write us on appmetrica@yandex-team.com to set up a meeting.

iMetrics

17 - 18 November, Moscow, Russia | Program

The event is held for the 6th year and dedicated to web analytics and online marketing. There are also reports of the mobile industry. In 2016 there woud be more than 60 speakers and 2,500 participants.

Come to our stand - we will be happy to answer your questions about the service. The program also includes stories from our colleagues about ClickHouse Yandex.Metrica.

MBLT'Dev

17 November, Moscow, Russia | Program

Conference for mobile developers. There are 4 sections announced, on hardcore iOS and Android development, cloud testing, live coding. workshops on Firebase and hall dedicated UI / UX.

17 speakers confirmed their participation: Russian and global experts from international product and service companies: Yandex, Dropbox, Just eat, Contentful, Google, Avito, Aviasales, Android Iasi, Realm, and others.

Games Gathering

2 - 4 December, Kiev, Ukraine | Program

Ukraine's largest game development conference. In addition to 2 lecture halls with 32 keynotes, you will be able to participate in battles and workshops.

Mobile Monetization Summit

5 December, Tel-Aviv, Israel | Program

Israel Mobile Summit has been held for 6 years. This year the main theme of the conference will be the monetization of mobile products. There would be 3 flows: Innovation & Growth, Monetization & Games and Analytics & SDKs.

In iOS 10 Apple brings some changes to its guidelines and policies which might affect AppMetrica functionality.

No need to worry: AppMetrica iOS SDK 2.6.0 is fully compatible with new guidelines. Please make sure to update AppMetrica SDK to version 2.6.0 (or higher).

What's new?

AppMetrica's cohort reports now provide a new kind of user return data: in addition to regular Retention, we’ve added the popular Rolling Retention metric.

Rolling Retention shows when users lose interest in your app and allows you to calculate the churn rate. By analysing not only launches, but any other user action as well, you gain insight into what makes people return to your app, and how to extend users’ lifetime.

This minor update of AppMetrica tracking will help you boost your ASO and more precisely run contextual ad campaigns. Search phrases which were used to find an app on Google are now shown for organic installs from Google Play. You can see these queries in the Traffic Sources report, in the Organic section.

If your application offers in-app purchases, you probably want to analyze its revenue data.

AppMetrica uses custom events to record and analyze in-app purchases. The collected statistics are shown in the Events report, which can be segmented like any other report. You can also use the purchase event to segment other reports.

We are happy to announce public release of Logs API – an API which allows you to pull out raw, non-agregated data of your applications from AppMetrica. Logs API opens new ways for AppMetrica integration with your in-house analytics or BI and smart data re-usage (e.g. retargeting).

Currently Logs API supports export for:

— Tracking URL clicks;
— Installations;
— Application events.

Such information is invaluable when creating customised reports and precisely defining a target audience for an ad campaign. Let’s look at both cases in more detail.

Creating customised reports

As an example of a customised report, let's say you want to get a summary report for all versions of a service. If the service exists in web and mobile versions, Logs API can be used to calculate the overall retention rate across the service as a whole, using your own analytics system.

In our example, the retention indicator will be calculated from registered users' actions with all versions of the service: a person's login is used to connect his or her use of mobile and web versions.

How to do it:

1. Integrate AppMetrica into the application; in the SDK, set the login and registration events so that users will be linked with their advertising identifier (GAID, IDFA) upon logging in or registering.
2. Use Logs API to upload data about login and registration events.
3. Upload analogous information from the web version of the service.
4. Merge web and mobile versions' charts of data by login.
5. Calculate overall retention for the product as a whole using in-house analytics.

Defining a target audience for an ad campaign

Non-aggregated data about installations can be used to define an audience for an ad campaign, setting targeting on the advertising identifiers of specific users. This is particularly useful for retargeting and cross-promotion.

For example, here’s what’s required to organise an ad campaign for application A among users who have already installed application B:

1. Create an advertising campaign for application A (for example, in myTarget) aimed at users of application B.
2. Upload data about all installations of application B over a relevant timeframe (for example, a year).
3. Add the identifiers that you receive into the settings of application A’s ad campaign.

Data can be uploaded not only by manually sending a request to the API, but also via user-friendly graphical interface. To do this, go to the Applications section, select what you need from the list on the left, and click Data export at the bottom of the left column.

Sharing with you a record of AppMetrica keynote on White Nights Helsinki February 2016.

What it's about?

Ad networks know a lot about the user and we can show how you can retrieve and utilize this data for product analytics. We present some interesting cases of campaign optimization using AppMetrica features - custom URL parameters and post-install postbacks.

Also you will find out how to get maximum of your campaigns using Dynamic Deeplinks and Post-click Landing features explained with cases. 

AppMetrica Case Study for Smart Campaign Optimization and Product Insights

AppMetrica SDK 2.40 brings much more accurate install tracking for iOS. Unique Referrer-based Tracking technology allows to engage non-heuristics matching instead of fingerprinting.

Read more about how AppMetrica tracking works.

How it works

With iOS 9 update third-party developers have got an access to WebKit.framework through which they can embed native Safari browser in their apps. Built-in Safari uses the same Cookie Storage as the original Safari.app. Thus, we are able to gain access to Safari.app Cookie Storage from third-party applications. Client-side logic is based on the use of Cookie Storage. URL Schemes are used to send a referrer from Safari to the app.

How exactly AppMetrica uses it in the attribution process?

1. Downloading cookie-referrer when opening the tracking URL.
2. In addition to the cookie client receives a response that opens the App Store (or the application itself, if it is already installed).
3. Wnen opening the app for the first time Safari runs in background requesting deeplink from the server and at the same time inserting cookie into request with referrer which was added earlier.
4. Safari getting deeplink with referrer parameter, opens it and thereby passing control to the application.

How  to use this in your app?

Very simple. Update the SDK to the latest version (2.40+) and implement 2 methods into the app:

enableTrackingWithURLScheme //registering the URL Scheme
handleOpenURL //processing redirect to the application

Find out more in our docs.

Referrer-based tracking technology is activated when clicking on the tracking link from Safari browser (if the device runs on iOS 9 or higher).

Some statistics

By the way, over the past week the share of visits from iOS 9.0+ among all the iOS users was counting 83%, including visits from Safari, which were about 91%.