Why An MMP is a Must-Have For App Marketers
A detailed guide on Mobile Measurement Partners.
To grow your mobile app, you must make data-driven decisions with data you trust. With the help of a mobile measurement partner (MMP), you can accurately gather, analyze, and optimize data to make critical strategy decisions about your ad campaigns by first understanding which ads are driving the best ROI.
In the guide below, we will explore an MMP’s purpose, and why you need one.
What is an MMP?
An MMP, or mobile measurement partner, is a company that helps app marketers measure campaign performance across channels, media sources, and ad networks. It collects and analyzes app data to deliver consistent metrics, and acts as an impartial referee in attributing conversions to the correct media source.
It’s an imperative component in a mobile marketer’s tech stack. Being the only party with an unbiased view of the entire consumer journey, an MMP enables marketers to understand which media source deserves credit for driving conversion. This empowers marketers to make informed decisions regarding budget allocation with correct mobile attribution.
What is mobile attribution?
Mobile attribution, also known as mobile measurement or app attribution tracking, is the technical process of identifying whether a user installs an app after seeing an ad, and then keeping track of how a user behaves after installing the app.
Mobile app attribution is incredibly valuable as it allows marketers to discover where their users are coming from. Some installs might come from ads within an app, others from social media; it’s multi-touch attribution that reveals and records that information.
How does mobile attribution work?
Mobile app attribution is different from web attribution because mobile apps don’t have cookies, image pixel tags, or any of the other standard web tracking methods. As a result, the methods that work for web tracking won’t work for mobile app attribution.
Companies like Adjust, Appsflyer, and Tenjin known as mobile measurement partners, attribution providers, or measurement tools, provide marketers with mobile attribution tools. We supply attribution solutions to advertisers who use any kind of paid marketing for their apps. Our main job is to attribute a mobile app install (as well as post-install events) to the source it came from.
How does MMP work?
In basic terms, an MMP matches campaign engagements with installs and post-install in-app actions.
Unlike Firebase analytics traffic source attribution where you only get very basic media channel performance. An MMP matches campaign engagements with app installs and post-install in-app actions. It combines device IDs, aggregated data, and probabilistic modeling, using an SDK to associate ad engagements with specific user activities within an app
This is done using a combination of device IDs for user-level attribution, probabilistic modeling, or SKAdNetwork in iOS 14 for deterministic aggregated level attribution.
By implementing a software development kit (SDK), which is a piece of code that collects measurement and attribution data, the app enables the MMP to associate ad engagements with app installs and in-app events (such as game levels, registrations completed in a FinTech app, placed purchases, etc).
What are the benefits of an MMP?
- Improve app performance, ROAS, and LTV — An MMP equips you with accurate and granular data, enables you to allocate your budgets and optimize your app’s performance, ROAS, and LTV.
- Scale marketing efforts — As you scale campaigns across several ad networks, all the tools you need to try out new networks are already set up.
- Use budget more effectively — An impartial MMP can connect all the dots in your campaigns and pinpoint exactly where credit is due. This means you can allocate your budget to the campaigns that bring the most value.
- Save time and resources — Let a universal SDK do the grind work, measure, and attribute all of your ad networks through a single SDK. Plus, you can save heaps of time analyzing countless dashboards and spreadsheets.
- Single dashboard — See one view consolidating all your raw and aggregated data for both paid media sources and organic activities.
Who needs an MMP?
The short answer: Any marketer with an app.
Mobile is the most data-rich marketing channel in existence. However, when it comes to assessing campaign performance, the sheer amount of media data that needs to be analyzed can be overwhelming and hard to gauge.
If you’re not working with an MMP, you’re probably spending countless resources and man-hours trying to make sense of way too many dashboards and spreadsheets. Unless you’re a computer, this manual analysis is a recipe for errors and plenty of missed opportunities for optimizing lifetime value (LTV) and return on ad spend (ROAS).
But when managed by a reliable, unbiased provider, mobile attribution can pinpoint the value of specific channels, media sources, publishers, campaigns, and even creatives, while allowing you to constantly optimize your app’s performance and ensure strategic growth.
What else can attribution providers do?
While MMPs are primarily known for their ability to help clients track conversions and attribute them correctly, they often provide other services that help marketers improve their marketing strategies and outcomes. MMPs also usually have a suite of products that augment the marketing stack, such as the ability to:
- Segment and build custom audiences for retargeting campaigns.
- Track cohorts and their in-app engagements.
- Receive custom callbacks filled with granular user data.
- Utilize and track deep links.
- Use combined datasets to optimize ad spend.
- Offer fraud prevention to keep datasets clean and budgets safe.
Can I do mobile ad attribution without an MMP?
Anything is possible. However, few marketing teams are equipped with the time and resources to create, deploy, and maintain an in-house measurement platform without the use of a technical partner. You can try to capture attribution by cobbling together data from different platforms and hope for the best, but we don’t recommend going down this road. Some reasons why:
1. Mobile attribution and deep linking require a lot of technical expertise
You will need a team of developers who are familiar with different types of mobile devices and operating systems. This includes knowing how to handle the different types of links that can be created and the data that can be captured, which is very complex. They would also need to constantly monitor the links and data to ensure they are performing correctly while troubleshooting any problems.
2. Broken experiences will negatively impact your performance
It can take weeks or even months to build an attribution and deep linking infrastructure from scratch. And, if you’re not careful, it can be easy to make mistakes. Unreliable deep links or misrouting a user can cause frustration for users that can impact brand loyalty or perception. Lack of accurate measurement or miscounting attribution can paint the wrong picture, impacting your decision-making and marketing ROI.
3. Processing and maintaining data requires significant resources
You can easily spend a significant amount of budget and resources to build and maintain your own data and linking infrastructure. In addition, adapting to rapidly changing industry standards and privacy requirements can be a daunting task, even for the biggest brands. An MMP will work hard to take all the hassle out of it at a much lower resource or budget investment than if you were to go for it on your own.
4. No Access to SAN data
SANs typically hold back from sharing all their data with individual advertisers. However, they do provide additional, valuable data to validate MMPs. Without an MMP, you will have a limited ability to combine de-duplicated SAN data from across the different networks into a single view. MMPs de-duplicate attribution across your ad networks by cross-referencing event data, giving credit based on event timestamps to provide a holistic view of your cross-network ad campaigns.
AppTrackingTransparency (ATT) Framework and iOS 17
MMPs continue to play a pivotal role in streamlining ad campaigns and aiding marketers to navigate through the shifting sands of the digital marketing landscape. The release of iOS 17 reinforces this trend, as Apple enhances its commitment to user privacy, building upon the foundation laid by the ATT framework introduced in iOS 14.5.
This advancement has prompted Mobile Measurement Partners to innovate and refine their attribution and measurement solutions, ensuring compliance with the heightened privacy norms under iOS 17.
Therefore, working with a Mobile Measurement Partner is more critical than ever (for those who are not aware of it yet) to guarantee you have the knowledge and tools you need to continue developing your business regardless of what changes take place in the adtech sector.
Things to Keep In Mind When Choosing Your MMP
On the market, there are several MMP choices. Depending on the needs of the developers, one solution might be better suited than others. Generally speaking, however, the basic functionalities are similar. Some attribution platforms appeal to large corporations, while others are great for small and medium-sized businesses.
We wanted to highlight a few questions/points for you to remember when picking your perfect Mobile Measurement Partner. It will make your decision process a lot easier and faster.
1. First and Foremost: Privacy and Security
The given topic is crucial and should be addressed with utmost caution in the form of thorough and ongoing research processes with any vendor that has exposure to your most valuable resource — your users’ data.
You must explicitly ensure that your attribution partner is completely independent and neutral and that they are not exchanging your data as part of their company plan.
2. Knowledge and Experience
Expertise is more than simply an advantage. As with any critical component, collaborating with an experienced, dependable MMP is vital. Moreover, the mobile attribution system is complicated to set up and manage. It necessitates serious effort to construct a powerful, scalable, reliable, and accurate platform.
To make matters even more tricky, attribution platforms are, by nature, a delicate (complex) product. Therefore, any choice you make will have long-term consequences for your business, whether the result is good or bad.
3. Precision of Data
The MMP should give accurate and unbiased statistics because, based on this set of information, you will make a decision in your marketing activities. As a result, you must completely trust and rely on it.
What you can do here is check the organizations’ customer portfolios and rely on their opinions — also do your own in-depth research on the preferred company! Research is crucial in any part of the business, and here at REPLUG, we can’t stress that enough.
4. Anti-Fraud Tools
Examine the mobile attribution product’s anti-fraud tools again and be sure of it. Fraud is the downfall and enemy of the mobile ecosystem, and excellent weapons are required to combat it. As a result, while selecting an MMP, a trustworthy (reliable) anti-fraud tool is a must.
Who uses an MMP solution and how?
Let’s explore a few use cases for what an MMP offers each team:
Use case #1 — Marketing team
- Measure and optimize ongoing campaigns.
- Use a single source of truth for your siloed performance measurement (this includes accurately deduping data from multiple sources, data inconsistencies, unstandardized & messy data coming from partners and ad networks, unattributed non-organic installs, evaluating actual iOS cost metrics, and understanding organic baseline).
- Calculate user LTV, spend, and ROAS data across all partners, platforms, and channels.
- Create smart audiences to be able to craft effective and highly personalized campaign segmentation.
- Allocate the budget effectively according to real-time, accurate, and fraud-free campaign performance.
- Block fraud from polluting your data and draining your budget
Use case #2 — User Acquisition team
- Create a delightful customer experience using deep linking to streamline journeys like web-to-app, email-to-app, QR-to-app, social-to-app, referral-to-app, text-to-app, CTV-to-app, etc.
- Gain access to aggregated user-level data using data clean rooms, and then draw actionable insights around UA activities.
Use case #3 — Product team
- Test, measure, and optimize new feature adoption/product updates, and keep track of where users are getting stuck by monitoring user journeys.
- Gain important insights around UX by putting in place in-app feedback surveys that will be shared with users during pivotal stages (e.g. Day 1, Day 30, etc.), and later on funneled into periodical product updates.
- Understand how different cohorts of users interact with your app, and adjust product strategy and roadmaps accordingly.
Use case #4 — BI/Analytics team
- Stream data into internal BI systems with ease and on the spot.
- Use predictive modeling to examine historical campaign data, past user behavior data, and transactional data — to predict future actions.
- Enable you to provide the marketer with the necessary data — so the latter can nip underperforming campaigns in the bud, or quickly double down on successful investments
Use case #5 — R&D team
- Simplify integration and compliance for complex tools such as Apple’s SKAdNetwork and Google’s Privacy Sandbox.
- Save endless hours of connecting to each media partner’s SDK individually.
- Integrate with other tools in your tech stack with ease.
Use case #6 — Customer retention team
- Keep churn rates at bay and improve user LTV by continuously monitoring retention and churn rates.
- Monitor granular data around when and why users are leaving the app, which will also inform your marketer’s decision-making around in-app events.
Key takeaways
If you’re still not entirely convinced, here are the top 5 reasons for incorporating an MMP into your marketing arsenal:
- Empower teams to make smarter, data-driven decisions. A mobile attribution equips you with authoritative, indisputable data, enables you to allocate your budgets, and optimizes your app’s performance, ROAS, and LTV.
- Universal SDK — One ring to rule them all. Don’t waste your precious time and resources. Let a universal SDK do the groundwork, measure, and attribute all of your ad networks through a single SDK.
- Stop paying double or triple for attribution. As you scale campaigns across several ad networks, instead of paying double or triple the cost, let an impartial MMP connect all the dots and pinpoint exactly where credit is due.
- Single dashboard — One go-to performance overview. One dashboard, consolidating all your raw and aggregated data for both paid media sources and organic activities, will save you heaps of time while allowing you to get a holistic picture of your complete user funnel.
- Leave mobile attribution to the experts. The mobile landscape is a fragmented jungle, and MMPs are best equipped to have the resources, expertise, and cross-network scale to meet your demand for marketing insights.
