The Changing Realm of Mobile App Measurement

The Changing Realm of Mobile App Measurement

One of the big things we’ve seen over the past year is a dramatic increase in the level of sophistication in mobile app marketing analysis.

One topic that isn’t discussed much in the press is the extent to which the app category is now dominated by true app marketing experts. When app marketing is measured in-house, the people who lead is are true experts in apps. When an app publisher leverages an agency, they are far more likely to work with agencies and teams that specialize in mobile marketing.

That’s important because the rules really are different, and  the highly competitive nature of the business requires marketing leaders that understand all aspects and nuances of app promotion.

Another way we see change is in how those marketing experts measure. Brands that used to measure marketing effectiveness primarily via install counts are now digging deeper to understand the quality of users garnered by different elements of a marketing plan. Today’s mobile app marketer often analyzes at least four different sets of metrics in order to assess performance and business health:

  1. Ad Metrics: Click-throughs, plays, interactions, etc. provide a data foundation, though they are by no means the whole story.
  2. Install Metrics: Still very important to marketers, install counts provide one view of the growth trajectory of a business.
  3. Engagement Metrics: These are vital signals about the extent to which an app holds the interest and intent of a user after the install.
  4. ROI Metrics: Because most leading mobile app marketers are now measured by revenue and profitability targets, these measures are often the keystone for today’s app business analysis.

Fundamentally – strategically – this is all about a major shift in orientation when it comes to marketing an app. Whereas the business used to concern itself primarily with an event – the install – today the focus is on the holistic user. Installs are a major part of that story, but so too are engagement, purchase behaviors and repurchase/loyalty.

As marketers work to further enrich their understanding of a user, the breadth and depth of an attribution platform become critical:

  1. The ability to measure and deduplicate ALL installs, across all vendors.
  2. Opportunity to cost-effectively measure all relevant events in an app.
  3. Rich, robust cohort analysis.
  4. Long-term financial analyses that can calculate things like ARPU and LTV over the entire user lifecycle.

If you are looking for a solution that can truly deliver on all of these points, get in touch with us.