Why Tracking & Attribution Technologies Are Transforming Mobile Marketing Forever

Mobile track­ing and attri­bu­tion have become increas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult. How do you begin to track and attribute sophis­ti­cat­ed user jour­neys?

Elizabeth D Arcy-Potts By Elizabeth D Arcy-Potts from CAKE. Join the discussion » 0 comments

Track­ing and attri­bu­tion have undoubt­ed­ly become increas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult in recent years, with the typ­i­cal user jour­ney becom­ing far more com­plex and frag­ment­ed. For exam­ple, a con­sumer sees a piece of PR for your com­pa­ny in a mag­a­zine and is prompt­ed to vis­it your web­site from their desk­top com­put­er at work. Lat­er, while com­mut­ing, they click a mobile dis­play ad for your com­pa­ny on their tablet and then make a pur­chase from their lap­top at home. How do you begin to track and attribute such a sophis­ti­cat­ed jour­ney?


In the past decade or so, adop­tion of online ana­lyt­ics tools has moved into the main­stream of com­mer­cial think­ing. Busi­ness­es have been uti­liz­ing these tools to cap­ture valu­able insights into con­sumer behav­ior to shape future mar­ket­ing activ­i­ty and opti­mize the return on invest­ment (ROI) of future mar­ket­ing spend.

In the world of dig­i­tal, change is relent­less. Just as mar­keters were final­ly get­ting to grips with track­ing the online behav­ior of desk­top and lap­top users, the phe­nom­e­nal growth in pop­u­lar­i­ty of mobile devices, such as smart­phones and tablets, has cre­at­ed a whole new set of chal­lenges for those seek­ing to track con­sumer behav­ior (espe­cial­ly those try­ing to accu­rate­ly attribute online con­ver­sions to indi­vid­ual chan­nels and adver­tis­ing affil­i­ates).

Senior mar­keters from a broad range of indus­tries and sec­tors told me at the recent Mobile World Con­gress in Barcelona that track­ing and attri­bu­tion are a top pri­or­i­ty in the com­ing 12 months. Many orga­ni­za­tions are look­ing to address these chal­lenges right now.

Mobile Marketing Tracking & Attribution

For those accus­tomed to track­ing con­ver­sions on tra­di­tion­al desk­top devices, know­ing when to use cook­ies, device IDs, or device fin­ger­print­ing on mobile cam­paigns remains some­thing of a mys­tery. How­ev­er, the accel­er­at­ing momen­tum of mobile as an ad plat­form demands that mar­keters’ track­ing activ­i­ty must evolve just as rapid­ly. Until recent­ly, mobile track­ing referred most­ly to the track­ing of mobile dis­play ads, user activ­i­ty on mobile web­sites and app down­loads:

  • Dis­play track­ing reports on the amount of impres­sions a mobile dis­play ad has achieved, its click-through rate (CTR) and, in some cas­es, con­ver­sions from those dis­plays, pro­vid­ing adver­tis­ers with an indi­ca­tion of which pub­lish­ers and affil­i­ates are per­form­ing well and how well the cre­ative of that ad dri­ves a con­ver­sion. Dis­play ads are typ­i­cal­ly tracked using an SDK (Soft­ware Devel­op­ment Kit) or sim­i­lar track­ing code imple­ment­ed on an affiliate/publisher appli­ca­tion. This requires the affiliate/publisher to place track­ing code, pro­vid­ed by the adver­tis­er, on the land­ing page the dis­play ad will be served. Alter­na­tive­ly, the pub­lish­er may place their own code and pro­vide report­ing direct­ly to the adver­tis­er. Both par­ties can track what is being dis­played, how often, and if a user clicks.
  • Mobile web­site track­ing is, in some ways, sim­i­lar to desk­top track­ing with cook­ies but not with­out its chal­lenges. For exam­ple, if you decide to track app installs by drop­ping cook­ies, you will need to redi­rect your con­sumer to a land­ing page after the ini­tial click and then again after the app install, in order for that cook­ie to be dropped and tracked.
  • App down­load track­ing allows mar­keters to gauge the effec­tive­ness of their mar­ket­ing efforts in dri­ving con­sumers to down­load apps and attribute the cor­rect sources of traf­fic. That said, track­ing installs alone doesn’t tell you much about how the app is per­form­ing. Prob­lem­at­i­cal­ly, attribut­ing mobile app installs (and track­ing user actions beyond the install) depends on a cook­ie-less mech­a­nism. This is where many sea­soned per­for­mance mar­keters get lost.

Developing A Successful Mobile Engagement Strategy

How­ev­er, as an exam­ple of how the track­ing require­ments of most orga­ni­za­tions have become more com­plex, the mas­sive pop­u­lar­i­ty of mobile apps demands that mar­keters now move beyond the track­ing of app down­loads to cap­ture the deep­er insights offered by track­ing the in-app engage­ment of users.

Devel­op­ing a suc­cess­ful mobile engage­ment strat­e­gy depends on, first, clear­ly defin­ing the actions that cre­ate val­ue for your brand and under­stand­ing each event lead­ing up to these actions.

The mak­ers of a game app or mobile web­site, for exam­ple, would be inter­est­ed in mea­sur­ing how often users log-in, how long they play and how much they spend on the pur­chase of “add-ons” like lives, coins, or weapons. A per­son­al bud­get­ing app, on the oth­er hand, may offer no in-app pur­chase func­tion­al­i­ty at all and, there­fore, define suc­cess­ful engage­ment quite dif­fer­ent­ly.

If your head is already spin­ning at the thought of tack­ling even the mobile ele­ments of your mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy, let alone your entire cross-chan­nel cam­paign, don’t wor­ry. The lat­est gen­er­a­tion of in-app track­ing tech offers a cen­tral­ized infor­ma­tion hub, where dif­fer­ent sorts of data (e.g., affil­i­ate web track­ing, affil­i­ate track­ing, mobile track­ing, in-app track­ing, etc.) can be col­lat­ed and ana­lyzed side by side in absolute real-time.

As recent­ly as 25 years ago, it was impos­si­ble to pre­dict that the rise of the Inter­net, togeth­er with the remark­able growth in the pop­u­lar­i­ty and com­put­ing pow­er of mobile devices, would trans­form the com­mer­cial world beyond recog­ni­tion. The world of mar­ket­ing has, at times, strug­gled to keep pace.

While cre­ativ­i­ty and dri­ve remain cru­cial com­po­nents of any mar­ket­ing cam­paign, mar­keters who fail to also pro­vide com­plete trans­paren­cy and deep insight into the effec­tive­ness of their activ­i­ty will come under increas­ing pres­sure.

Smart mar­keters will embrace and har­ness the new gen­er­a­tion of track­ing and attri­bu­tion tech­nolo­gies to val­i­date and shape their mobile strate­gies and cam­paigns in real-time, thus max­i­miz­ing the ROI of future spend­ing.

Mobile SEO Now Banner

Elizabeth D Arcy-Potts

Written by Elizabeth D Arcy-Potts

Sales Director, Europe, CAKE

Elizabeth has been selling software for 9 years, beginning her career at American blue chip consultancy The Corporate Executive Board. Immediately before moving to CAKE as Sales Director, Europe, Elizabeth was working as a BDM at Performance Horizon Group where she worked with global accounts like etsy, SWISS Air, Etihad Airlines, McAfee and major UK and Germany based agencies.

Inked is published by Linkdex, the SEO platform of choice for professional marketers.

Discover why brands and agencies choose Linkdex

  • Get started fast with easy onboarding & training
  • Import and connect data from other platforms
  • Scale with your business, websites and markets
  • Up-skill teams with training & accreditation
  • Build workflows with tasks, reporting and alerts

Get a free induction and experience of Linkdex.

Just fill out this form, and one of our team members will get in touch to arrange your own, personalized demo.