The Adjust Solutions Partner Program – An Insightful Experience

yellowHEAD thrives to gain as much knowledge as possible in order to provide our partners with the most value. This is why we are so proud of our Tech team and how hard they worked at helping us earn our brand-spanking-new Adjust certification!

During the course, our team learned a lot about attribution and reattribution. They now know not only all about click-based and impression-based attributions, but have expanded their knowledge about other attribution methods, how they work, and how Adjust prioritizes between them.

With these insights, our team can help our partners set up retargeting campaigns and track them using the Adjust dashboard.

The team also learned a lot about Adjust’s SDK, and can confidently guide our partners’ developers through integrating it into their app successfully and testing it before going live.

Moreover, the team got familiar with another really cool tool – Audience Builder – which helps easily build target audiences based on the users’ activity in the app.

Was all of that too techy? Don’t fret! We weren’t familiar with some of these ourselves before the course. Here are some helpful definitions:

Attribution

The process of matching an action the user performs on a publishing platform to an install of an app and/or in-app events of the user. This process helps advertisers & agencies analyze the success of their advertising channels in order to better optimize their campaigns.

The advertiser can choose the attribution window (the amount of time between the event on the publisher’s side and the install) to which Adjust will attribute the install to this publisher.

The following are different ways to attribute an install to a specific ad:

• Click-based attribution – When a user clicks on an ad, their device ID is collected by the publisher. Adjust’s SDK also collects the device ID when the user first opens the app after the install.Using the device ID and timestamp of these events, Adjust can attribute the install to the publisher that had the last click before the install, as long as it falls within the attribution window.For example, if the attribution window of the click-based attribution is 7 days and the same device ID had produced two clicks on different ads in the week before the install, the install will be attributed to the ad that had the most recent click.
• Fingerprint-based attribution – This attribution method is based on the IP address and the information from the user’s agent. If the IP address and details we get from the agent when the user clicked on an ad are the same as the ones we got when they installed the app, we can attribute the install to this ad.This method is mainly used in mobile website advertising or in email promotions. It is a fallback method for cases in which we do not get the device ID, as an IP address is usually temporary and can change from the moment a user clicks on an ad until they install the app.
• Impression-based attribution – This method is not the primary method Adjust uses (click-based attribution will take priority over impressions). However, if we fail to collect the relevant details, the impression-based method will be the chosen attribution method.When there is no relevant event on the publishers’ side within the attribution window, and Adjust cannot attribute the install to any publisher, the install will be considered as an organic install.

Reattribution

Reattribution occurs when a former app user is brought back through a new source. Usually, the ad will be part of a re-engagement campaign.

The reattribution will occur only if the user falls in the predefined inactivity period.

Similar to the attribution window, there is also a reattribution window in which we can specify the maximum amount of time between a click and an install.

SDK (‘Software Development Kit’)

This is a code that can be used to develop software applications built for specific platforms. Once implemented in an app, the SDK can collect information about the users’ in-app events.

This allows developers to analyze their users’ activity within the app after an install, and attribute these events to the attribution source. This enables them to evaluate the performance of advertising channels in a more accurate way.

The Audience Builder tool

Using the data Adjust has collected on users that installed the app, the Audience Builder tool can create an audience based on user behavior: their in-app events, their initial attribution source, the country they come from, etc.

Developers can create an audience and split it into groups, so they can test the performance of each advertising channel using the same target audience (A/B testing).

The tool helps create dynamic links that contain the users’ data and can be automatically updated when a new user meets specific parameters. These links can be sent to the publishers to help them target the right users.

This course was overall very insightful and we’re really excited to incorporate these learnings into our work.