News — 08 May 2023
Affise Enables Probabilistic Attribution
With the App Tracking Transparency Framework, Apple emphasized its position on data privacy and intention to give its users a more transparent choice to protect their privacy and information. Sounds like a reasonable introduction in 2021 when privacy is one of the central issues for every online business. However, this step challenges a large part of the mobile advertising industry, questioning advertisers’ control over ad campaigns’ performance and raising the need for new attribution collection methods.
Released earlier in 2021, Apple’s iOS14 policy prohibits attribution platforms to store information vital for end-user identification. As a result, it becomes impossible to pass user information, in particular, click ID, IP, User-Agent, to an advertiser and get it back. Without this information, advertisers can’t properly assign conversions to ad campaigns. Hence, it becomes problematic for them to influence the ad revenue.
The future of mobile attribution and the way marketers will attribute mobile app install campaigns became the most debated issues since summer 2020. From the start, Affise got actively involved in this debate to timely implement solutions that would allow advertisers and ad networks to attribute app installs from iOS.
For now, there are two solutions that allow marketers to measure the mobile attribution on iOS:
To adjust customers’ business and ensure minimum mobile measurement disruption, we at Affise worked on both matters. Recently, we explained how ad networks can set up interaction between SKAdNetwork&Affise. You can check more information in the article.
In this article, specifically, we will tell you about actions that Affise took to enable probabilistic attribution.
Probabilistic attribution is an alternative method to measure mobile attribution from iOS by relying on statistics and probability distribution of all the campaigns that are likely to have generated an install. It is not as reliable as the deterministic method that uses a unique identifier to recognize the device. Marketers used to rely on it as a backup when install referred and no device identifiers were available. And now Probabilistic attribution is one of the few ways to measure attribution under the ATT policy.
As the iOS 14 privacy update does not allow tracking platforms to use IDFA, Click ID, User-Agent, or IP data. These identifiers are not unique to a device unless a user shares their IDFA on iOS14. Without these identifiers, marketers cannot assign a 100% probability for attribution. Therefore, there is a set of probabilities that one or more campaigns drove the install. Particularly, probabilistic attribution relies on the user agent and the IP address of the device to perform attribution.
In the early days of Jan’2021, Affise rolled out Probabilistic Attribution that already works with all the MMPs. Probabilistic Attribution implements conversion matching without using the ClickID parameter. To simplify the integration with MMPs and Affise Probabilistic Attribution, you need to pass additional parameters to the tracking link, such as:
Probabilistic Attribution and MMPs
Every MMP invested a lot of time to prepare for the iOS ATT release, as together with the mobile advertisers they will experience the update impact the most. However, despite Apple’s privacy introduction released only in 2021 majority of market players foresaw these changes years ago. Thus, they all are familiar with Probabilistic attribution and have used it as a default method for cases where IDFA isn’t available.
Since the first announcement about the upcoming privacy change, MMPs have been enhancing probabilistic attribution to improve its accuracy. However, the question about the future of probabilistic attribution is still in the air. We are monitoring the situation and will present updated information once it is available.
Probabilistic Attribution can work with all mobile attribution platforms by using general tracking and postback links from the list above. AppsFlyer and Kochava have their own set of macros and parameters based on current integration opportunities.
The list with examples of how to set up tracking URLs and postbacks accordingly to attribution solution:
http://app.appsflyer.com/com.appsflyer?pid=mediaName_int
&clickid={clickid} – Affise clickid
&af_siteid={pid} – Affise Publisher ID
&af_c_id={offer_id} – Affise Offer ID
&af_sub_siteid={sub2} – Affise Sub-account 2 for traffic optimization purposes
&af_lang={language} – Affise user language
&af_ua={device_ua} – User-Agent
&af_ip={ip} – User IP
http://domain.com/postback?
clickid={clickid} – Affise clickid
&action_id={transaction-id} – Transaction ID
&goal={event-name} – Goal name
http://domain.com/probattribution?
action_id={postback_id} – AppsFlyer Postback ID
&goal={event-name} – AppsFlyer Goal name
&offer_id={af_c_id} – Affise Offer ID
&pid={af_siteid} – Affise Publisher ID
&country={country} – Country
×tamp={timestamp} – Timestamp
&sub2={af_sub_siteid} – Affise Sub-account 2
&postback_id={postback_id} – AppsFlyer Postback ID
&platform={platform} – AppsFlyer Platform Type (ios,Android)
http://kochava_tracking_url?
click_id={click_id} – Affise clickid
&ad_platform={sub6} Affise traffic type [mobile, web] Parameter will be required soon
&att={sub7} This should be populated with 1 for users who’ve consented and 0 for those who haven’t. Parameter will be required soon.
&site_id={pid} – Affise Publisher ID
&sub_site_id={offer_id} – Affise Offer ID
&creative_id={sub2} – Affise Sub-account 2 for traffic optimization purposes
http://{AFFISE_CUSTOMER_DOMAIN}.com/postback?
click_id={click_id}
&action_id={click_id}
&offer_id={sub_site_id} – Kochava sub_site_id
&pid={site_id} – Kochava site_id
&country={user_country} – Kochava User Country
×tamp={timestamp} – Kochava Timestamp
&goal={event_name} – Kochava event name
&sub2={creative_id} – Kochava creative_id
&att={1:0} – 1 if AUTHORIZED, 0 – if NOT DETERMINED, DENIED, or RESTRICTED*
Read more about Apple’s ATTracking
We are keeping an eye on the updates of the MPPs and changes to the probabilistic attribution and SKAdNetwork integration set-ups. A big share of integrations mainly remained the same as we briefly described in our previous article. We will be updating the article once there is information on new integrations. Further, you can find the link to the integrations guides.
One of the Adjust’s solutions aimed to mitigate the transition for marketers and developers is using an in-house versatile Data Canvas to visualize SKAdNetwork data. With Adjust’s conversion value management, users can select up to 6 events that will trigger a conversion value update. These are custom events that can only be mapped once.
To set your SKAdNetwork conversion value event mapping in Adjust, follow these steps.
For more information, check Adjust settings instruction.
Branch is actively working on a SKAdNetwork solution to enable ad networks to forward Apple postbacks to Branch via an endpoint. Branch will then validate the postbacks using the Apple-provided cryptographic signature and aggregate the data on the dashboard.
curl -X POST https://api2.branch.io/v1/skadnetwork
2. Send the following SKAdNetwork data:
“version”: “2.0”,
“ad-network-id”: “com.example”,
“campaign-id”: 42,
“transaction-id”: “6aafb7a5-0170-41b5-bbe4-fe71dedf1e28”,
“app-id”: 525463029,
“attribution-signature”: “MDYCGQCsQ4y8d4BlYU9b8Qb9BPWPi+ixk/OiRysCGQDZZ8fpJnuqs9my8iSQVbJO/ oU1AXUROYU=”,
“redownload”: True/False,
“source-app-id”: 1234567891,
“fidelity-type”: 1,
“conversion-value”: 20
a. partner-campaign-name – Name of campaign name corresponding to campaign ID (String)
b. partner-campaign-id – ID of campaign name corresponding to campaign ID (String)
c. partner-ad-set-id – (String)
d. partner-ad-set-name – (String)
e. partner-ad-id – (String)
f. partner-ad-name – (String)
g. partner-creative-id – (String)
h. partner-creative-name – (String)
i. test – Send as true if sending a ping for testing purposes (Boolean)
j. ip-address – IP address of device the postback is received from (String)
k. user-agent – UA of device the postback is received from (String)
Read more in Branch manual.
http://your_app_tracking.com?
pid={pid} – Affise Publisher ID
&offer_id={offer_id} – Affise Offer ID
&aff_sub2={sub2} – Affise Sub-account 2 for traffic optimization purposes
&lang={language} – Affise user language
&ua={device_ua} – User-Agent
&ip={ip} – User IP
http://domain.com/probattribution?
action_id={transaction_id} – Customer Transaction ID
&goal={event_name} – Application Event (Goal)
&offer_id={offer_id} – Affise Offer ID
&pid={pid} – Affise Publisher ID
&country={country} – Country
×tamp={timestamp} – Timestamp
&sub2={aff_sub2} – Affise Sub-account 2
&platform ={platform} – Platform Type [iOS,Android]
To give you a thorough overview and walk you through the set-up process, we created a full guide where you can find additional details regarding Probabilistic Attribution and how it will work with other features such as:
We know upcoming changes are not a simple thing to deal with. Thus here at Affise, we prepare all solutions needed so our customers can continue their operations without interruptions.
Please check all upcoming news and blog posts for instructions on direct SKAdNetwork integration & Parallel tracking.
As always, contact your dedicated Customer Success Manager and 24/7 support team with questions about upcoming changes.
Written by
Content Manager
Yulia is a Content Marketer with a love to a great story and an eye to small details. Carrying a voice and delivering an accurate message - that’s what Yulia believes content marketing is for. Looking for thorough research and long-reads? You came to the right person. Her goal is to produce content that educates and entertains, and most importantly, has an impact. Challenges and something that is yet to be explored are her main motivators.
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