To stay ahead of the curve, mobile app marketers need to be looking beyond top-level metrics. One of these top-level metrics is the install.
Looking at which marketing channels and advertising partners convert installs doesn’t give you insight into what engagement helped drive that install along the path to conversion. Mobile marketers should look at attributed installs versus assisted installs to better understand the impact of channel and campaign performance along the conversion funnel.
Before explaining more about the importance of an attributed installs versus assisted installs, let’s review some terminology.
- Installs: New users that open the app for the first time.
- Attributed Installs: Publisher with the last click, within the attribution window for the publisher.
- Install Assists: Publisher(s) with a click prior to the last click, within the attribution window.
- Publisher Install Contributions: The total number of installs for which the channel was involved (Attributed Installs + Install Assists).
- Install Rate: The percentage of installs occurring from the total number of unique clicks.
- Assist Rate: The percentage of assisted installs occurring from the total number of unique clicks.
- Install Contribution Rate: The percentage of install contributions occurring from the total number of unique clicks.
Measuring attributed installs makes complete sense. Marketers need to know which channel and campaign converted that install. However, the assisted install metric makes it possible for marketers to measure the performance of the channels, campaigns, and advertising partners that focus on promotion and awareness (not only the ones that convert the last click).
This data is particularly useful for marketers that have campaigns running with a variety of channels and advertising partners simultaneously. Campaigns and advertising partners that focus on promotion and awareness – typically via banner and video ads -can re-engage users at a later time to install your app. These campaigns and advertising partners typically generate attributed installs, but generate a large number of assisted installs. If you have campaigns and advertising partners with varying business goals (for example, awareness vs. installs), then the assisted install metric gives you insight into how well each partner is achieving their goal.
Measuring assisted installs in addition to attributed installs also gives mobile app marketers insight into the duplicate (overlap) rate between campaigns and advertising partners. If an advertising partner or channel has unique traffic, then they likely have very few assisted installs. If an advertising partner or campaign has many assisted installs, then they are interacting with many users via ads that your other advertising partners are also interacting with (not unique traffic).
As a data-driven marketer, do you differentiate these metrics and measure the performance of each individually?