Choosing an MMP – Which app tracking solution is the best for you?
Andre Kempe: Welcome to our webinar about mobile measurement partners. I have Stephan Goetze Goetze with me and Stephan Goetze, we met years ago, I think shortly after ringtones when the first apps came out you were working for a company called Mobile DE which was, or still is a massive platform in Germany and some other European countries. And they basically invested as one of the first companies back into app marketing, a lot into app marketing. And I was lucky enough to be part of that story back then. And you evolved in this industry very much. And now you are what’s your official title?
Stephan Goetze: Yeah, Team lead, welcome everyone team lead for MarTech in partnerships. So dealing with also MarTech is fantastic. So still relevant and…
Andre Kempe: And so for a very big German company the scout group. Which has a lot of different verticals underneath. And you are basically in the process of a buying decision more or less that’s my understanding.
Stephan Goetze: Yes. So evaluating is one of the goals, to check what’s going on there. And also when you have different solutions probably it’s best, to have only one because of the load for the app and so on different reasons. Yeah.
Andre Kempe: And during this evaluation process, which looks at a lot of different features of the mobile measurement partners or act tracking solutions that are out there from your perspective probably look into very different feature sets than maybe a start-up would look into. And this is why we somehow caught, caught this topic and got a little bit of interest from the Facebook mobile marketing experts group that we are in. we thought, okay, let’s have this webinar share your findings. Maybe there are different opinions. To the audience, if you want to add a comment, have your own experience, or see things completely differently, just raise your hand. We are very happy to get you in and then discuss your topic or your opinion here.
So this is a completely neutral presentation. Let’s say it’s really just listing a couple of features. We are discussing them. Which value do they have for a corporation, and which value you might have for, a smaller company? And this is not a selling pitch for any of those, neither it’s saying don’t do this and don’t take this one. You personally might have a completely different buying decision process than maybe Stefan has. I would say kick it off. The stage is yours and otherwise, the audience is very welcome to raise their hands if you want to say something.
Stephan Goetze: Thanks. Yeah, for sure. I just share just a short presentation, so it’s much easier to follow. Hopefully, you can see it already. Does it work? So excellent. So yeah, it’s about, yeah, just evaluation about like three different measurement partners Branch, Appsflyer and Adjust. We have a like long history with just right for 7, 8 years Branch for two years probably. And Appsflyer is an interesting spot for me. I just work with them years ago. Right. And the idea was to just look at this, and as Andre Kempe already said, it’s about how to look at these from the corporate point of view. I have some dimensions I just think make mostly sense for us. These are legal conditions, server locations, privacy, and security. Because these sometimes are, people are not too into it. And then in the middle, you see incidents, I guess this is very important for reliability or services, the expertise in the specific field also where this company is coming from.
Also, I just touched briefly about iOS14. It’s a hot topic, and the readiness for it and also time to market are these companies ready to rumble, right? When it is like time for it. And when the market is in heavy changes, as we probably are at the moment, and then on the right-hand side, the feature set, as Andre Kempe already said, it depends on what you need. What’s your point of view here, but especially deep linking and smart banners are something that is interesting. So that’s highlighted here and for sure the last thing costs, So I just go through it a little bit and just, just comment on it, Andre Kempe will jump in, and everyone who wants to participate just ask. There’s a chat function and let’s have this, this conversation.
So first of all, legal condition matters a lot. So if there’s a problem with, companies you have to make sure that the place of jurisdiction is near, right? So Germany, for instance, for us or UK, EU, or European Union makes sense. And sometimes big players also, yes. Players don’t offer it in the first place. So make sure to ask for it. Make sure to involve your legal. It’s just advice from our side because it could mean a lot of problems later on. That’s just this one it’s an easy one, but just to mention it.
The next one is much more interesting in terms of GDPR implications. And as you know, that’s not a new topic. But also the problem was that this was not active anymore. And there is a specific risk when you just this is based on standard contextual clause. That means that it’s an addendum. It’s kind of a, you could usually ask your, legal for advice here, but that means there is an implicit risk here. If you are having data servers or your data is laid out of the EU European Union, especially in the US. And this is not something that is regulated best at the moment. There are a lot of legal talks in the scene and it’s not finalized yet. What will happen here, but this, I just want to call out, to make sure to check that the server location is in the EU or best in Germany or your country where every precondition is met.
I don’t know if there are some questions here, but I guess this is pretty clear when we compare these different solutions here. Adjust and Appsflyer has EU servers and Branch’s is the one, that is currently in the US space. So for us, that could mean risk and of course the companies, sometimes you take this risk, right? So it’s not me to judge here. It’s depending on your company, how you select this, and how you deal with it.
This is about privacy and security. It’s also very interesting and it’s like a little bit bold comment here trustworthy secure vendor that meets high standards. And only from my assessment here and all the information I have got today Appsflyer is the one that, that seems to have everything you would need from a corporate sort of the point of view. And the different layers are and lots of, yeah, sometimes people don’t really care about it so security factor authentication are important to secure your accounts. Single sign-on is also another method to use. Why, because you can imagine in all of these tools, you have app credential secrets, you have stuff there stored. If you hack it, you have probably a good, the chance of make some bad things with it. So it’s not cool.
Often companies also big corporates have a lot of different people, and user accounts there it’s not only 2 or 5 people it’s massive. And so yeah, it’s good to take it here or to check it. Interestingly is that Appsflyer is the only one that offers this for free with no additional costs that’s the finding here. Currently, it seems Branch cannot offer factor authentication. What’s so cool? And when it is about single sign-on its depending on the services, your company is using, right? So probably it’s okay to use Google like Adjust offering Branch has three partners on board. It depends. And besides two factors and single sign-on, it’s also the SDK type. So by nature, Appsflyer has a secure SDK. That’s much better than an open one because an open SDK means you can hack it easily.
You can do a lot of stuff here. And for my understanding, and also working with these players here Adjust has a way to sign the SDK to protect against SDK spoofing, but this is a menu process. So it means also you have to do it right. You have to care for it. If you do it once, it’s probably not enough. And Branch is not offering this at the moment. So that’s interesting. And afterward, the three different digital pillars when it comes to audits. The external audience, trustee privacy, or specific standards certifications I guess this really matters. What I can see here also in my assessment is that Appsflyer is doing it right. So privacy, that’s very important for Germany. Adjust has it for years, I guess, since, I don’t know, I can remember there’s a link you can see it, right?
It’s a yearly check-up and also you can have different products you check against and so on. It costs money of course, but it’s really something the assessment they’re doing. So I would take it for granted. And for me, this is important that when I’m working with vendors, they are certified or they are external audits. And yeah, that’s my findings here. So to someone up, I guess Appsflyer is really nailing it also with the free services for these security features. I really like this.
Andre Kempe: Quick question, Stephan Goetze you were mentioning here, the SDK spoofing, maybe that’s not something everyone knows about. How, is that relevant for buying decisions? How would you describe that?
Stephan Goetze: Yeah, I mean, there are different fraud patterns, so it also changes. And there was time, I guess was last year heavily that when you have fraud patterns that are involving that you have to protect somehow. So the thing is that when it comes to tracking attribution you could hack into the systematic or in this process. And this is possible when you have access to the SDK and can like tweak it or hack it a little bit to simulate specific flows Or actions. And there is good documentation for this SDK spoofing. So we can also share, later on, we had this better explained, but this is something that was evolving in the last years, and this is still something that is a problem.
For sure there was an open-source-like movement everyone said, yeah, open source is cool. Do you know what you’re doing? And so on, everyone can work on it and, you can check it. But on the other hand, it’s also open for fraudsters and hackers, so it’s both sides. Right. So the advantage for Appsflyer is that they have a secure one. You could also argue, yeah. It’s not open source, but yeah, I mean, it depends. I guess from a from a security standpoint, it’s malice to have it. And Adjust came up with a signature feature that may totally sense. They got it. It’s important. And so they, they fixed it. And for Branch, I cannot see this. Yeah.
Andre Kempe: Cool. Thanks for clarification this to the audience. If you have more questions or anything, just raise your hand or put it in the chat. We are happy to take you on stage or just respond to your questions in the chat window. Here, please. Stephan Goetze, go ahead.
Stephan Goetze: Cool. Yeah. The next one is incidents. I mean, this one is very interesting. It’s hard to get the numbers. I got some from most of, the players here and there are like statuses. So I have a link here. And if we do, I can also post, later on, normally you have like status dots like Appsflyer or Branch or Adjust and then you can check about what’s happening, right? Downtime, uptime what’s going on? And there you have also incidents, like are reported not everyone’s reporting the same peculiarity. You have, to know this. And what’s interesting is when, when checking back and going back a little bit, there were like some, some heavy times for Branch.
What I know is that they had really hard times in 2019 and a lot of different services, were affected. Also last year, there was a huge life, like sum of different things happening. And that meant for a very long time services were affected. And that, that of course has business impact. In 2019, there was a period of like Christmas for like the seasonal, like high business, like for ecommerce and other people. That was very important. And I know that that some companies really had problems with it and they moved away from them because it was affecting the business negatively. And just to compare it with, Appsflyer Adjust when you look at the numbers from 2019 and 2020. Two years, it was just eight. Not, not all, almost eight minutes downtime for certain services. I mean, this is almost nothing.
Same for Appsflyer I mean, last year it was one hour something. So this is really cool to see the differences. And you should be very aware of this fact that there’s like the ability to have this status checks. You should like check it regularly when you are working with vendors here. And also this year already, we had some incidents with Branch and Adjust are just here on the 21 and in January already. So this is really interesting for me and everyone should be aware and ask also when, dealing with other vendors or with these vendors.
Andre Kempe: What I can say is I work with both, like Adjust and Appsflyer I did work a little bit with Branch for the different clients that, that we run here. And downtime-wise, I have to say, it’s not recognizable, obviously, sometimes some dashboard isn’t loading or some data is not accessible or something, but this happens it’s, massive things that they are leading with. So totally acceptable downtimes. But what you say here Branch 100 hours, I mean, that’s obviously a massive flaw in the system, obviously.
Stephan Goetze: Yeah. I guess it probably has to do with the technical background that they have like also brought back in the baseline end of 2018, perhaps tune and so on. Right. And integrating it, or, I don’t know. I mean, we have some other numbers that probably can, can mirror or give like more in, in insights why this happens. Also when do we have enough engineering power? And stuff like this, are you able to fix this quickly? Do you have the right stack? And so on, I guess there are some, a lot of things that are not obvious here. And I don’t have the deep insights, but I guess makes sense to know what’s going on here. And also, it just has a major outage last year that also affect data. So yeah, it happens for sure. I’m totally with you, Andre Kempe. It’s just 1 pillar, to look at.
Andre Kempe: Absolutely.
Stephan Goetze: I will just go on right. Guess makes sense. If there are no questions here, expertise like this one a lot. And I guess. When it is about overall right. Experience Future proof vendor for mobile attribution marketing, I would say just to take it away in the beginning, Appsflyer really nailed it. And then Adjust and then, then Branch partial. And, and why I just highlighted employees locations. I mean, look at this massive employees. And also when you do with engineering power Appsflyer has around 500 engineers, his massive. Adjust 250 engineers around approximately and Branch less, of course, because they only have under 400 employees in total. So this is probably something that is important when it is about to, are these companies able to be fast to market, And to involve to, to yeah. Work on new innovations and updates.
I guess this is where when I compare these I see different things right. On the one hand, the rules from, from Branch, right. Coming from the webspace, the deep linking space, and then acquiring tune, trying to get it together. Then they’re the identity graph, the cookie based user graph they have here in place. And they always market as the superior thing at all in the market, but now facing cookie-less future, IOS 14 and other things that its they are not clear how they cope with this transition. Right. Are they really we are ready for this. Right. It’s about the different features I have later on. I can clearly see that Adjust. Yeah. Really have some nice features and innovations Appsflyer do it.
I’m missing this with Branch. For me, it looks like they’re offering the standard. It’s okay. It may probably be okay. They have some strengths also. I have it in other slides then coming, and it depends on your use case, what you need. Probably you don’t need every single feature. And also when it comes in, expertise in years, I guess Appsflyer and Adjust are very, like having the longest reputation in the market. And be there for the mobile attribution part, and also deep linking all, in this field. There are some missing aspects for Adjust. I have it on another slide then. I guess I just go over it. The next one to go more into deep, just touch it briefly.
IOS14 readiness, I guess this is the hard topic at all. Differences how these different players cope with it. You can look at it, how they work on it. If they provide already facilities to use this right. To get in touch with the changes. And it’s not just to, write blog post, it’s more like to really offer something in their products. I guess there, you can see already that Adjust an Appsflyer have really fully into stuff there. You have like a variety of, good prepared things to start right away. And this really looks promising. And also from a marketer’s perspective all cool, they are prepared, they really show they care. And they can also react very fast on changes.
So this is not set in stone, we know IOS 14 Apple, we will see how this plays out in the next month. There were already some Adjustments end of, January where like you through, for instance, and other stuff is now possible, but still we know that there are limitations in terms of what you can use here. And I see some risk, with Branch here cause the root where they’re coming from, right with this graph and cookies and then stuff like this, also their market share. So probably they probably not that that’s prepared for what is coming and also their engineering power. So yeah, that, that’s just 1 view, right? How we can look at this. I don’t know if there are any questions, but this is, I mean, not finalized, right. This topic is evolving, it’s not that we can say this is done today or tomorrow.
Andre Kempe: Yeah. I would say anything around IOS 14 and how it’s going to play out that that’s a separate session and could probably be scheduled for 3 hours instead of just one. I suggest skipping it at this stage.
Stephan Goetze: Yes, it is. I just want to make sure. And that’s the point here Do you have the right vendor in place that is prepared? That is has ability engineering, power tools and so on, in preparation to really help you as a client then. Okay. But that’s clear, I guess. Then deep linking. For sure, right. Deep linking, I highlighted in the beginning and also smart banner. For sure deep linking this is, I mean, the thing Branch has a long history. And they are like superior. They do it right. They can, they have it. And, and also Appsflyer is really having everything you need. And there are some slightly differences probably that when it comes to ESP integrations, when you want to work with like, like email or ECRM stuff right. And so on and pushes, but it depends what you, what you’re working with.
For us for instance, it, Salesforce is very important. So it makes sense to know that Appsflyer for instance, has a partnership with, Salesforce or Salesforce invested in them. So there is natural interest and doing the best you can have right. In the market. And probably no other can, deliver this. And what’s obvious. And that really the burden here also working with Adjust for so long time is that just really has some problems. Right. And they really have no advanced, deep linking features at the moment. And I know they are working on it. It’s currently that they want to, scope it and do a lot of yeah. Trying to fix this. As soon as possible, but they’re still missing and cannot compete coolly with, with Branch and Appsflyer.
That’s a takeaway if you are really relying on deep linking when you have like this case is where this matters. You should have in mind who can really offer this, but also have in mind. IOS 14 also has some challenges for this. We’re not covering this year, but is much more complex, but also important to ask them, Hey Branch, Hey Appsflyer are you prepared for deep linking also in this IOS 14 world. Cool. But this is obvious, right. Adjust is working on. They just had other topics they worked on. That’s why they’re probably behind here.
Smart banner, another cool thing that some companies are using. This or journey yeah. The naming in the Branch where you’re trying to trans yeah. To, To make a transition from the web users while mobile web to add. Totally cool. Smart banner it’s not new it’s an old one. I can remember brought this to Mobile D. Back in the days also to the scout crew were important, but, but with static banners now there’s some, no, I mean, Branch has a very sophisticated tool where you also can use user behaviour and actions to play this smart banners or like intersti and stuff on. So to channel your users and to push them to the app, and also in combination with deep linking, of course, this makes totally sense. And as the numbers and the app usage is mostly the best one. You have a better interaction with them. You can use pushes, you can better engage with, no costs. So the topic, it all makes sense from our point of view.
What’s here when you compare it. It’s also the, the burden that Adjust don’t have it. They’re not invested in it. It’s now in the product exploration somehow they know clients wants to have it, but also when they will make it happen, it will probably only provide simple or like basic things when they’re starting with it. So coming back and looking at Appsflyer and Branch Appsflyer also has a really cool smart banner feature here also when it comes to the editor and so on, you can do it really easily. And also some audience targetings. It depends on your use cases. I would say Appsflyer and Branch, really nail it here. And probably Branch has a little advantage, but I mean, this is only for time. If, having the engineering capacities and also feedback from clients I guess it’s easy to know that FFI will, will probably also make much out of it in the future here. Right. And be better. But just that’s my assessment here. Yeah. I don’t know if there are any questions, but it’s also probably a very clear case.
Andre Kempe: I don’t see any questions coming in, but interesting view here. I wasn’t even aware of that feature.
Stephan Goetze: Yeah. I mean, yeah. Normally you make a static one or yeah. There different solutions in the market. You have your own script, you, you don’t need it. Right. You could also do it yourself just to explain it, if you know what you’re doing, you can do it with a script. You can use it in, on your website. No problem. But if you want a really nice feature where you can be testing where you can make it more seamless and you don’t need resources, it’s much easier to have it included. It’s just depending on your resources and what we do. And yeah, I just take the next one.
The feature list. I mean, it’s the features. I really find interesting. It’s, the one. Okay. What, when, when you compare, the three players in the market, what they can offer, I have some also comments here. I just go through it. Right. Trying to make some, giving some context, how I see it, I mean, paid ads everyone can do. So it’s probably, there’s a no brainer and that’s what they can do. There are probably some favourites when it comes to, to which channels And which partners, so make sure and this is not included cause it’s [Inaudible26:49 ] they are having integrations. Normally they have for the majority of partners out there or different vendors.
Attribution wise, I guess it’s, it’s interesting to see that there are differences. So I can see that, that for instance just has a feature, right. Multi-touch one, but it’s limited a little bit, how many touch ones you’ve got there, you have the Branch thing. And they’re also saying, Hey that’s so cool. Cause we have the identity graph, but knowing this is something that is a little bit problematic because you’re using data right, from other vendors. And so on. It’s a little bit problematic and, it’s really for everyone and people that are using Branch to check or also with legal, if this makes sense, right. For you, to have this approach. And if this is like also stable and it’s working in the future I have my doubts here I guess Appsflyer really has it.
What I really liked with Appsflyer also the combination with to have this ability for people based attribution, but also to make this data available easily and also have visualization and dashboards. So when you compare to the others, it sometimes seems, oh yeah, you can do it, but visualization is a pain. Or also if you can access data probably, but base is to, try it out and to look at it what you need dashboards as a server topic here. That’s my only my look at this, I guess Appsflyer has very interesting on top features and possibilities. Its extra features Premium features, but it’s, it’s really interesting to see that they have a high dash. You can have like really extensive and cool cost and error reporting. And this probably matters for some of, their clients a lot Adjust also trying to get better. So the data– or data studio somehow they can drop your stuff you want to, to build’s very cool. So we test, we tested it, I guess for longer time. And that makes sense. And for Branch. Yeah I see it. We are trying to get to more into it. But it’s more like, I would say more like a standard one.
It’s not really advanced. It’s not that cool, like the other features, but it depends, some people out there probably just don’t need dashboards because they have their own, right. It’s a use case that matters. If, if you like dashboards, it’s also personal, perhaps how you like to have filters, how fast this stuff is working and so on. So this was a personal view on it.
The next one, this is probably really a key thing. The audience builder, and who has it Adjust and Appsflyer have it. And why does it matter? Because when it is about retargeting incrementally tests, and really when you really want to chase it, you wouldn’t need kind of this tool right. To make like different AB tests or t to split an audience for instance, to create audiences. And this makes sense for some of the folks. Out there. But make sure, and that’s the fact that Branch don’t offer something like this currently I guess there’s better somehow I don’t have access to it, but trying to get more info about it really eager to learn more. We have some, some session also next week of Branch to also probably clear some of the gaps I, see here. And then we could make an update later on. Deep linking, we already added smart partners, for sure. So I would say Appsflyer Branch can really offer everything you need here, but it Adjust has really need to get on a no smart banner journey, if you just yet deep linking Okay. But you have to involve here.
Data access is important for sure. Adjust is nailing it for sure you have like unlimited raw data, right. Reports and so on. There is no, no problem. It’s without additional costs. So that’s really cool. It depends if you consume it, if you are working with your own dashboards and so on building stuff like this. And what I also like with Appsflyer is the three data locker, is that if you’re working with Appsflyer that you have the easy way to access this data not like using server to server or other things Or APIs to call this. Depends on what you do, but make sure for Branch and Appsflyer data access is an extra packages. And most of extra costs that are involved here, because data matters. And this is also another pillar and information here.
The CDP connectors, CDP, customer data platform, something that is evolving, something that some companies already corporates are using, but also a lot of start-ups. It’s nothing that also corporates are doing. This could make makes sense to have an integration, right. With your favourite CDP you are using. So it’s much easier to collect data or to connect data, to make the user segments you’re using like transferable.
The last one some of them we touch, but uninstall tracking. I really like this in terms of really knowing about the churn rates and really do something out of it. Most of the companies are using it for Android. With IOS they don’t want to use it because there’s like kind of sometime ago Apple said, okay, it’s not allowed to do, but most of the comp, as lots of companies are doing it without any problems and are not banned. But I guess it’s, its good to know that Adjust and Appsflyer are like providing this feature Branch, not. So if you need uninstalled tracking and you’re relying on this, because you really want to know if you grow, what’s the churn? What’s really happening there with your data and you installed? Then make sure you chose the vendor here.
Besides this fraud prevention, that’s a nice topic. I mean, it’s a complex topic that different like evolving topics. We, talked about it some slides ago. The fraud patterns are changing. Right. So it’s nothing that is set in stone. And probably you could say all of these vendors have normal standard fraud protection somehow, but then what is the difference? And I guess when it comes to the SDK spoofing I already said something about Adjust has a SDK signature feature. Appsflyer has a secure SDK. That’s why they have more stars here. And have better fraud prevention by nature.
And then it’s about, okay, what- it’s interesting that Appsflyer and Branch have some kind of rule builders, so you can make your own fraud rules. I mean the questions, if this is the right approach, but they offer it. And what Appsflyer is also having a post attribution fraud prevention. That means that also later on when it’s clear, there was fraud in play. It’s not only real-time they all offer. Right. So in real time they can filter some stuff. They have different patterns more, yeah. They, should all cover the normal stuff. And some claim that they can also detect new stuff. But it’s hard to get more and more details on this for this, but then post attribution is interesting because if you later on have something that this is corrected. That this is something when it’s obvious that it was spotted, not in the first place that is corrected, the data’s corrected and everything is done and you don’t have to care for it. So that was interesting to see this differentiation here with apps flyer.
Yeah, fraud prevention is also here an extra feature for most of them. So make sure to, ask for it, if you don’t know. And the, the other ones, like, two factor we talked about it. I don’t cover it here just to name and yeah. To say Branch has no two factor authentication and that’s probably a problem should be a problem not to be secure here. Additional feature innovation I just touched it already. I guess, for corporates, but also for start-ups and to save in the future you partner that can offer additional cool features with Adjust for instance, Adjust automate, why you can manage its budgets, [Inaudible] and we know it’s, it’s a company in the world but it’s, it’s like an addition for the feature set. Or like the data canvas, for instance. Where you can really have your data and play with it and so on and makes a lot of fun. Or on the other hand, also the extended massive dashboarding capabilities and reporting stuff that Appsflyers, is providing. And also what I said in terms of updating existing features Time to market, reacting on IOS 14. You should look at this, if you not want to change your, your partner every two years. Yeah, but this are my 2 cents. Right. So this is probably the feature list here I can provide. I don’t know if there are some questions, try to make some context to it.
Andre Kempe: All right thanks Stephan Goetze that was it.
Stephan Goetze: I guess it was it, but the cost, right. The last, it depends on your contracts. If procurement did a good job, right. Just let me have, the sentences before I go here and also where you’re coming from. So if you have having a business with a partner, like Adjust for years, you probably have good conditions. Right. So that’s in our case, the situation. But then if you look at the different packages and features, it depends in the end. What are the features that you need? How does it play together? And then from my perspective, I can see from our perspective that Branch is very expensive for what they offer. And then I see Adjust of course is cool, but if you’re missing cool, deeplinking and smart banner, it won’t help you that they are cheap.
And when it’s about pricing basis. Yeah. It depends. Adjust and Appsflyer, you can have attribution or other pricing models, right. Branch is here on annual basis monthly active users. It depends how you got it. Make sure you have the right one that is not an issue later on when you’re scaling or something else. Could be more expensive than. Yes, this is, I guess my assumptions here or my very small and comparison and yeah, like of course, to hear other comments on it we will make this available. If there are no questions here, probably also we can have it in space Facebook are somewhere else.
Andre Kempe: Well to the audience, if you want to come on stage, happy to have an open discussion here, see it like a meeting in the end. But otherwise just put a question in the chat. I do have a couple of questions or comments. Have you considered the web tracking capabilities like the web SDK from Adjust or web SDK from Appsflyer have you looked into this.
Stephan Goetze: All are like having this, right. That’s a good question. So you can use it for sure. And, and both it’s so every one of them have the ability, it depends if you reintegrate it and its working.
Andre Kempe: But it’s not a big, important part for your buying process, let’s say.
Stephan Goetze: It’s something that you should do. I mean, it, it probably depends on if you are like a pure app player, for instance. And you need, you need probably some, you just have apps, but you have some, some websites or something else. You probably need something. And then you want to make some, some specific campaigns. We are coming from like having a normal online presence and apps and so on. So we have other situations because we were dealing with different analytic concepts. When you have, like, for instance, Google or mixed funnel, other stuff. And this is like for the whole corporate world important to check online business, then you have the apps, it’s much more the problem, how to, match this together. And therefore you need other solutions, but if you are like a pure app player, and you just want to have like, I don’t know, landing pages or something like this could be something that’s to look into.
Andre Kempe: I’m asking because it seems to become a more and more important topic at least for the clients that I’m working with. And they, for example, experiment with web flows where they try to sell subscriptions of apps, And not only to avoid the app store fees, but also to leverage the recurring subscriptions without notifying the customer, Hey, you should really cancel your subscription. Which happens if you pay it through apple pay or whatever…
Stephan Goetze: That’s a good point.
Andre Kempe: Web tracking a lot, actually.
Stephan Goetze: Yeah. I guess makes totally sense. Good examples. Like also, when you want to, to drive apps, you could do it with a mobile webpage much better. So knowing also from my experience in the past, from doing this operative view with good team, is that if you have a mobile website and you can get traffic on this. And you have good traffic for this, you can yeah. Gain much more cheaper. Buying it much, much cheaper. And then later on instead of like going out to USC or Apple search and so on, and if you are like in a competitive environment it makes sense to have landing pages to promote your apps or also for the subscription. Model’s interesting factor. It makes sense to do it. Definitely.
Andre Kempe: One other thing, if you could, go back to the part where you had the data access features and stuff listed.
Stephan Goetze: Mean the, the feature sets, this one?
Andre Kempe: Yeah. I can only speak to my experience with Appsflyer and Adjust here. The data access for both works pretty fine. Let’s say you get, you can get access to raw data. I’m, one of those users who doesn’t really work with dashboards that are provided by the two. I’m more one of those users who is pulling data through APIs and I build my own stuff. The experience that I had was that, for example, the data retention in Appsflyer means like how long they actually store the data for me as a customer is limited to, I think, 90 days it was or something like that.
Stephan Goetze: Yes, that’s True.
Andre Kempe: After 90 days, you only get access to some aggregated data, but you cannot pull line by line. Let’s put it this way.
Stephan Goetze: Yeah. Same with Branch so that’s the differentiator to Adjust where you have it for like unlimited. I didn’t yeah Noted it here. Cause it’s like specific. But this is a good, good point to add here.
Andre Kempe: For me. This was always like a killer argument. Like, okay. Then I rather prefer Adjust as a partner, but then I also know that I think Appsflyer is providing a longer data retention if you buy additional features.
Stephan Goetze: If you have a three data logger for instance, right. Or you have like the access to the data, you could gather this and make this available. Of course. You have them to set up how you get the data. But you can make like normal, I don’t know, from purpose on a monthly basis or something. You would mirror it and you have this data. It’s for sure. Also they, use it here. Yeah. I mean,, it’s good to really check the details here, what you need, what are the capabilities and the features you want to have. That’s why Adjust is really cool and it’s not extra cost. So with the others, you have to care about it. You have to, find a good agreement or good deal. And it’s depending on your whole package. How costly it is , at the end, but it’s a good point to mention you how data
Andre Kempe: Exactly. Rihanna what you’re just saying in the chat. It’s not a problem if you store it in your own data warehouse, it’s absolutely correct. It’s really just if you don’t have any, if you are one of those who don’t have this technical setup, just to store data and many don’t have, and then there are suddenly wondering and many clients like, Hey, there’s only 90 days. Why?
Stephan Goetze: For start-ups. Right. Trying to work with it and starting, and then they, oh, they get it later on there, like probably successful. And then they need data. They want to work with the data. It could be a nightmare to really say, oh, damn it I cannot have that. It’s just aggregated data. And then that could be a yeah. Case where it doesn’t–
Andre Kempe: Fabio, I will come back to your question in just one second, I just need to finish this point because it’s still a little bit related to pricing how you get data. Another experience I had with Appsflyer was that in app events for organic users are also a premium feature. Like you cannot, you only get aggregated information, but get it like line by line and you cannot build your own reports to understand organic behaviour versus paid user acquisition behaviour. In Adjust this is included. For example, do you see this as a big problem? Or do you just say as a corporate, hey, we just pay for it and that’s fine.
Stephan Goetze: Yeah. Good question. Depends. I’m a little bit too confused with my setup. I don’t know. One second.
Andre Kempe: Don’t worry. All good.
Stephan Goetze: I just got out of it. You mean like the availability? Sorry, can you just repeat just the I’m having…
Andre Kempe: Absolutely. So when, when you are looking at organic in-app events, so users that are not attributed to paid traffic, then you don’t get the raw data line by line for those users except you pay for it in Appsflyer.
Stephan Goetze: Yes.
Andre Kempe: And unless it’s included, and that’s also a point that I often consider in the buying process.
Stephan Goetze: Yeah. The use case, right. And what you want to do and how mighty you are, and if you’re doing your own attribution and your BI stuff and so make sure yeah. What you need and, and really be curious about it. And I guess also corporates, right. Are involving, they’re using it step by step, and then it get probably much more complicated and you want to make much more with your data and then it’s good to know that there are huge differences.
Andre Kempe: Fabio is asking, is there a feature from any of those tracking providers, which tracks multi-device in the customer journey from web to app touch point, for instance, or vice versa
Stephan Goetze: Multiple devices per user, I guess, or what does he mean?
Andre Kempe: Fabio can take you on stage and maybe you can ask the question unmute you, if you want.
Stephan Goetze: I’m not sure what…
Andre Kempe: Have a quick discussion around it.
Stephan Goetze: Identify I guess when it is about like, like multi device. Across platform and so on, you really need probably much more than just mobile measurement to make this available. A CDP, for instance, can do this base on identity resolution and you really like using different identifiers, cookies advertising ID and so on to make sure that you really can find the user right across device, cross platform, cross device. So I would say it’s, it’s, it’s a problem here to cover this with, such tools here.
Fabio: For instance Google attribution I know that they can track this by yes if the user has of course an Android user usually is logged to a Google account. Then if he uses same account with Chrome, then they can track. But to the rest yes. Out of scope is there?
Stephan Goetze: Yeah, you’re right. No, Google can do it. Cause it’s, it’s there. They identify and they can do this and measure it. But here it, it are like, this would be then two different installations.
Fabio: Okay. There’s no technology for that.
Stephan Goetze: Yeah. You can have it like with the CDP, for instance, where you have other like registrations and logins. When you have a user that logs in and from a different device, for instance, then you can make it available or stitch this information together. But this is nothing I know that Mobile measurements solutions can offer it’s you need another solution for this.
Fabio: Okay. Thank you. Yeah I’m more here in this in this call to refresh my memory about mobile app tracking, which I didn’t work for a while. So that’s why my question can mean be that in this year that I didn’t work with mobile, that someone develops something like that.
Andre Kempe: Don’t worry. There’s, there’s no stupid questions. There are only stupid answers.
Stephan Goetze: But you can do this. Of course, if you have like a registration and you would like that you would measure this. And, and make this available and you have an identifier, somehow you could use it. You could make it also with the mobile measurement partners, but it’s only probably possible when you have a hard log in or registration where you match this. And it’s then you would be PO yeah. You would be able to stitch this, that’s probably my last thought about. So it’s possible. It depends on your setup, what you’re tracking.
Andre Kempe: Talking about data again do you, for example, I once came across, one of my clients wanted to port from one tracking solution to the other, and then the topic data portability came up. Do you have experience with that? Is that, something you consider in the decision for one of the suppliers?
Stephan Goetze: Fantastic question. I guess this is probably the nightmare you have got also when it’s about comparability, or when you want to compare the data. So for sure you cannot really make it comparable that easy. So different methodologies and so on and so on and accurate. Something we want to check. And also something we have to consider when, when changing the ecosystem, when we would like, for instance, change the player. But it’s also up to your setting. If you are able to use the raw data, right. And the identifiers in everything and you have a good solution internally, you will have data and possibilities to, match it, or like to make a better solution out of it. Or I guess it’s nothing, these players can offer you easily. You need more power to it and experts to make this happen.
Andre Kempe: Probably goes back to the point of Rihanna having your own data warehouse, and then you’re just feeding it from a different source in the end.
Stephan Goetze: Yeah. So I guess it’s…
Andre Kempe: Was data structure ever a topic like how you get the raw data?
Stephan Goetze: I guess. It depends on your market stack, if you have, for instance, RVs as real it’s of course. Cool. Right. As you know when dealing with APIs, for instance, and you have massive data, for instance, it could be a problem. There could be limitations or like, technical issues, or you cannot like you probably don’t want to submit all information also when you make sure that’s encrypted or something like this. So I guess raw data implementation, or SV like way of SV bucket and you can just connect it. It’s a very easy thing. And it could be very beneficial. So I like this solution.
Andre Kempe: You mentioned in one of those future-proof feature points incrementality measurement, for example, I just saw another start-up popping up in Berlin, which I also know from spec long time ago, CPC times is incrementality measurement a topic already, or is it becoming a topic and how much do we believe in that? How does it play into this, this coming year?
Stephan Goetze: Yeah, I guess it’s important, in the end, you really want to make sure if everything you are spending for paid, that doesn’t make sense. If you really make a difference, it does just look like fine numbers, but if you take it away somewhere and you just say, hey, we’ve paid, we are so enormous. We’re doing it. We need it. We are so like successful. And then you, you’re not looking at the whole picture and you’re losing probably from organic or other like owned or other channels, then that’s a problem. And yes, I guess it’s important if you don’t want to waste your money. And if you want to make sure that it’s sustainable and that you’re doing the thing, it should be something you should be after.
Andre Kempe: Have you ever heard, I mean I think bringing up all, that I have in mind you remember that there was this one tracking provider. I think it was Chava who came up with a blockchain integration, whatever thing obviously was never realizing in any direction, but the bringing up now the new password, machine learning, artificial intelligence, is that happening in mobile measurement? And is it something where the tracking partners should look into from your perspective?
Stephan Goetze: That’s interesting. I guess. Yes, because on the fraud side, it’s heavy, they have money, they are very like creative. And if you don’t compete and you have the same weapons, I would say, right. Or the same tools you will have a problem. So I guess these vendors out here, the measurement partners have to find ways and also you needed to complete or to make attribution work also in the future. Because I guess we are like now in the era of where the possibilities of having data available, Like a candy shop will be limited. So you need new ways to work with data and to make what’s called data action move.
Andre Kempe: Okay. Well, I don’t have any more questions and I think we have a good hour now to the audience. Is there anything else you want to ask Stephan Goetze or bring up have we forgotten maybe one topic to discuss here that’s all maybe also possibility otherwise closing this. We haven’t looked into more tracking partners. Do you have a closing comment on this? Why did you not look into those? Is it getting too much to analyze n the end? Is it just a repeating feature set in the end?
Stephan Goetze: It makes always sense to sense, to compare like three different solutions, a minimum to know you can compare it from my perspective. It makes sense to know who are the marketing market leaders, are in the market. And if I see something here from my perspective, that Adjust is, missing, some very interesting features and they cannot compete for this much to look at what is probably the best next action. Also when I come, when it comes to server locations, GDPR, reliability, and engineering power, then I look of course, firstly, and then Appsflyer was, was probably the first choice here. And also I knew them from the past what they did was another level. That’s why.
I didn’t consider them in the first place. But I guess always when it’s about MarTech and challenging your existing vendor, make sure you have more than another one, right? To comp to, to make a comparison and to find like agreement, it could help you in any sense, Could help you with procurement. It could help you to find gray spots or something you probably have not thought of. So yeah. But yeah, too many are out there, but I guess wouldn’t make sense for us to double-check others at this point. Yeah.
Andre Kempe: Thanks Stephan Goetze. This was very insightful. I learned a lot. So thanks for taking the time, to compare all those features and explain them to us. To the audience, if you want to connect with us or have additional questions later on just shoot us a message. We are certainly willing to give you feedback on this. I think that was it.
Stephan Goetze: Yeah. Perhaps we have some comments afterward. Thanks.
