Tenjin's Attribution Overview

Attribution ties a mobile app download to a specific source of marketing campaign. This informs marketers why and where a user downloaded your app.

For example, if a user saw an app on a blog post that drove them to download the app, marketers will want to know the user downloaded the app because of the blog post. Marketers can further estimate what type of users like their app. If the blog attracts a specific user demographic (gender, age, etc.) it helps the developer understand how each type of user interacts differently with their service.

Attribution is important because it helps marketers better understand their customers and reasons for using their service.

Tracking techniques

The ecosystem currently has a couple ways to track where installs come from on a mobile device.

1. Web links, deeplinks, and organic content - users find content on the web, mobile web, or through mobile apps. If any of this content contains a link to your app that's using a Tenjin tracking link or deeplink, Tenjin will attribute the engagement (and context) to the install.

2. Self Attributing Networks (SANs) - Self Attributing Networks (SANs) are "walled garden networks" that allow marketers to advertise in their content to acquire users. Examples of SANs include Apple, Meta, Google, Snap, etc. where marketers can place ads in each of those content platforms.

   On install of your mobile app, Tenjin will request attribution information directly from the SANs to handle attribution on a view through or last click basis.

3. Ad Networks - Ad networks will pass click or impression data at the time the click or impression happens, respectively. The data is usually some form of an advertising_id and click_id. These impressions and clicks are used when view through or last click is calculated in Tenjin.

4. Influencer Campaigns - users can find your content through influencers who publish content on the broader internet. Setting up links to track those installs is straightforward. We also recommend simplifying links by combining them with SmartURL.

How data flows

Below is a diagram illustrating how data flows between Tenjin, networks, and devices.

0. Create a campaign in Tenjin's dashboard
1. Get the click tracking URL or deeplink (for non-SAN or custom channel)
2. Use your tracking URL in the non-SAN network
3. Ad is requested by the publisher in the non-SAN network
4. Your ad is shown to the user
5. Your ad is clicked by the user
6. The network fills in the Tenjin click URL macros (advertising_id and click_id at minimum) and sends the click URL to Tenjin
7. Tenjin redirects the user to your app in the store
8. User downloads the advertised app
9. Tenjin's SDK notifies the Tenjin server of the install with advertising_id
10. Tenjin links the advertising_id on click to the advertising_id on install and notifies the non-SAN network of a completed install through install callback.

Tenjin's attribution is calculated using a last click and the view-through model. If a user clicks (or views) multiple ads in the diagram above during step 5 after which the app is installed, then the following models are used to figure out which network gets awarded the install.

Last click attribution

Last click attribution gives credit to the campaign/channel which the user last clicked on. Usually the attribution window for these campaigns/channels is 7 days.

View through attribution

View through attribution gives credit to the campaign/channel which the user last viewed the app's content/ad on. Usually the attribution window for these campaigns/channels is 1 hour. This is overridden by any campaign that there was a click for.