How To Measure The Results Of In-App Events When Onelinks Don’t Work

You run In-App Events and don’t know if your efforts bring any value.

Many app developers and marketing managers face the challenge of accurately measuring the impact of In-App Events (IAEs) on the App Store. While IAEs have proven effective for re-engaging users, attracting new downloads, and increasing revenue, traditional tracking methods like OneLink don’t actually include IAEs.

Major mobile attribution platforms confirm that currently, there is no way to track IAEs properly. At Social Discovery Group, our portfolio of 60+ dating and entertainment brands is supported by a team of over 100 marketers dedicated to app growth and development. We’re used to measuring all our marketing efforts in terms of financial value.

Eventually, we’ve managed to develop our own composite way to evaluate IAEs, and are going to share it with you.

Normally, all digital marketers track their marketing activities using an attribution provider to understand how each UA channel performs. At SDG, we love to measure all our marketing efforts in terms of financial value, and IAEs are no exception. When creating IAEs, we should upload a OneLink leading to the event itself.

However, it turned out that when you want to see the results of the IAE through OneLink, there is no accurate information. At best, there will be some data about the returning users who were previously attributed by the tracker. At worst, you will not even be able to find your IAE in the list of attributions.

By the way, we spoke with representatives of all major mobile attribution platforms, and all of them confirmed that currently there is no way to track IAEs properly, and any data we could see on their platforms wasn't comprehensive. This means that it would be wrong to use their data for proper evaluation.

At first, we tried to measure the results of IAEs by OneLinks only and were somewhat satisfied seeing some returning clients and the revenue generated by them. This approach broke down when one day we couldn’t find our IAE on the attribution platform at all. This was a sign for us to dig deeper and find a proper way of measuring IAEs.

So, now our reports on IAEs contain data from three sources.

The first one is App Store Connect, of course. Under Analytics -> Metrics -> In-App Events, we can see the number of impressions of the IAE (both unique and total) and its views (also both unique and total), as well as app opens (without a division between unique and total). There are also two more parameters that are always null for our apps - reminders and notification taps.

But that is not all. If we choose “By In-App Event” in the second filter, the following data will be available: Downloads (total, first-time, redownloads), Sales (sales, proceeds (sales minus Apple’s commission), number of in-app purchases, and paying users), Usage - opt-in only (installations, sessions, active devices, active last 30 days, crashes, and deletions).

Other metrics we can track about IAEs (opt-in only) include installations, sessions, active devices, active users in the last 30 days, crashes, and deletions. We can evaluate IAEs on the App Store side in the Metrics section, including downloads, sales, usage (opt-in), and In-App Events (data analogous to the App Store section).

We don’t use all the above-mentioned parameters for our IAE reports—only these ones: impressions, page views, app opens, number of in-app purchases, and sales.

The above-mentioned information might seem enough to draw conclusions about IAEs, but it doesn’t give us the full picture. It could be sufficient if an app (or a game) gets only organic traffic. But if there is also paid user acquisition, we should take paid users into consideration as they also visit the app page and see the IAE.

Our second source is the information about IAEs on our attribution platform provided by OneLinks. Users here are attributed to retargeting (re-attributions and re-engagements), so we choose "View type = retargeting" in the settings, and we’ll see our IAE OneLink name in the list of media sources. The most interesting data for us here are the number of re-engagements and revenue. Depending on your settings, you can also see clicks, ARPU, sessions, etc.

The third and final step of our IAE evaluation is to compare the total number of registrations, sales, revenue, advertising costs, and advertising installs across all paid traffic sources before and during the IAE. For such a report, we have developed our own reporting system. If paid marketing activity (in terms of costs and installs) was more or less at the same level before and during the IAE (or even decreased), and there is an uplift in metrics such as registrations, sales, and revenue, we conclude that the IAE drove these improvements and was a success.

Summing up, despite the fact that OneLinks doesn’t track in-app events directly, you can still evaluate their effectiveness.

To do this, you need to combine three types of data: from App Store Connect (at least impressions, page views, app opens, and in-app purchases with sales), retargeting data from the attribution platform where the OneLink was created to evaluate returned users (re-engagements and revenue), and a general uplift in registrations, sales, and revenue for all paid traffic sources considering marketing spends (since the in-app event is viewed not only by organic users but also by paid ones).

This approach allows you to comprehensively evaluate the results of in-app events and determine whether it is worth the effort to launch them. According to our reports, it is.

Wishing you profitable in-app events! Please, share in the comments how you track their results.

Written by Elena Alekseeva, Team Lead ASO at Social Discovery Group