In this blog post we discuss why influencer marketers in the app space need to start putting more effort into measurement, what are the benefits, and how getting started with partners like Matchmade and AppsFlyer makes it easier than ever.
1. Introduction
For years, video views, clicks, site traffic and engagements have been staples used by influencer marketers to measure creator marketing success. These same metrics are often used when measuring brand marketing success as well. But is this brand-related approach enough when it comes to creator marketing in the app space?
While some influencer marketers already measure the later conversion stages (e.g. installs and in-app revenue) successfully, many more could learn a thing or two about measurement from the performance-oriented user acquisition front. While upper-funnel metrics can indeed be valuable, measuring installs, in-app conversions, and other similar down-funnel metrics can bring valuable insights for growing creator marketing efforts further.
To do this effectively, the right technologies need to be leveraged. Especially in the current privacy-focused environment, using mobile measurement partners can bring valuable insights that help you run your campaigns better. But what are these measurement partners?
2. What is a mobile measurement partner (MMP)?
AppsFlyer provides an excellent explainer of what a Mobile Measurement Partner (or MMP for short) is:
“A mobile measurement partner is a platform provider that attributes, collects, and organizes app data to deliver a uniform assessment of campaign performance metrics.
Drawing an analogy from sports, an MMP acts as a trusted and impartial referee to rule on attribution.
It’s a mission-critical component in a mobile marketer’s tech stack. Being the only party with an unbiased view of the entire consumer journey, an MMP enables marketers to understand which media source deserves credit for driving a conversion. This empowers marketers to make informed decisions regarding budget allocation.”
In other words, using an MMP is key to understanding how your creator marketing campaigns are performing – both in terms of absolute numbers and in comparison to other marketing channels. It helps you understand what kind of users are attracted to your app from creator sponsorships, how they differ from users acquired via paid ads, and much more.
If you do not use this kind of in-depth measurement, you might be able to estimate that creators work for you in the aggregate. However, it will be very hard to prove it – and even harder to scale it further as you won’t be able to develop an understanding of what kind of creators and themes result in people installing your app and making in-app purchases.
3. Why using measurement partners matters?
3.1. Creator Marketing budgets are growing, and so is accountability
Advertisers are constantly putting more money into working with creators (by some estimates, over 4 billion dollars will be spent on influencer marketing in 2022 in the US alone). As has been the case with all types of digital marketing, as investments increase, so will the need for accountability.
Simple engagement-based metrics will not be enough when your creator marketing budget starts (even partially) approaching the levels spent on search, display and social media ads for example. However, once you are able to prove the results, you will be able to gain bigger budgets and make creators a more meaningful marketing channel than ever before.
3.2. A higher volume of creators is needed for bigger reach and better performance
In order to successfully grow influencer marketing budgets, marketers also need to work with an increasing number of creators at a time to have sufficient reach. It’s great if you’ve been able to get good results with a few big stars, but that won’t be enough to truly take things to the next level.
There are very few truly big names out there, so demand for them will keep increasing – and the price tag will be ever higher. Furthermore, smaller creators actually tend to perform better than big names in terms of conversions and engagement, which also makes them far more cost-effective.
To be able to achieve the desired results at the desired scale, marketers need a combination of different sized creators – in fairly large numbers.
Once you start hiring more and more creators, you should use MMP measurement to understand what kind of creators actually bring you the most valuable users. Don’t restrict yourself to only looking at individual creators, but rather look for patterns in channel topics, audience composition, etc. to determine broader characteristics that work for you.
You can then iterate campaigns based on this data to rehire the top-performers and find other creators with similar content and audiences at large scale to attract more and more high quality app users.
3.3. Deep linking capabilities make the user experience more seamless
It’s also important that the customer journey from creator to mobile app is both contextual and seamless as this helps maximize the conversion rate. Any additional clicks a user needs to make to land in the right place – whether installing an app or taking another action – has the potential to lower the conversion rate.
This is where deep linking technology comes in. Deep linking is the ability to automatically send the user to the correct app store (based on their device) or into a specific section of the app if they already have it installed. For example, if a creator is offering free in-game currency as a promotion, when the user clicks on the link they’ll be taken directly to the page where they can claim it instead of having to navigate there themselves.
Not only does this offer the customer a seamless experience from Youtube to the mobile app, but brands can also measure which creators are driving the most traffic and purchases.
Choosing the right Mobile Measurement Partner
Quick tip: your performance marketing team might already be working with an MMP. Check with them to see if you have an existing solution that you could easily leverage. Matchmade supports all of the major MMPs like AppsFlyer.
As there are several players in this space, how do you choose the right technology partner? Of course, there are many parameters to consider depending on your use case, but I would highlight these as the most important ones:
- Reliability and support
- Pricing structure
- Speed of innovation
- Independent and unbiased
AppsFlyer is a great example of all of these criteria. They are the biggest player globally and more than 89,000 apps use their solutions so the reliability is extremely high. They also offer excellent customer support so you get any issues solved fast and implementation is easy.
The pricing is very transparent and competitive for both big and small advertisers. You pay per conversion, so you only pay for results and the solution scales in a cost-transparent way as your app grows in popularity.
Speed of innovation is also very important. Especially as privacy requirements are gaining ground and practical implementations are in a flux, you need a measurement partner that is capable of adjusting to these changes.
AppsFlyer takes privacy seriously and constantly develops the product further with these industry standards in mind. They also offer a lot of additional helpful solutions such as fraud detection, which can help you tackle fraudulent installs.
Providing accurate measurement data relies heavily on a foundation of trust between the MMP and its customers and partners in the ecosystem. That’s why it’s important to choose an independent and unbiased partner like AppsFlyer. They have no conflicts of interests and so can focus exclusively on measurement as their core business, ensuring impartiality and independence as a reliable third party.
Matchmade also integrates seamlessly with AppsFlyer, enabling you to measure installs and in-app user behavior from users you acquire through creator marketing. The integration can basically be enabled with a few clicks so if you work with us, you can get data and insights from day one.
Want to find out more?
Take a look at our case study where our joint customers achieved great results through creator marketing:
Nordeus uses Matchmade to reach new players with YouTube creators.
You can find more information about AppFlyer’s solutions here.