Why is Apple implementing its own analytics?
Eric Benjamin Seufert, a leading Wooga marketer, shared his thoughts on what is the main innovation of the new iOS 8, the final version of which is likely to be available today.
The original version of the material can be found on Mobile Dev Memo, a website dedicated to the mobile industry, hosted by Eric Seferth himself, author of the book Freemium Economics.
Amid rumors about the enlarged screen of the iPhone 6, the fact that Apple will simultaneously present its own analytics and attribution system with iOS 8 has been lost. The changes were first announced at WWDC in June.
Apple’s new analytical product, available via iTunes Connect, will allow developers to track the entire conversion channel of the application, starting with the views of the application page in the App Store (a la, how many times it was visited) and up to its retention. The full list of metrics that will be monitored via iTunes Connect can be found in this AppLift post. [AppLift’s post in Russian is here. – Approx. editorial offices].
The main advantage of the new Apple service is the App Store views metric: it is impossible to find out the conversion of app page views to installations without Apple switching to transparency. And despite the fact that marketers can approximately calculate it for advertising campaigns by tracking clicks and downloads, these figures are inaccurate, and even to get them, you need to spend well. By opening its own platform and providing developers with this information, Apple will allow mobile marketers to more confidently compose descriptions and post screenshots on the App Store pages of applications, optimizing the conversion channel.
Perhaps even more effective than the new analytics will be the attribution system that Apple will introduce with iOS 8. The Apple company will allow developers to add two parameters to download links to track the source of installations – the provider ID and the campaign ID. This form of attribution is now possible only through the collection of a unique device identifier, which is often a burdensome and technically difficult task that many developers prefer to entrust to third-party providers.
The fact that Apple is introducing this new feature – the ability to track the download source – is undoubtedly good news for developers: it will add clarity to marketing and reduce advertising costs, because now a number of functions will not necessarily be given to autosource. But the announcement of this feature raises the question: why is Apple doing this only now?
The most plausible explanation is that Apple is trying to simplify the process of developing and marketing applications for iOS. And here it is quite possible to find a parallel with the exclusion of HasOffers from the PMD program by the Facebook social network last February, although everything was implemented in that case somewhat differently. Excluding Facebook Facebook, which dominates the advertising provider on the market, has given developers a choice: either continue to use Facebook as one of the many download sources, but with less transparency and efficiency, or completely switch to Facebook in order to get maximum performance from advertising campaigns.
Introducing analytics and attribution as new iTunes Connect tools, Apple poses a similar dilemma to the developer: should he, having limited resources, spend on third-party analytics and services that are necessary for developing and displaying applications on iOS and Android, or should he seriously reduce the number of tools used and develop only on iOS?
A source: http://mobiledevmemo.com
Photo: George Hodan
