Find The Best Free App Attribution Tool

Learn more about how Kochava’s Free App Analytics® tools compare with the competition

Whether you are an indie app developer or have an entire portfolio of mobile apps, you should have an attribution tool, preferably a proper mobile measurement partner (MMP) by the time you upload your app to the app stores. No one will know about your app without good marketing, and you won’t know where your best users are coming from without attribution and measurement. 

Integrating a mobile measurement and attribution software development kit (SDK) into your app(s) will not only help you determine where your users are coming from and what they’re doing inside your app but is also a vital component of your marketing tech stack. Even if at first you’re only running ads on one ad platform an independent attribution partner who can objectively measure all of your campaigns will become especially important as you grow and add more marketing channels. 

A number of free app attribution tools exist, but how do you choose the right one for your needs? 

Kochava introduced Free App Analytics® (FAA) as a platform to help indie and first-time app marketers get up and running with mobile marketing. With it, you’ll be able to perform attribution and measurement, use our deep linking technology to streamline the user experience and leverage our Intelligent Consent Manager to manage user consent prompt dialogues, among other attributes. 

To help with your research on free app attribution tools, we’ve put together a comparison table of the main free tools on the market, and below are some callouts from it.

How Does FAA Compare to Other Free Offerings?

Support for paid and owned media

First-time marketers may start advertising with only one ad platform, such as Facebook or Google Ads. Each will have its own analytics dashboard that will show you the isolated perspective of your campaign performance on their platform. But eventually, you’ll want to expand your advertising to other ad platforms, even add channels such as connected TV. Once you have grown your audience base and brand awareness, your owned media channels (eg, website, social profiles, etc.) will also serve a greater role in your omni-channel marketing strategy. That’s where an MMP comes into play, and it’s best to have one from the start of your app marketing journey.

An MMP will help you visualize all paid and owned media campaigns in one dashboard It should be noted that such an ability to measure both is not an option among all free measurement tools available. Paid media are ad campaigns you pay for through an ad platform. You might manage them on your own or hire an ad agency to do it for you. Some marketers might not realize that they can measure and compare their owned media campaigns alongside their paid campaigns. Again, each individual channel, be it a paid ad platform or an owned media campaign, has associated performance analytics, but each will display results differently. With an MMP, you can compare and look at omni-channel data in a consistent data model.

Super publisher measurement that’s independent and unbiased

As an FAA client, you can measure your campaigns across any of what we call the super publishers. These include Apple Search Ads, Facebook and Instagram, Google Ads, Twitter, TikTok, and Verizon Media. An MMP is vital especially when running paid campaigns alongside the super publishers because they will claim any attribution that occurs on their platform which may not necessarily be the attribution winner of your campaign if you’re working with multiple ad partners. Through FAA, Kochava will show you the true winner and act as an objective moderator among your campaigns. The demand for objectivity is also why Facebook doesn’t allow Google Analytics and Firebase to act as a certified measurement partner of your Facebook campaigns. 

SKAdNetwork support for iOS

Last year, Apple changed the rules of attribution and measurement in digital advertising by requiring app marketers to prompt for user consent using its AppTrackingTransparency (ATT) framework with iOS 14+. If a user opts out and denies tracking abilities for the marketer, aggregated attribution via Apple’s SKAdNetwork becomes vital. Understand whether your free toll supports SKAdNetwork. Kochava fully supports SKAdNetwork for FAA customers. For more information about FAA attribution, visit our webpage here.

Additionally, to help with selecting ad partners equipped to handle SKAdNetwork data, Kochava developed the SKAdNetwork Certification program. Marketers can search the Kochava Media Index for SKAdNetwork-certified partners.

Free up to what point

It’s hard to find anything that’s free forever. As you grow and scale, it’s likely that you will eventually outgrow the “free” in your attribution tool. Be sure to understand how much room you will have to grow before hitting this ceiling. To maximize your use of FAA, we’ve made the platform free for up to 100K attributed conversions per month. In addition, we offer a seamless transition to paid tiers, meaning that no SDK transition is required and the valuable time of your app developers won’t be interrupted.  

The takeaway: Compare free app attribution tools

Having an attribution partner, particularly a truly independent MMP is a necessary part of app marketing to see how all your marketing channels are performing. Free app attribution tools are extremely helpful in getting started, but the available tools differ greatly in feature functionality. Check out our comparison table as you search for the right free app attribution tool to grow with.

To request a free demo or more information about FAA, contact us.