No two MMPs are alike and choosing one goes beyond cost
Mobile marketing remains a new world for many marketers, but with fierce competition in the app stores, you want to start marketing your app as early as possible and see what types of ads are working in your favor. To do it right, you need a mobile measurement partner (MMP) to measure data from ad impressions, clicks, installs, and post-install (conversion) events across all of your partners and channels, providing objective attribution to show you where your best users are coming from. But, are you asking the right questions when researching new mobile MMPs?
Here are the questions you don’t want to miss:
1.) Is your attribution privacy compliant?
Apple’s AppTrackingTransparency (ATT) framework with iOS 14 has introduced new boundaries around advertising measurement. A failure to strictly abide by the stipulations in Apple’s User Privacy and Data Use policy can put an advertiser’s app business in jeopardy.
2.) How robust is your support for Apple’s SKAdNetwork?
An MMP that provides SKAdNetwork support will supply the advertiser with a more holistic view of their ad campaign’s measurement and attribution. Make sure the MMP has certified SKAdNetwork partners as well, to ensure optimal performance throughout your growth.
3.) What support resources are available (eg, account team, technical support) after the initial set-up and implementation?
An MMP’s support staff is the true face of the company. They are the product experts that can help adapt it to your needs. How responsive are they? Regardless of whether they have a local presence or not, the support team should be able to respond within a short time span. It’s their job to help problem-solve and find a solution.
4.) What features does your SDK support?
An MMP’s software development kit (SDK) is a marketer’s first connection with its users and is how they collect in-app activity for analysis and future reengagement. An MMP’s SDK should be light to avoid app bloat and a clunky user experience. You also need to know what capabilities that SDK has. What kind of tracking abilities, post-install events, revenue events, media costs, data syndication, fraud protection, and what deep linking, and deferred linking capabilities do they have? While MMPs first emerged to provide attribution and analytics, their platforms should encompass at least these features as they are integral aspects of mobile measurement.
5.) How do you support SDK implementation, and are other options available? What does the implementation process look like?
When choosing an MMP, it’s a commitment—a relationship—that’s started—and your first signs of how that relationship will go is in implementing the SDK or server-to-server system to collect and visualize your data. It shouldn’t be a burdensome process. With the right prep work and support, implementing an MMP’s SDK should be painless.
6.) Do you support cross-platform attribution?
At this point in the evolution of digital marketing (with mobile being a huge part of that), MMPs should live up to their claims of holistic measurement, and they will all likely answer this question differently. What you need is an MMP that can identify and link users across any channel, web, or mobile, and over any connected device.
7.) What are your fraud offerings/fraud tools?
It should go without saying that an MMP should have a comprehensive fraud toolset. There is no single fix or 100% prevention, but there are strong tools to mitigate and reduce it as much as possible. The next question is how customizable are their tools? Every MMP has an anti-fraud offering, but there’s no one-size-fits-all prevention method. In other words, not all offerings will be the same. You need a sophisticated toolset that includes simple, automated tools and also more customizable ones that an MMP’s support staff can help recommend and implement. Ad fraud taxes a marketer’s resources, but they are not alone in preventing it. Reducing ad fraud is an ongoing aspect of marketing, and marketers should have multiple customizable options at their disposal.
8.) What lifetime value tracking capabilities are available? Can you define the metrics used in the calculation?
Measuring the lifetime value (LTV) of a user is a necessary marketing metric to understand how users move through the funnel and then be able to compare it across all your marketing channels. Ask about your options in analyzing LTV and what customizable options are available there too.
9.) What types of reporting are available and how long do you preserve data?
Marketers need flexibility in their reporting and not simply standard default reports. Make sure an MMP has reporting to suit your needs beyond the default, aggregate reporting but also row-level, scheduled, API feeds, or custom reports via a query tool. What are their API policies? What are their policies with API feeds, and how far back do they retain records? While some MMPs cap retention at 90 days, it is beneficial to collect and access data beyond that. Long-term data retention means you can avoid duplication of installs when users uninstall your app only to reinstall later on.
10.) Are you compliant with the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR)?
The regulatory landscape is in a state of flux, making compliance a tricky road to navigate, and there are no signs of that slowing down as more states introduce similar regulations. Facilitating the marketer’s journey has become or should be what an MMP stands for. Not only should it be expected that an MMP is compliant, but it should also have tools in place for customer compliance, too.
11.) Does your platform support dynamic audience activation?
Dynamic audience activation is an essential part of personalized marketing. How easily can you segment and create an audience? What are your options? In visualizing your analytics, you should be able to save a list of device IDs for activation with a media partner. Bonus points if you can do that within the same platform.
12.) Are there options for audience enrichment?
There’s only so much data you can gather about your audience before you need to look to additional sources. With the end of the third-party cookie coming, the first-party data that you have has become all the more valuable, and you need to marry that with other verified and privacy-first data sources to enrich it. While there are vendors that may offer it, you would have to verify the data yourself as opposed to using an MMPs already vetted sources. The more consolidated your tech stack, the more efficient and secure your data is.
No two MMPs are alike
While mobile has become king of digital advertising, it is still a relatively new marketing medium. It’s not an extension of desktop or another channel. It’s a whole other beast to understand and use. That’s why mobile measurement and analytics are so important. These are the tools with which to understand consumers on mobile.
Whether you’re a new marketer making your first strides in mobile marketing or a more experienced one who has worked with an MMP, you need to work with one who is looking out for your best interests, supports you from the start, and innovates on your behalf.
To learn more about the questions to ask, see our Request for Information free downloadable worksheet.
