Adjust declares it is now entering Measurement 2.0 for mobile analytics

Mobile analytics firm Adjust has now entered its next stage of life.

The company, founded in 2012 to track user installs of mobile apps for advertisers and developers, recently saw that the mobile analytics landscape had significantly changed.

So it decided to migrate from what it calls Attribution 1.0 to a new Measurement 2.0. And it is launching some new products to take advantage of the new environment.

Head of communications Simon Kendall told me that three main conditions have changed since the company’s creation.

First, mobile ad networks — pressured in large part by Facebook and Google — are increasingly using programmatic means to target their ads. That means the networks need more kinds of data, and more of it.

So, instead of focusing primarily on data relating to conversion — which ads lead to app installs — Adjust is now offering all kinds of other data — including data about events, apps, installs and privacy.

To accompany that effort, the company is today announcing Audience Builder, a platform for creating and managing user segments and for providing other kinds of datasets:

Second, Kendall said, there is a greater awareness among publishers of fraud in user acquisition for apps.

So, in addition to its ongoing anti-fraud efforts, Adjust is also focusing on providing accurate data. Marketers say accurate data on mobile fraud is even more important than reducing the fraud itself, Kendall said, because accurate info lets them know which advertising results to trust.

The third difference in conditions: users are frequent users of fewer apps, but when they are loyal to an app, it tends to be for a longer period of time than before.

So Adjust is focusing on longer time horizons to follow users. Instead of concentrating on the first 30 days of app usage, for instance, it will now offer the ability to track engagement up to 90 days, or even as much as a year.

And it is today launching Real ROI, which collects media costs over a longer period of time and with more users, compared to app publishers’ previous emphasis on getting ROI from a few users in a short period of time.

It’s a new mobile world out there for attribution firms, and now Adjust has given it a name. As founder and CTO Paul Müller said in a statement accompanying this Measurement 2.0 positioning:

“The way ‘attribution 1.0’ was built — the way we originally built it, too, before the restructuring we’re launching now — assumed that granularity could be restricted to the performance of individual ads or creatives on a certain day, that the incoming data wouldn’t have been maliciously manipulated, and that usage of an app was relatively short-lived.

“These presumptions are no longer true in 2017, but marketers are still struggling under their influence.”

About The Author

Barry Levine

Barry Levine covers marketing technology for Third Door Media. Previously, he covered this space as a Senior Writer for VentureBeat, and he has written about these and other tech subjects for such publications as CMSWire and NewsFactor. He founded and led the web site/unit at PBS station Thirteen/WNET; worked as an online Senior Producer/writer for Viacom; created a successful interactive game, PLAY IT BY EAR: The First CD Game; founded and led an independent film showcase, CENTER SCREEN, based at Harvard and M.I.T.; and served over five years as a consultant to the M.I.T. Media Lab. You can find him at LinkedIn, and on Twitter at xBarryLevine.