Snowplow vs AppsFlyer/Branch( For Mobile Apps)

Snowplow is not a drop-in replacement for a mobile measurement platform like Appsflyer/Branch. In particular, we do not implement any of the SKAdNetwork functionality around tracking anonymised post-install conversions.

Having said that, the mobile attribution landscape has changed significantly (especially on iOS since 14.5) and it is much harder to link an individual logged-in user on your mobile app to a pre-install campaign impression, without their explicit consent.

What we can do (reasonably well) is the following:

  • Cross-platform identity stitching for logged-in users via our unified model
  • Cross-platform identity stitching for anonymous users who go from web to mobile via unified model
  • [Android-only] Track the install referrer entity with information about the referrer URL that led to the install of the app
  • [coming soon] Share a session ID and device ID for users going from web to mobile, note that this will be post-install only and rely on deeplinks

So you can get a lot of the value of an MMP from Snowplow, but won’t be able to track anonymised conversions. Hope this helps!

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