Marketing
October 18, 2024
Chris Fitkin
Founding Partner
The mobile app ecosystem has evolved dramatically over the past decade, with user acquisition costs soaring and competition intensifying across every category. In this landscape, flying blind is no longer an option. Attribution platforms have become the eyes and ears of effective mobile marketing teams, providing the critical data connections between marketing spend and user behavior.
I’ve spent the last decade implementing attribution solutions for companies ranging from seed-stage startups to Fortune 500 enterprises, and one truth remains constant: the right attribution platform isn’t always the most popular one. While AppsFlyer dominates market share conversations, I’ve increasingly found myself recommending alternatives based on specific client needs.
Let’s dig into what makes AppsFlyer tick and explore the competitors that might actually serve your needs better in 2024.
Before exploring alternatives, it’s worth understanding what propelled AppsFlyer to its market-leading position. Launched in 2011, AppsFlyer captured the mobile marketing zeitgeist by solving a fundamental problem: connecting post-install user activity back to acquisition sources.
The platform’s core strength lies in its comprehensive approach to attribution:
Having implemented AppsFlyer across dozens of apps, I’ve found its technical documentation and SDK stability to be generally superior to competitors. However, this reliability comes at a premium price point that’s increasingly difficult to justify for early-stage companies or apps with modest marketing budgets.
The platform’s greatest weakness might be its own success—it has evolved into such a comprehensive product that smaller teams often implement only a fraction of its capabilities while paying for the entire suite. This complexity can also extend implementation timelines and require dedicated technical resources.
If AppsFlyer built its reputation on attribution technology, Singular approached the market from the opposite direction—starting with marketing analytics and expanding into attribution. This fundamental difference in DNA creates a substantively different product experience.
Singular’s standout feature is its ability to automatically normalize and combine marketing data from disparate sources. Anyone who’s manually reconciled campaign naming conventions across multiple platforms will immediately understand the value here. The platform transforms hours of spreadsheet manipulation into automated insights.
Where Singular really shines is connecting marketing spend data with attribution outcomes for ROI calculation. While AppsFlyer requires additional setup to achieve this visibility, Singular treats cost data integration as a core feature rather than an add-on.
For marketing teams more focused on optimization than raw attribution data, Singular’s approach often leads to faster value realization. Its interface prioritizes actionable campaign insights over technical attribution mechanics, making it more accessible to marketing generalists.
Singular works best for companies with:
Singular’s pricing typically scales with marketing spend rather than user volume—potentially offering better economics for apps with large user bases but moderate acquisition budgets.
If you’re operating in vertical categories plagued by attribution fraud—gaming, finance, or e-commerce—Adjust deserves serious consideration. The platform has invested heavily in fraud prevention technology, often identifying and blocking fraudulent attribution attempts that other platforms initially miss.
Adjust’s fraud prevention system employs sophisticated pattern recognition across billions of installs, allowing it to detect emerging fraud techniques before they become widespread. For apps where customer acquisition costs exceed $10-20, this fraud prevention capability alone can justify Adjust’s implementation.
Beyond fraud prevention, Adjust offers particularly strong user segmentation capabilities. The platform enables marketers to create highly specific user cohorts based on both attribution source and post-install behavior—perfect for retargeting campaigns and lookalike audience creation.
Adjust’s pricing tends to follow a traditional SaaS subscription model with tiered packaging based on functionality and scale. Mid-market companies often find it competitively priced against AppsFlyer, particularly when factoring in the potential savings from superior fraud prevention.
Kochava rarely leads market share conversations, but technical teams often favor it for its flexibility and configurability. As attribution has evolved beyond simple install tracking to encompass complex user journeys, Kochava’s adaptability has become increasingly valuable.
Two features particularly distinguish Kochava from the field:
1. Configurable attribution settings: While most platforms offer predetermined attribution models, Kochava allows marketers to customize attribution logic, lookback windows, and conversion criteria to align with specific business models. This flexibility becomes invaluable for companies with non-standard conversion paths or complex re-engagement strategies.
2. Comprehensive free tier: Kochava offers the most fully-featured free plan in the attribution market through its “Free App Analytics” product. For early-stage apps not yet running paid user acquisition, this provides attribution capabilities without financial commitment—a significant advantage over competitors requiring paid contracts from day one.
Kochava’s approach to cross-platform measurement also deserves mention. The platform effectively tracks user journeys across mobile apps, web environments, OTT devices, and connected TV—making it ideal for media companies and entertainment apps where multi-device usage is common.
Branch entered the market as a deep linking solution before expanding into attribution, and this heritage remains evident in its product. While all attribution providers offer some form of deep linking, Branch’s implementation stands apart in both technical sophistication and ease of implementation.
The platform excels at maintaining context across user journey touchpoints. When a user clicks a Branch link in an email, social post, or advertisement, the platform preserves that interaction’s context through to app open—enabling highly personalized first-run experiences based on acquisition source.
This contextual handoff capability proves particularly valuable for:
Branch’s Universal Ads solution deserves special attention for marketers battling the attribution challenges posed by Apple’s App Tracking Transparency framework. The platform’s web-to-app attribution methodology maintains reasonable attribution fidelity even in high-LAT (Limited Ad Tracking) environments.
Organizations already using marketing automation platforms will appreciate Branch’s extensive integration ecosystem. The platform maintains native connections with major engagement tools including CleverTap, Braze, and Iterable, streamlining implementation of cross-channel campaigns.
Firebase takes a fundamentally different approach to attribution than standalone platforms like AppsFlyer or Adjust. As part of Google’s broader app development ecosystem, Firebase Analytics treats attribution as one component of a unified development and analytics platform.
This integrated approach offers several advantages:
Firebase’s attribution approach works best for:
Having implemented Firebase Attribution for several startup clients, I’ve found its limitations become apparent once companies scale beyond initial Google-centric acquisition. The platform offers less comprehensive third-party network coverage and fewer advanced attribution features than specialized alternatives.
Teams considering Firebase should note that while implementing multiple attribution platforms creates redundancy, many companies maintain Firebase alongside a dedicated attribution platform, using the former for development analytics and the latter for marketing measurement.
Attribution platforms rarely exist in isolation—they operate within complex marketing technology ecosystems. Based on our implementation experience at MetaCTO, several technical considerations should influence platform selection:
Attribution data often becomes business-critical information, raising questions about ownership and portability. Platforms vary significantly in their approach to data access:
For companies with data warehouse strategies or planning potential platform migrations, these differences in data portability can significantly impact long-term flexibility.
Most organizations maintain dedicated product analytics platforms alongside attribution tools. The quality of these integrations varies substantially across platforms:
For technical teams already committed to specific analytics solutions, these integration differences can significantly impact implementation complexity and data consistency.
After implementing attribution across dozens of mobile applications, I’ve developed a framework for matching platforms to specific business scenarios:
Consider AppsFlyer when:
Consider Singular when:
Consider Adjust when:
Consider Kochava when:
Consider Branch when:
Consider Firebase when:
At MetaCTO, we’ve refined our approach to attribution platform selection through dozens of implementations. Our process typically includes:
Technical audit of existing infrastructure - Attribution doesn’t exist in isolation; its effectiveness depends on compatibility with your broader tech stack including analytics (Mixpanel, Amplitude), subscription management tools (RevenueCat, Stripe Billing), and advertising platforms (AdMob)
Marketing channel assessment - Different attribution platforms excel with specific acquisition channels; we inventory planned marketing activities to ensure compatibility
Event taxonomy development - Before implementation, we design comprehensive event tracking frameworks that align attribution with broader analytics strategy
Implementation complexity calculation - We evaluate how each platform’s SDK will interact with existing code, particularly for apps built with modern frameworks like SwiftUI or Kotlin
Budget modeling - Beyond sticker prices, we model the total cost of ownership including implementation resources and potential hidden costs as your app scales
Our technical experience spans the entire attribution ecosystem, having implemented these platforms across diverse technical architectures. This hands-on knowledge allows us to anticipate integration challenges before they arise and sequence implementation for maximum efficiency.
Based on our attribution implementation experience, several common pitfalls deserve attention:
Deep links represent one of attribution’s most valuable capabilities but also its most technically complex. Proper implementation requires rigorous testing across:
We recommend comprehensive testing matrices before launch, particularly when using features like Magic Links for authentication alongside attribution.
Attribution SDKs require implementation at critical points in your application lifecycle. Common issues include:
Our implementation teams treat attribution SDK integration as a first-class engineering concern rather than a marketing add-on, with dedicated QA processes using tools like TestFlight to validate functionality before release.
Apple’s App Tracking Transparency framework fundamentally changed iOS attribution. Successful implementations now require:
Platform selection should heavily weigh each provider’s approach to post-ATT measurement, as significant performance differences exist between implementations.
Successful attribution extends beyond technical implementation to interpretation and action. We help clients establish:
These operational practices often differentiate successful attribution implementations from technically correct but underutilized ones.
The attribution landscape continues evolving rapidly in response to privacy regulations, tracking restrictions, and ecosystem fragmentation. While AppsFlyer remains the market leader, our implementation experience increasingly finds specific use cases where alternatives deliver superior results.
The right attribution platform depends on your specific needs:
At MetaCTO, we approach attribution as part of a comprehensive mobile app strategy. Our experience extends beyond implementation to insight generation and growth optimization.
Whether you’re building a new application or optimizing an existing one, the right attribution foundation transforms marketing from guesswork to data-driven decision making. Contact our team today to discuss your specific attribution needs and how we can help craft an implementation strategy aligned with your business objectives and technical architecture.
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