Earlier this month, mobile ad attribution startup HasOffers spotted what seemed to be an important new feature in the latest iOS update — iAd attribution. Now it looks like the company was right, because it just announced it’s taken advantage of the new feature to support iAd attribution in its MobileAppTracking service.
Basically, this means advertisers can see whether their iAd campaigns are paying off, because when a consumer performs a desired action (like downloading an app or making a purchase), the advertiser will know whether they saw an iAd first.
Even though HasOffers says it’s “the first platform to support attribution for iAd,” CEO Peter Hamilton acknowledged that developers don’t have to work with his company to make this attribution happen.
“Any client can work with any partner — they can always set up direct kinds of relationships,” he said. “We’re really just software as a service that makes it easier. We’re grease on the wheel.”
Hamilton also pointed out that this news comes as Apple is also expanding iAd by opening the iAd Workbench system to non-developers and supporting new types of actions in ads — not just driving downloads but also showing videos, pointing users to websites, and promoting iTunes content. The new Workbench features and new iAd attribution mean that we’ll see a combination of brand campaigns and performance campaigns, Hamilton said.
In a blog post, HasOffers wrote:
The team at iAd has done an amazing job getting attribution technology available to developers, while also providing an approach that puts user privacy first. Because this attribution touch point is at the operating system level, it is unique to the app and not even visible to the iAd team. Because iAd was designed to support developers rather than generate revenue, it has some inherently unique motives which easily align it with a high level of user privacy while not losing the value of what will likely be some of the strongest targeting and optimization available.
HasOffers also announced this week that it will support ad attribution in Windows.