• by Paul Müller , Op-Ed Contributor, February 22, 2017

While ad networks have long been consolidating on the Web, we haven’t yet seen this level of consolidation in the mobile ad industry. We’re seeing more and more competitors coming into the market, offering a wide and complex array of partners for mobile marketers to test out.

In the case of mobile measurement platforms, a core selling point is the ability to serve as a central data collection point for hundreds or thousands of integrations to ad networks, premium ad publishers or niche analytics solutions. This growth in analytical complexity begs the question if the measurement platforms aren’t up to snuff.

In our conversations with marketers and partners, we’ve identified three limitations that must be fixed in 2017:

1. Lookback windows must grow.

2. Integrations and application programming interfaces (APIs) must allow for higher frequencies and higher rate limits

3.  Longer user lifetimes and engagement patterns must be reflected by analytics.

Lookback Windows
With user retention rates and loyalty rising, marketers must look at users for longer periods of time. Their attribution and analytics tools need to increase in the span of time for lookback windows. For instance, there’s cohort analysis, the distance of time from install that the marketer can analyze. At present, this lookback window is most often 30 days, but with more engaged users, marketers will need to distinguish cohorts by 60 days, 90 days or further to assess the quality of mobile traffic they’ve acquired.

We’ve seen that engagement of retained users is on the rise since 2015, making those users more valuable. We’ve also seen that up to 10% of users will return to an app even after having not used it for more than three months!

Rate Limiting
API rate limits are essentially limitations on the volume and frequency of real-time data being sent into or out of a platform. Limiting the amount of data flowing in and out of a platform is a way to keep costs down, but it also reduces the speed at which marketers can make data-driven decisions, and increases the complexity of integrations for everyone.

With more mobile ad network controller systems becoming better at managing data, we would want to see more investment into APIs, specifically in rate-limiting. In an ideal world, APIs transmitting marketing data wouldn’t be rate-limited at all.

Reengagement Periods
Users can now be reengaged on longer timeframes (60, 90 days and more). With these sophisticated models, it's important that mobile attribution systems and marketing analytics can understand engagement from reengaged users.

On the one hand, the industry needs to develop a more standardized model of attributing activity to reengagement campaigns.

On the other hand, measurement platforms need to ensure that they are primed to apply these models. Specifically, records about inactive users must be retained for much longer than is the standard today. These periods of forgetfulness and inactivity are a missed opportunity, and require more advanced systems to handle the complexity of longer reengagement windows.

Why Now? What’s Next?
These attribution and measurement requirements are the direct consequence of bigger market trends that have emerged over the past year. With improvements in these three key areas, we anticipate that mobile attribution will improve and handle the complexity the rate of growth we’re now seeing in mobile.