Using Campaign Based Tracking in Google Mobile Analytics

Hey Guys,

In this post we’re going to take a look at using campaign based tracking in Google Mobile Analytics and how you can use that to track installs and engagement with your Android app.

 

So What is Campaign Based Tracking?

It’s basically a feature of Google Mobile App Analytics that enables the attribution of native Android app installs to advertising campaigns and other marketing efforts in your Google Analytics app reports.

The reason it’s so widely used is because it provides highly accurate reporting on the success of your online marketing efforts, by properly tagging your online campaigns. By properly tracking campaigns in Google Analytics, this feature enables the attribution of online ad campaigns and traffic sources to user activity within your Android app.

 

Implementation – Using Campaign Based Tracking in Google Mobile Analytics

So how can you use it? Well that’s easy. First you need to make sure that Google Play Services and Google Analytics are already integrated in your Android app. Here’s a detailed guide on how you can do that.

Once that’d done, you just need to complete the following steps to implement campaign based tracking.

Step 1. Add a receiver in the manifest file of you Android app.

<!– Used for Google Play Store Campaign Measurement–>

<service

android:name=“com.google.android.gms.analytics.CampaignTrackingService”/>

<receiver

android:name=“com.google.android.gms.analytics.CampaignTrackingReceiver”

android:exported=“true”>

<intent-filter>

<action android:name=“com.android.vending.INSTALL_REFERRER”/>

</intent-filter>

</receiver>

Step 2. Modify your Android app’s Google Play URL by adding the Google Analytics Tracking Campaign parameters mentioned below.

&referrer=utm_source%3Dgoogle
%26utm_medium%3Dcpc
%26utm_term%3Dpodcast%252Bapps
%26utm_content%3DdisplayAd1
%26utm_campaign%3Dpodcast%252Bgeneralkeywords

Note:

You can modify your app’s Google Play URL automatically by using the Google Play URL Builder or just follow these guidelines to generate the URL manually yourself.

 

Testing & Debugging

Once you’ve installed the campaign tracking parameters and code inside your Android app, you need to test it to make that it actually works. To do that, you need to simulate that you just installed the app via a special i.e. Ad campaign URL and see if the campaign tracking code you put inside the app can successfully trace that install and record it. You can simulate the install by broadcasting the following code to your Android app using the ADB.

am broadcast -a com.android.vending.INSTALL_REFERRER –n app.package.name/path.to.receiver –es “referrer” “utm_source=testSource&utm_medium=testMedium&utm_term=testTerm&utm_content=testContent&utm_campaign=testCampaign”

On receiving this broadcast, you app should respond with the following message in ADB terminal:

Broadcasting: Intent {act=com.android.vending.INSTALL_REFERRER cmp=com.example.analyticsecommtest/com.google.analytics.tracking.android.AnalyticsReceiver (has extras)}

Broadcast completed: result=0

 

Using Campaign Based Tracking in Google Mobile Analytics

Now that you’re done, you can use campaign based tracking to monitor installs and other engagement with your Android app. You can see that in Google Mobile Analytics dashboard, as depicted in the screenshot below.

 

As you can see, this shows all the sources that got users to your app, as well the number of people who viewed your Android app’s Google Play URL, how many of those installed the app, how many new users the app has, and a variety of other data.

And that’s it!

 
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