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Track affiliate apps for iOS apps for more than 24 hours

I am trying to launch an affiliate project for my application, and Apple's 24-hour interruption makes this a little more difficult. I am wondering if there is a way to implement my own tracking?

At first I thought of a landing page with a phone number input form. Upon presentation, we will use something like Twillio to send the user a link to the application via SMS, as well as save the phone number along with an affiliate code from the URL of the landing page. Then I saw that Google somehow allows you to keep track of adwords regarding application installation and believes there might be a way that is not related to this phone number ... Does anyone know how they do it?

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To be or not to be

The main question here is the nature of your intention.

It explains the necessary accuracy / limitations that you have on iOS. I see two options.

100% Accuracy

If you need 100% accuracy, you can use the SFSafariViewController - this view is rendered by another process, and it has shared cookies between your application and Safari. This iOS 9+ is only a 100% way to set attributes. You can also get an explicit indication (email address, phone number, etc.) requested by the user after installing the application. This may be required if the business model relies on this process (for example, each installation is paid to a user account, etc.).

You can get an idea and complete the implementation by following this link

<100% accuracy

If you want to provide the largest UX possible (but not critical) or collect analytics (but this allows some kind of deviation) , you can use some approximation methods, for example, collect IP addresses, location, etc. from requests to your affiliate link. The flow may be as follows:

  • Your landing page contains a dynamically generated link.
  • When you click on the link, user metadata is stored (ip, location, device information - everything that can be captured from the User-Agent or other information available for your web service).
  • User is redirected to the App Store
  • After installation and launch, the application requests your service with information about the device and ip.
  • Your web service is now deciding on attribution. The matching algorithm may include any required number of variables / conditions. Like "the same IP + device type + no more than 5 minutes from the moment you click the link."

Thus, you do not request information about the user (email address, phone number), but you can already track the attribution. The percentage of adjustment to be adjusted.

Edit # 1

You may find this approach useful; it is used for an input attribute, however you can use it for analytics.

Edit # 2

If you're really curious about how AdWords does this, you might be interested in setting up walkthrough tracking . It clearly states (section "Instructions for tracking the installation of iOS applications (first open)", page 14) that you must use the AdWords tracking code ( this guide describes how ) or configure server-server integration. So, back to the original questions:

.. maybe there is a way that is not associated with this phone number?

Yes

Does anyone know how they do this?

There are many methods (as well as a measurement pixel built on top of the above SFSafariViewController ) described in these documents:

Google SDK
3d party SDK

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