App Measurement in a Privacy-First World: How AppsFlyer Helps Teams Understand App Performance

Trusted by over 15,000 brands and counting, including some of the biggest names such as TikTok, Netflix, Pepsi, and Lululemon, AppsFlyer is one of the leading marketing attribution platforms that helps teams understand app performance.

Bundled into a sophisticated suite of performance tracking features and tools that create seamless, contextual journeys across every channel and device, overwhelming signals turn into clear next steps with AppsFlyer.

And now they’re powered by AI copilots, AI data guides decisions and outcomes instead of simply informing. As quoted from Forrester, ‘AppsFlyer customers achieved 207% ROI, with a payback period of under six months, according to Forrester’s Total Economic Impact™ research.‘

There’s big return potential and a focus on clear app measurement in a privacy-first world, so we’re going to explore how AppsFlyer specifically helps teams understand app performance.

How AppsFlyer Helps Teams Understand App Performance

CMOs and attribution leaders see fragmented data from every channel, and touchpoints are turned into one view with AppsFlyer. It has never been easier to optimize spending, prove ROI, and scale confidently with privacy-safe insights.

What AppsFlyer actually does is track user interactions end-to-end. It follows them from the first ad click-through to in-app events and purchases. You get a full 360° view of the customer journey across mobile, web, CTV, console, and beyond. With that, it’s so easy to understand which campaigns and channels drive installs, engagement, and revenue, and how to make those all-important data-driven decisions.

It’s an undeniable comprehensive visibility that lets teams quickly identify what’s working (and what’s not) in their app marketing strategies. What we love is that the impact is measurable. Brands using AppsFlyer’s Measurement Suite report an average 20% boost in return on ad spend (ROAS) and 62% higher revenue after getting the essential deeper insights and optimizing campaigns as needed.

Image Source: AppsFlyer

Privacy-First Solutions

We’re in the era of user privacy and strict data protection rules, and AppsFlyer’s measurement solutions are built with privacy by design. The platform adheres to global regulations such as GDPR and CCPA by using advanced data encryption and anonymization to ensure compliance while gathering marketing insights.

And we all know how common ad fraud is now, with global ad fraud losses estimated to be at around $250 billion (Traffic Guard), with Spider Labs’ research stating fraudulent clicks convert at about half the rate of legitimate ones (1.29% vs. 2.54%). That causes advertisers to overestimate campaign effectiveness if invalid clicks are not filtered out.

If you’re using AppsFlyer, that’s not the case. Their privacy-first solutions efficiently detect fake installs, bot traffic, and sophisticated fraud schemes. They’re using advanced AI-powered solutions that analyze millions of threat signals in real time before ad fraud wastes money.

Continuous monitoring post-attribution and their post-attribution reconciliation features, where you can reclaim wasted spend and recover partner payouts with full transparency, ensure every dollar reaches real users.

We also love their privacy-preserving measurement techniques. With those, marketers can still understand campaign performance without compromising user privacy. Their fraud defense studio is customizable with flexible enforcement.

You can select when to implement or tag detected fraud to align protection with business objectives. For example, it fully supports Apple’s SKAdNetwork framework on iOS, meaning marketers can attribute installs and conversions on iOS 14+ devices in aggregate form, working within Apple’s App Tracking Transparency limits.

And we could keep going—AppsFlyer has tons of privacy-first features that help teams truly understand the organic traffic, revenue, and growth of apps.

Top Features of the AppsFlyer Measurement Suite

AppsFlyer’s core Measurement Suite includes a massive set of features that help marketers measure and improve app performance across platforms. To summarize it a bit for you, here’s what you can expect from the Measurement Suite:

• Attribution Across Platforms
• ROI and Revenue Analytics
• Fraud Protection
• Audience Segmentation
• Creative Performance Insights
• Incrementality Testing
• Marketing Analytics Dashboards
• Seamless integrations with thousands of partners and tools

The Other Apps Flyer Product Suites Available

Measurement Suite is the go-to for monitoring app performance, in our opinion, but they have other product suites available that are slightly more specific.

• Deep Linking Suite: tools for creating seamless user journeys from any channel into your app. AppsFlyer’s OneLink technology generates smart links that automatically route users to the right in-app content (or app store if not installed)—whether they come from web, email, QR codes, social media, or referrals.
• Data Collaboration Suite: This suite includes solutions that enable secure first-party data partnerships and advanced analytics for media networks. It allows companies, especially retail media networks, to unlock the value of their first-party customer data in a privacy-preserving way. You’ve got features such as data clean rooms, audience exchange, retail media measurement, and more to help publishers and advertisers collaborate on insights without sharing raw user data.
• Agentic AI Suite: AppsFlyer’s AI-powered automation suite is incredible. Using autonomous AI agents, it can handle various marketing tasks without constant human intervention. The system operates on AppsFlyer’s trusted data foundation, executing decisions, like pausing a low-performing ad or boosting spend on a high-ROI campaign, instantly based on live data signals.

The Benefits of Using AppsFlyer and Recent Success Stories

The benefits speak for themselves in some of the success stories we could find online, and we’ll go into them more in a minute.

First, you get that unified, trustworthy data source that leads to better decision-making and cost efficiency. For example, global e-commerce leader eBay switched to AppsFlyer to scale its mobile marketing and stated they “gained full 360-degree insight into our user acquisition activity, while lowering our costs.” For them, AppsFlyer was their definitive source of truth for attribution.

Then there’s the fact thatAppsFlyer’s strong fraud protection systems result in savings and higher ROI. Using the systems, Playrix, a leading mobile gaming company, used AppsFlyer’s anti-fraud tools to save almost $100,000 per month that would have been lost to fraudulent ad engagements. By automatically blocking fake “reward” installs and invalid traffic, Playrix also reduced fraudulent activity by 12.5%.

AppsFlyer will consistently drive improved marketing outcomes. Sweetgreen, the fast-casual restaurant app, achieved a 17% increase in marketing ROI after implementing AppsFlyer’s measurement and analytics to fine-tune its campaigns.

We could keep listing examples of success stories and features, but now it’s time to find out for yourself how they can benefit your brand. You can request a free demo for a taster, and have the option to sign up for the Zero, Growth, or Enterprise subscription – each has different levels of feature access, so make sure you pick the right one for your needs.