Facebook's New Analytics for Apps

April 11th, 2015

Facebook's New Analytics for Apps
David Quinn

by David Quinn

VP of Strategy & Partnerships at Gummicube, Inc.

At f8 2015 , Facebook announced new Facebook app analytics. Available in their Facebook SDK, Facebook App Analytics includes features that are pretty standard across both free (Flurry, Google Analytics) and paid (Mixpanel, others):

  • tracking custom events
  • creating funnels
  • cohort-based tracking
  • user segments

So far, nothing new here.

Facebook also added a section called

"Integrations"

Integrations tracks Facebook related actions like referrals, logins and stories (posts) created from within the app. This has been available before, but gets a UI refresh and is part of the new analytics launch. Here is how one app's "Integrations" data looks: Analytics for Apps - Facebook Integrations And you can toggle thru measures of story engagement as well: Details

Why

Facebook as an analytics partner is a potential game-changer

While Google and Flurry can track all of the actions users take in your apps, and supports funnels, segments and cohorts - none can tie users taking specific actions in your app (events) to Facebook data. If you have ever experimented or run a campaign using Facebook's ad platform, you know that the ability to target potential users is unlike anything any other platform can provide. With Analytics for Apps, mobile app publishers gain insights to which demos take specific actions, and allocate advertising spend more intelligently. Facebook App Analytics - Events

Coming Soon - Attribution

While still in beta, Facebook is also introducing Attribution - so publishers and marketers can marry ad spend and user lifetime value by install source. The goal here is to answer "How can I better allocate my ad spend?" Attribution aims to identify the true value of an install source. There are several companies addressing the issue of "not all installs are equal" - including Tapstream and some of the paid analytics services. But again - none can connect this data with Facebook's deep well of demographic data. Attribution from Facebook is expected to launch with 10 mobile advertising partners for tracking. Combining Attribution, Events, Cohorts and Segments with Facebook data should make both using Facebook's SDK and advertising on their platform extremely compelling for most app publishers and marketers. With Facebook's aggressive moves into mobile messaging, smarter notifications and app linking - Facebook looks to expand their value to mobile app users and mobile marketers.

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