Navigating the Storm: How Creative-Level Attribution is Changing Mobile Marketing

Jesse Lempiäinen, the CEO & Co-founder of Geeklab explores the challenges of attribution in marketing and how the company’s new creative-level attribution framework is helping developers and publishers cut costs.

Where We Stand Now

As an industry, we’ve been struggling ever since Apple pulled the plug on IDFA with App Tracking Transparency (ATT). We’re trying to navigate these stormy waters through various means:

• Leaning on SKAdNetwork and AdAttributionKit: With their limitations in data granularity and slow, inaccurate feedback, these privacy-friendly frameworks aren’t giving us what we need. Adoption rates are low because ad networks lack incentives to support the latest versions.

• Relying on Android’s GAID: Modelling based on Android traffic using GAID has been a fallback, but with the global rollout of the Privacy Sandbox, GAID’s days are also numbered.

• Giving Up on a Single Source of Truth: Some have abandoned the idea of a unified accurate dashboard, looking only at incrementality. While useful for the big picture, it doesn’t help with day-to-day decisions.

Network-specific probabilistic attribution methods like Aggregated Event Measurement (AEM) on Meta add to the confusion. Discrepancies between data owners make it nearly impossible to trust any single dashboard.

Rethinking Our Approach

At Geeklab, we wanted to fix this mess. We believe every creation has an audience, and our mission is to help creators find theirs, fueling creativity worldwide.

We took a hard look at our practices and realised a conflict. We base our decisions on creatives—the deepest level of analytics we act on. Yet, the entire measurement and attribution framework is built around device identifiers and user-level data.

So, we built a creative-level attribution framework. This lets us analyse and attribute marketing performance at the creative level without relying on device identifiers. It works between the ad networks and the game using our SDK and a unique linking schema applied to the ad networks.

The Benefits of Going Creative-Level

Privacy-Friendly and Future-Proof: Our solution is privacy-centric and ready for the future. By not relying on device identifiers, we’re set up to handle any new privacy regulations or platform changes.

Real-Time, Cross-Platform Insights: You get near real-time performance measurement across all platforms, including iOS. This overcomes the limitations imposed by ATT and similar initiatives.

Deep Analytics Without Limits: Analyse in-app events like retention, ad and IAP revenue, custom events like levels passed—all by creative—with no limitations. Need day 365 retention data? It’s all there.

Accurate Attribution: Our SDK ensures accurate last-touch attribution by assigning installs to a single creative, once. This means you can optimise based on true performance metrics.

Direct Feedback to Ad Networks: By using web technologies like Meta’s Conversions API (CAPI) and TikTok’s Events API, we provide near real-time attribution back to the ad networks at the creative level, enhancing campaign optimisation.

What to Consider

Limitations in User-Level Optimisation: Ad networks cannot optimise toward specific user types within a creative. Optimisation is focused on the performance of the creative itself, not individual user behaviours. Marketers can adjust spend toward high-performing creatives but lack the granular control over targeting specific user segments within those creatives.

Proof It’s Working

We’ve seen incredible success with our framework. We recently partnered with Talofa Games (named a top gaming startup by GamesBeat in 2024) and managed to cut their marketing costs by half while keeping the same user quality – all thanks to Audiencelab.

Watch the full case study here:

We truly believe that the future of mobile and digital marketing is privacy-friendly. We can overcome the challenges introduced by moving away from device-level identifiers and grow our games again.

After launching the framework at PGC Helsinki in early October, we’re now open to the public.

If you’re ready to join the future, you can do it here: audiencelab.ai

At Geeklab, we’re committed to helping creators and marketers navigate the ever-changing landscape of mobile marketing. By rethinking attribution and focusing on the creative level, we’re paving the way for sustainable growth that respects user privacy and fuels creativity worldwide.