User Acquisition concepts reference
Familiarize yourself with some of the core concepts you’ll encounter in this documentation.
Campaigns
In the context of advertising, a campaign is a digital marketing strategy focused on user acquisition. Campaigns contain one or more creative packs, a bidding strategy, user segment targeting settings, and attribution links.
Creative packs
Creative packs are the content of an advertising campaign. A creative pack consists of a video ad and end card asset, or a playable ad asset. Multiple creative packs can be assigned to a single campaign, and individual creative packs can be assigned to multiple campaigns.
Impressions
An impression counts when a video ad begins playing. The quality of impressions generated by your game dictates how much revenue you earn. An impression is also referred to as a start when used in attribution tracking.
Attribution
Attribution tracks various user interactions and attributes them to the ad campaigns that generated them. You can define attribution links to track when players start an ad (generate an impression), complete an ad, or click an ad.
Mobile measurement partners (MMPs)
Mobile measurement partners, or MMPs, are third-party attribution service providers that help you track activity that may occur after players click on your ads. MMPs can attribute installs resulting from your ad campaigns, or post-install events such as retention metrics or in-app purchases.
SKAdNetwork
Apple’s StoreKit Ad Network, or SKAdNetwork, is a privacy API framework that helps ad networks and advertisers measure their ad activity on an aggregated level.
Advertising KPIs
The following metrics are commonly used as key performance indicators for advertising campaigns:
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Conversion rate | In the context of ad campaigns, conversion rate is the number of installs divided by the number of generated impressions. |
| Cost per acquisition | Cost per acquisition (CPA) measures the average amount an advertiser pays to acquire a user. |
| Cost per install | Cost per install (CPI) measures the average amount an advertiser pays per install of their app as a result of a given ad campaign.Target CPI (tCPI) is the average amount you wish to pay per install. |
| Impressions | When observed as a metric, impressions measure how many times players viewed your ads as a result of a given campaign. Impressions indicate the overall exposure to your ad campaign. |
| Retention | Retention is a type of cohort analysis that measures user engagement over time. It indicates the percentage of players that return to your game a certain number of days after installing your app. It is typically expressed as DX, where “X” is the number of days you’re attempting to measure after installation. D0 represents all users that installed your game on a specific day, and is always 100%. For example, assume that on January 1st, 1000 users install your game. Seven days later, 250 of those users log back in to your game. The D7 retention for January 1st is 250 out of 1000, or 25%. |
| Return on ad spend | Return on ad spend (ROAS) is the return of investment on your ad spend, expressed as a percentage. To determine ROAS, divide revenue derived from the ad source by the cost of that ad source. Values under 100% indicate that the users in question cost more to acquire than the revenue they’ve generated at the time of measurement. Note that this value can still go up over time. |
| Spend | For CPI campaigns, spend measures the amount of your budget spent based on the number of installs generated by your campaign times the cost per install (CPI). For CPM campaigns, spend measures the amount of your budget spent based on the number of impressions generated by your campaign (CPM). |
| View completion rate | View completion rate (VCR) is the rate at which a video ad is watched in its entirety. To calculate VCR, divide the number of completed views by the number of total impressions. |