The appeal of a single number has never quite diminished on Madison Avenue, even as the industry has spent two decades drowning in data from every conceivable source.
Snapchat, the ephemeral messaging platform that has been working to prove itself as a serious performance marketing destination, is now expanding what it calls Unified Attribution to advertisers globally, in partnership with the mobile measurement firms Adjust and AppsFlyer. The capability, which entered beta testing in May, promises to give advertisers a single view of their campaign data rather than forcing them to reconcile competing metrics from multiple platforms.
"It's very simple in terms of why it's useful, but that's also the beauty of it, because you get one data set to make your decisions out of," said Andrey Kazakov, the chief executive of Adjust.
The offering represents something of a concession by Snapchat — an acknowledgment that advertisers have grown weary of platforms grading their own homework while third-party measurement partners grade it differently. (The two grades, as anyone in media buying can attest, have rarely matched.)
Several brands tested the system during the beta period, with results that Snapchat was eager to share. Mohegan Sun Online Casino reported a nearly 90 percent lift in return on ad spend. Muzz, a marriage app for Muslim consumers, said it drove 41 percent more installs while reducing its cost per install by 29 percent.
"For the first time, Snap's optimization and advertiser measurement are working from the same data," said Bright Park, a principal partner development manager at AppsFlyer. "That closes a gap that existed across the industry for a long time."
The move aligns with Snapchat's broader effort to reposition itself as a performance marketing platform, a shift that has accelerated under pressure from investors and larger rivals. Revenue at parent company Snap rose 19 percent year over year in the second quarter, to $1.6 billion, with advertising still accounting for the overwhelming majority of the business.
Whether a unified data set will prove as clarifying as its name suggests remains to be seen. Advertisers have been promised simplicity before.
Original story published in Marketing Dive: "Snapchat's bid to simplify mobile marketing measurement goes global"