Integrating AppsFlyer and Google Analytics: Step-by-Step Explanation

Every piece of meaningful data has some useful information associated with it. While Google Analytics is associated with web traffic data, AppsFlyer is associated with app-based data. Integrating data from AppsFlyer and Google Analytics provides a unified platform and makes it possible to run an in-depth behavioral analysis for the events related to customers and draw crucial insights about them.

The present article aims at providing a step-by-step guide to integrate  AppsFlyer and Google Analytics data. A complete walkthrough of the content will help you develop the skill to connect AppsFlyer and Google Analytics easily.

Introduction to Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a web analytics service that provides users with statistical and analytical information. It is highly useful & helps in managing search engine optimization (SEO) and product marketing operations. It is free of cost service available to every Google user.

It visualizes data using its interactive features such as dashboard, motion charts, and scorecards to display real-time changes in data. Using Google Analytics, you can generate a custom report that meets your business requirements.

For further information on Google Analytics, you can check the official site.

Introduction to AppsFlyer

AppsFlyer is a marketing attribution and mobile analytics platform that lets users, ad agencies, marketers, developers, brands, not only track their performance but also optimize their acquisition funnel. It provides users with accurate ROI trackings for all their campaigns. AppsFlyer supports both traditional sources like television, social media platforms, and even sources like in-app advertisements, which are much harder to monitor. Also, read AppsFlyer to BigQuery data integration in minutes.

For further information on AppsFlyer, you can check the official site.

Prerequisites

• Working knowledge of Google Analytics.
• Working knowledge of AppsFlyer.
• A Google Analytics account.
• An AppsFlyer account.

What type of data do AppsFlyer and Google Analytics store?

Google Analytics is a popular web analytics service provided by Google that provides users with statistical and analytical information. It stores data related to traffic associated with any website or applications linked with your account. It further filters and gathers insights about users, such as the number of users that are visiting your website, which cities and countries they are from and even about their preferred mode of surfing your site. 

Google Analytics provides you with data that can help you track your marketing campaigns, understand how users behave on your websites, and what interests them the most. It stores and provides data that contains statistical information such as page speeds and conversion rates of the goals you have set up. 

Google Analytics is extremely powerful when it comes to web analytics, but is the web the only source of customer data? Is it the only place, customers shed clear and business empowering trends? No!, A lot of crucial information comes from the apps you use, a better way would be to call it mobile marketing analytics. To truly uncover your marketing ROI this is a must, and AppsFlyer can get you there.

AppsFlyer is a widely used mobile attribution tool that lets you understand app engagement and delivers one of the best-in-class mobile marketing data available. It stores data related to how users interact and behave on your apps in an easy-to-use and highly available manner. It gathers information about metrics such as CPI (costs per install) by matching the media costs and revenues generated with each app install. It further filters and gathers insight about revenues generated using in-app advertisements by various campaigns and across multiple channels. 

AppsFlyer provides you with data that can help you bring your customer acquisition strategies back on track. It provides information related to the number of uninstalls related to your app, allowing you to focus on re-targeting the customer and ensuring customer retention in the future.

Need some help with these tools? You can always check out Hevo Learn for amazing tutorials if you ever feel stuck while working with these tools.

Why Integrate AppsFlyer and Google Analytics?

Google Analytics helps to extract and analyze the web traffic data such as place and time of access, visits, frequency of access, and more. AppsFlyer, in contrast to Google Analytics, focuses on the centralized and accurate tracking of app events such as downloads, bounce rate, duration of usage, app advertisements, etc. Though multiple data sources can be analyzed separately, yet integrated data analysis provides more precise insights. Integration of Google Analytics and AppsFlyer data provides a consolidated and one-point source of information, making it feasible to perform fast, precise, and in-depth behavioral analysis of the user events. It is similar to a Single Source of Truth and offers benefits such as increased productivity, zero redundancy, freedom from silos, etc. 

Check out some amazing benefits of integrating data:

• Breaking Silos: When teams of an organization are not the same page they struggle in building up a place in the market. A Single Source of Truth breaks down all the silos and motivates them to work collaboratively by making teams understand how their work is impacting others. When teams can access the data with the same insights, they can recognize key patterns, customer trends, needs, metrics. It enforces a cohesive working environment.
• Reliable Data: Data is handled differently by every organization, this can be in terms of how precise and up to date the data is. This is where a unified marketing data warehouse can help. It eliminates redundancy by consolidating data from various sources and makes it available from one point of source globally.
• Improved Productivity: With SSOT in place, teams need not fiddle from one place to another in search of accurate and reliable data to make business decisions. It helps to reduce the time & effort elements leading to increased productivity and a better industry-scalable real-time performance.
• 360 Degree View: With a Single Source of data being put in place, marketing teams can blend in data from various sources. It gives a full-fledged view of their position in the market. This prevents them from taking any crucial calls based on just one source of information. When everyone in the marketing team is on the same page and can connect the dots, it generates more trust and confidence in the strategy and numbers.

Hence, integrating your AppsFlyer data with Google Analytics is a must. It will help you perform a truly in-depth analysis of your customers and modify your strategies to target in the best way possible.

Methods to integrate data from AppsFlyer and Google Analytics

There are multiple ways in which you can connect AppsFlyer to Google Analytics:

• Method 1: Integrating AppsFlyer and Google Analytics using UniqueId
• Method 2: Hevo, A simpler alternative to integrate AppsFlyer and Google Analytics

Method 1: Integrating AppsFlyer and Google Analytics using UniqueId

You can easily integrate your AppsFlyer data with Google Analytics by using the UniqueId available in Google Analytics. The UniqueId will help AppsFlyer identify your Google Analytics account and easily integrate data.

This can be implemented using the following two steps:

• Step 1.1: Integrating data with Google Analytics
• Step 1.2: Viewing the integrated data in Google Analytics

Step 1.1: Integrating data with Google Analytics

Launch AppsFlyer on your system and select configurations for the menu on the left and then click on integrated partners. Once you have clicked on it, a new search field will open up. Enter Google Analytics in the search field and click on its logo to open the configuration window.

To integrate AppsFlyer with Google Analytics, you must have a UniqueId available that will help you connect both of them. While using the Google Analytics window, you can only make use of the integrations tab.

In case you don’t have the UniqueId, you can easily get it from your Google Analytics account as follows:

Open the official Google Analytics website and sign in with your desired Google account. Once you’ve signed in, click on the admin setting option and select properties. Under properties, you will find a tracking id. Copy this tracking id. This is your Unique Id.

Click on the “save integration” option. This will integrate your AppsFlyer data with Google Analytics. This will only integrate your installation details to Google Analytics. You can integrate your default postbacks and in-app data as follows:

Integrating Default Postbacks

AppsFlyer can send automatic postbacks based on the installations done by the user. To enable them, go to the default postbacks section, and in the event field, select install. 

This will send a postback every time a user installs the app. You can choose to send the postbacks to a particular partner or send them to everyone by selecting organic as the sending option.

Integrating In-App Events

To enable postbacks related to in-app events, you need to enter the account id again. Once you’ve entered it, you can then select events such as views, purchases, ads, etc. that you wish to send to Google Analytics.

Step 1.2: Viewing integrated data in Google Analytics

To view your AppsFlyer data in Google Analytics, you need to use the events option. Go to the official Google Analytics site and sign in with your account. Select behavior from the panel on the left and then select the overview. You can view your events, in-app postbacks data here.

Viewing the installed data in Google Analytics

To view your installed data, select the regular-install option from the overview section. Click on the second dimension option and then select the campaign option.

A new table will now show up, indicating the campaign names for every install as follows:

Viewing in-app data in Google Analytics

To view your in-app data, select the regular-install option from the overview section. Click on the second dimension option and then select the particular event you wish to view. Now click on the campaign option.

For further information on viewing AppsFlyer data, you can check the official documentation here.

This is how you can integrate AppsFlyer and Google Analytics and use your desired BI Tool to analyze your data.

Method 2: Hevo, A simpler alternative to integrate AppsFlyer and Google Analytics

Say goodbye to the tedious challenges of unifying your marketing data! Use Hevo to integrate AppsFlyer and Google Analytics data for free with multiple marketing applications and bring in integrated data in a matter of minutes and visualize it in your desired BI tool. You can easily create your marketing reports and dashboards without the hassle of extracting and combining marketing data from different sources. Hevo is fully managed and completely automates the process of not only bringing in your data from multiple sources but also transforming it into a cleaned and analysis-ready form without having to write a single line of code in a completely secure and reliable manner.

Gone are the days of sitting down and manually optimizing your data to get rid of inconsistencies, silos, and managing data losses. Hevo takes care of all your data preprocessing needs and lets you focus on key business activities and draw a much powerful insight on how to generate more leads, retain customers, and take your business to new heights of profitability.

Steps to use Hevo:

Hevo focuses on three simple steps to get you started:

1. Connect: Connect Hevo with your desired sales & marketing data source/s by simply logging in with your credentials.
2. Integrate: Consolidate your marketing data from several sources in Hevo and automatically transform it into an analysis-ready form.
3. Visualize: Connect Hevo with your desired BI tool and visualize your unified marketing data easily to gain better insights.

Use Cases of AppsFlyer and Google Analytics Integration

Integrating AppsFlyer with Google Analytics allows businesses to leverage the strengths of both tools for better marketing insights and decision-making. Here are some key use cases:

1. Campaign Performance Tracking
   Combine AppsFlyer’s mobile attribution with Google Analytics’ web analytics to track the complete customer journey across platforms and measure campaign ROI effectively.
2. User Behavior Analysis
   Analyze user behavior by integrating AppsFlyer’s app data with Google Analytics to understand how users interact with your app and website for better engagement strategies.
3. Audience Segmentation
   Use integration data to create detailed audience segments, improving targeting for ads, push notifications, and personalized experiences.
4. Attribution Across Channels
   Get a unified view of app and web data to attribute conversions accurately, helping you identify which channels drive the most value.
5. Improved Retargeting Campaigns
   Leverage combined data to run retargeting campaigns focused on users who dropped off or didn’t convert, boosting re-engagement and conversions.

Conclusion

This article teaches you how to integrate data from AppsFlyer and Google Analytics with various other marketing data sources and store at one place. It provides in-depth knowledge about the concepts behind every step to help you understand and implement them efficiently. These methods, however, can be challenging especially for a beginner & this is where Hevo saves the day.

Hevo, helps you easily integrate data from multiple marketing sources like AppsFlyer and Google Analytics for free and applications and visualize it in your desired BI tool. Hevo is fully managed and completely automates the process of not only bringing in your data from multiple sources but also transforming it into a cleaned and analysis-ready form without having to write a single line of code. You can easily visualize your unified marketing data using your desired BI tool and create impressive business reports.

Want to take Hevo for a spin?

You can now replicate your Appsflyer data to any Data Warehouse such as Redshift, BigQuery, Snowflake, or a destination of your choice without writing code in just a few minutes for free with Hevo.

Sign up for a 14-day free trial and simplify your data integration process. Check out the pricing details to understand which plan fulfills all your business needs.

Frequently Asked Questions