Mobile attribution, in plain English
The terms behind measuring paid user acquisition — defined simply.
Mobile attribution
Determining which ad, campaign or channel drove an app install or in-app purchase, so marketers know what their spend actually produced.
MMP (mobile measurement partner)
A platform that attributes app conversions back to marketing sources and reports on performance. MakeRVN is a modern, usage-priced MMP that works without an SDK.
Conversions API (CAPI) / Events API
Server-side channels — Meta Conversions API and TikTok Events API — for sending conversions directly from your server to the ad network, recovering signal that client-side pixels lose after iOS ATT.
Deferred deep linking
Carrying a click's context into the app after install, so a purchase that happens later can be attributed to the exact ad click that led to the download.
Deterministic vs probabilistic attribution
Deterministic attribution matches a conversion to a click exactly (via a click id). Probabilistic attribution estimates the match using signals like IP address and a time window when no click id is available.
SKAdNetwork (SKAN)
Apple's privacy-preserving install-attribution framework. It reports aggregated, delayed conversion data without device-level identifiers, which is why post-ATT attribution relies more on server-side signals.
Server-side conversions
Sending conversion events from your backend to ad networks (rather than a browser/app pixel), which is more reliable, resistant to signal loss, and how ad algorithms are fed for optimization.
ROAS (return on ad spend)
Revenue generated for each unit of ad spend. Accurate attribution is what makes ROAS trustworthy enough to scale campaigns on.