Determining if user installed app from an ad link - ios

I'd like to be able to connect the dots on whether a user has installed and subsequently launched my app after viewing advert either through another iOS app or a website.
Is there anything to specify with the app store URL which carries over into the app's launch?
What are the general practices of trying to doing this?
Applies to iOS 4.0+

Try Apsalar . They use several methods like UUID, IDFA tracking etc to determine the source of app install (Provided you use their custom download links in your Campaigns)
Note: This requires you to either install their SDK in the app or configure server to server tracking.
They also provide some cool analytics data. You can do a cohort analysis in conjunction with your campaign source, to measure which source is performing the best.
All of the above requires to be set up within the app. Refer documentation on their site.
We are using Apsalar for our Project Management app

Related

How to access 3rd party TvProvider on rooted device?

My question is a follow up to this question.
Let's assume I have an Android Tv stick, I also am the vendor. There are 3rd party apps like Netflix, Prime, etc. I want to access the channels provided via TvProvider or ContentResolver. As pointed out in one comment:
apps vendors signs with the same key as an AOSP itself
placed them in a special folder - only vendors of devices can do it
or you, but only on rooted devices
How are my possibilities for the options above?
Using one of the proposed options you will be able to get all channels from the TvProvider inside the apps with signature /signatureOrSystem protection level. I don't know the specifics but I assume they may be different for different ROMs you may use. You will be able to retrieve the data from TvProvider the same way you are able to do it in your own app - this answer has links to examples from Android system app.
You will be able to render Rows from the data via leanback library in your own app(I don't know whether it should be a launcher or just an app). After the user by clicking on a card will enter the app that provided the content and view it there. You will not be able to view the videos inside your own app even if it is a system one because you would have to have access to the backend of the app that provided the media and that information is not stored in the TvProvider. The media inside a TvProvider is rather a simple link to a content page inside the other app.
There is plenty of info online about modifying ROMs, creating signatureOrSystem apps I cannot dive a specific link because I cannot verify its validity, because I haven't tried to do such things with TvProvider in specifics and Android OS in general(except for the root and disassembling and modifying already existing apps from the device vendor - also plenty info online).

How to shorten a Firebase Dynamic Link using my own domain name

I'm trying to implement Firebase Dynamic Links in an iOS app. The goal is to have a clean URL for marketing purposes so folks can share links on social media. The idea is folks will share the clean URL that starts with my domain name.
When the app is installed following a click on that link, we want to be able to track who referred the app install by looking at the payload delivered by Firebase. I think this goal is similar to Firebase's use case to convert web users to mobile app users.
An example link I would like to provide for sharing on social media is: http://example.com/my-payload-here
I've tried several cases but I'm not able to get the behavior I'm looking for in any case. Has anyone implemented this successfully before?
Here is my test procedure:
Uninstall the app
Send the link to be tested in an iMessage to myself
Tap the link on my iOS device (not using a simulator)
Install the app from the App Store
Launch the app after download completes by tapping "Open" button in the App Store
Below are my findings:
Short link generated from the Firebase Console (https://xyz.app.goo.gl/ABCD) - Link opens in App Store. I install the app. When I launch the app after installing, the payload is not delivered. If I quit out of the app, go back to the link in iMessage, and launch a second time, the payload is delivered.
Long link identical to the "Long Dynamic Link" from the Firebase console for the link generated in #1 (https://xyz.app.goo.gl/?link=http://example.com/my-payload-here&isi=12345&ibi=com.example.MyApp) - behavior is identical to #1
Short link using my domain (http://example.com/redirect/my-payload-here, configured to 301 redirect to URL in #2) - Opens in App Store. I install. When I launch the app after installing, the payload is not delivered. If I quit out of the app, go back to the link in iMessage, and launch a second time, the link still goes to the App Store.
Some questions I have:
Why isn't the payload delivered on the first launch for cases 1 and 2?
How can we make this launch the app and deliver the payload instead of going to the App Store?
I've also consulted the Firebase flowchart for the deep link in case 2.
Google Firebase team added support for custom subdomains to Dynamic Links.
You can now specify up to five custom page.link subdomains for your Dynamic Links. Short links using these new custom subdomains look like the following example: https://example.page.link/abcXYZ
Firebase Dynamic Link domains assigned on projects couldn't be deleted at this time.( firebase team is working on it.)
You can now whitelist the URL patterns that can be used as a Dynamic Link's deep link (link) or fallback link (ifl, ipfl, afl, ofl). If you define a whitelist, Dynamic Links won't redirect to URLs that don't match a whitelisted pattern.
You can try both of these features in the Firebase console.
This is not currently possible with Firebase. If you need whitelabeled URLs, you either need to build it yourself or use a more powerful link platform like Branch.io (full disclosure: I'm on the Branch team).
To answer your questions specifically:
I have implemented Firebase Dynamic Links in a testbed app and can confirm that linking through installation the first time does work for both long and short URL variants. There is likely something wrong with your AppDelegate config, so we can take a look at that if you want to share code.
Firebase does not support custom domains at this time. In theory (if you can solve the first issue above) you could get this working for first install by using a redirect like you have tried. However, you'll never be able to get it to launch the app with Firebase link data once the app is installed. This is because Universal Links work based on the domain of the link, and don't even request the web destination. Even if you enable Universal Links manually on your own domain, the app will open immediately without ever calling Firebase and the link data will never be set.

IOS Deeplinking- Pass msg from email to your app

Existing user of the app will send email to other user.
Other user may have app installed or not installed on their device.
The email will contain some token. Now I want to pass that token to my app. I have read that by deep-linking, its possible. But how will I handle the case when other user have not installed my app yet in their IOS device.
Any help is appreciated.
What you're describing is called Deferred Deep Linking (Deep Linking refers to using a link to open your app, even directly to a specific piece of content, and Deferred means that it works even if the app isn't installed first).
Unfortunately there's no native way to accomplish this yet on either iOS or Android. URL schemes don't work, because they always fail if the app isn't installed. Apple's new Universal Links in iOS 9 get closer, but you'd still have to handle redirecting the user from your website to the App Store
A free service like Branch.io (full disclosure: they're so awesome I work with them) can handle all of this for you though. Here's the docs page covering exactly how to create email links like you described: https://docs.branch.io/pages/emails/email-partners-list/

iOS Conversion / installation Tracking

Objective: i want to fetch my custom parameter(referrer) from iTunes link upon installation of my application in device.
iTunes links look somethings like this:
https://itunes.apple.com/in/app/complete-gym-guide-lite/id550449574?mt=8
If i append my parameter say(&referrer=xyz)at the end and i open this url in ios safari browser then it will prompt to download the application.
Confusion: will app store send my parameter(referrer) to my application on launch so that i can fetch it in my application and use it.
In case of Android play store link look like this: http://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=&referrer=guid%3D%guid%
As you can see referrer parameter at the end of url. Once app is installed in device then play store will send this parameter to app using INSTALL_REFERRER broadcast receiver. We can use this parameter.
What i tried OR Other people doing for conversion tracking: Other people are simply sending static data to their server at the first time opening of app and maintain a flag in NSDefault to make sure that app does not send same data again. I can also do the same as well as alternate ways suggested in below links but i want to do something with custom parameter.
I have already seen below links:
iOS - track which ad campaigns my installs are coming from
Tracking iOS installs from multiple marketing sources
Please help me out.
As #Aditya said, for now, Apple is not sending any referrer (or params) from iTunes to installation.
The only way you have it's to use a third party sdk to get your installations.
I have been working on a own sdk to get this but the way to get any info it's really hard and not really confident to use it. So endly we used some third party which are using many techniques to getting this (as fingerprint data, App2App methods, etc...)
I have tested appsflyer sdk and facebook sdk, they work as expected, use this or any else you prefer.
Hope this helps

How to share a link from the app using other applications

I want to share a link from my app using other applications installed on my iPhone such as Gmail, Facebook, DropBox, WhatsApp etc. In android there is a straight way to do so, just fire an intent and it automatically shows the installed apps through which we can share whatever we want. Is there any such way in iPhone ?
Thanks!
On iOS , app is more separated from each other. The only way to pass data from one app to other is using the URL mechanism. As one example, an app register url scheme "open-me://",you invoked openURL with "open-me://my-link" then that app will launched. That app will define the detail of the URL so it could understand the content.Continue with the example we are using, the text you passed could be either "open-me://A?data=my-link" or "open-me://A?message=my-link". So there are no general solution for all apps.Typically third party app will provide a SDK to make these things easy.
If you don't mind using a kind of large third party library, ShareKit is a good choice. It supports quite some apps.
If you want to know more about this topic,for example sharing files between app. You could start from reading the class reference of UIDocumentInteractionController.This UI component will show a list of app installed on your device which support the URL scheme.

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