Xsolla, a game commerce company, has partnered with AppsFlyer to provide analytics for web shops as alternative stores for game devs.
AppsFlyer focuses on mobile measurement, attribution, and data analytics. This enhancement of the Xsolla and AppsFlyer partnership provides game developers with improved insights and simplified activation for its web shops, which are available worldwide as alternatives to traditional app stores.
The partnership also introduces solutions to address cross-platform measurement and attribution challenges. The partnership includes two integration options: server-to-server (S2S) and web integrations for mobile games.
Xsolla and AppsFlyer have collaborated closely for over a year to develop two custom integrations that address critical challenges in the mobile market. These integrations offer game developers comprehensive data on user behavior, campaign performance, and revenue attribution across mobile and web platforms.
Activation is straightforward and requires no coding from developers—teams of all sizes can enable these tools directly at Xsolla and AppsFlyer publisher accounts. This approach highlights Xsolla’s commitment to simplifying complex processes and supporting developer success.
These integrations address two major challenges in the mobile gaming ecosystem: reliable lifetime value (LTV, or how much money a given users will generate over the course of an app’s lifetime) and return on advertising spend (ROAS) measurement across platforms and accurate web shop ad campaign tracking. Developers can manage small activations directly through their accounts with a streamlined activation process via the Xsolla Publisher Account and AppsFlyer Publisher Account.
The Mobile Application S2S Integration enables complete LTV and ROAS measurement for purchases made within the application and on the Web Shop. Web Shop purchases are measured as in-app events.
AppsFlyer attributes each purchase to the number of mobile application installations, user acquisition, and re-engagement campaigns to help provide a complete cross-platform user journey, complete LTV, and overall return on investment (ROI) calculation. The setup process is simple and requires no technical expertise, making it accessible to all mobile developers through Xsolla’s and AppsFlyer publisher accounts.
The web integration activation is designed to measure and assess marketing performance, advertising conversion rates, high-performance advertising creatives, and re-targeting efforts for Web Shops using Xsolla’s Site Builder. Developers can easily enable this functionality, allowing them to measure the effectiveness of ad campaigns driving traffic to their web shops through Xsolla’s and AppsFlyer publisher accounts.
“Xsolla’s web shop solution has revolutionized the mobile game development industry, with over 500 Webshops established,” said Berkley Egenes, Xsolla chief marketing and growth officer, in a statement. “Previously, the traditional mobile measurement tools were not suitable for this scenario. These integrations with AppsFlyer bridge the data gap between web shops and mobile apps, offering game developers a complete view of LTV and overall ROI,”
He added, “This collaboration underscores Xsolla’s commitment to simplifying complexities for our mobile game partners and enabling smarter business decisions based on complete data flows across the player journey.”
“In an increasingly evolving and dynamic gaming ecosystem, understanding the full user journey across mobile and web is critical for developers looking to optimize performance and maximize revenue,” said Adam Smart, product director of gaming at AppsFlyer, in a statement.
He added, “By combining Xsolla’s expertise in commerce with AppsFlyer’s leading analytics capabilities, we’ll see seamless cross-platform measurement and attribution, giving developers the insights they need to drive smarter decisions and accelerate growth for the industry. These integrations ensure developers can focus on creating exceptional gaming experiences, knowing that their successes are appropriately credited.”
The gaming industry, particularly mobile games, increasingly demand tools that provide clear insights into player behavior and enable precise campaign performance measurement across platforms. These solutions help developers optimize engagement strategies and ROI, empowering developers to focus on creating exceptional gaming experiences.
Web shops are part of the omni-channel world
Brian Quinn, president of AppsFlyer, said in an interview with GamesBeat that we are headed toward an omni-channel world with mobile at the center. AppsFlyer is developing strategies and product roadmaps for that world, where developers apps will need to know how their games are performing across different platforms. With web shops, developers will be able to get to know their customers more and ask them whether they want to opt in to sharing data about their game preferences. That’s an opportunity to directly learn more about customers tastes and how to target them with relevant app or game recommendations, as permitted under regulations.
“We see a mobile centric, omnichannel view of the world,” Quinn said. “We have continued discussion around signal loss due to privacy, platform changes, regulatory changes, what it means adoption of Apple’s frameworks, what’s going to happen with Google, privacy, loss of growth and more.”
Quinn added, “We need to be focusing on omni-channel strategies and not multi-channel strategies, where it’s like we have mobile, we have CTV, we have out of home” as parts of a disconnected campaign.
Quinn said the company has to watch regulatory environments around the world and see the paths that companies adopt when it comes to marketing and privacy.
“There’s a lot of fragmentation,” he said. “We have a layer on top that scans and allows you to do your own set of modeling. They have a lot less first-party data. We developed robust probabilistic modeling, which was more privacy safe.”
He said such solutions are now more mainstream.
“We built these different measurement flows for different types of campaigns on different platforms,” Quinn said. “And then we built a proprietary modeling capability that we call like single source of truth, which de-duplicates all of those installs and events. And so now you have a one true read on your business if you’re a gamer, and that provides clarity.”
The company can provide trustworthy measurement and an independent and unbiased view of how apps and games are doing across the different channels, as it doesn’t have investment from a media business.
“They see that as as as very accurate and very trusted. And then if they have a single view of their business from all these different kind of fragmented media spaces,” Quinn said. “It’s easy for them to then invest and it’s easy for them internally to get the buy in from finance, from marketing, from growth teams.”
He added, “We’ve been building scaled measurement capabilities in an IDFA-less world for four years. It’s fragmentation. Sometimes there is an identifier, sometimes not. And then we have to resolve that to a single view. We’re starting to feel quite comfortable providing analytics and accurate measurement in that world.”
And now it seems web shops are more viable, easier to stand up, and can be another source of performance measurement for mobile marketing.
“The web is now a channel where a lot of mobile companies are thinking they’re going to go find new users and bring them into their app environment,” he said. “It’s part of their acquisition flow and so with identifiers going away, the analytics across these different platforms gets easier, because you’re not dealing with the unique identifiers of the platform. So you’re now you’re dealing in aggregated data sets across multiple platforms. So, long story short, I think one of the things that gets us excited about growth, and it might be a different approach that we’re taking than others, is we have a pretty strong foothold in mobile.”
Regarding third-party app stores (like the Epic Games Store) that are coming, Quinn said, “My point of view on this is that it’s exciting to think that there are third party app stores on the horizon, and if Epic is going to plant that flag — and they’re the ones really championing it — that could open the door for more, depending upon the region and regulation and whatnot.”
He said, “What we see as an exciting opportunity is that those stores are going to need measurement support. There needs to be these are new environments where consumers have optionality, and when that’s the case, there’ll be advertising and monetization options.”
Quinn said these platforms still need an independent, unbiased measurement company to exist.
“We get excited about the potential of not just two types of stores out there for mobile devices and more consumer choice,” Quinn said. “It seems like there should be more (third-party app stores) than there are.”
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