Revenue attribution overview

At a glance: Revenue is a significant metric that AppsFlyer collects. Revenue is used to calculate KPIs like ROI and ARPU. Use revenue as a parameter in defining audiences for retargeting and lookalike based campaigns.

Attributing revenue

This article discusses revenue at a high-level:

• discuss revenue sources
• how revenue analysis can boost marketing efforts
• technical aspects of revenue attribution.

Revenue streams

There are three main sources for generating revenue.

Revenue attribution

Revenue attribution establishes the connection between revenue and other factors in your marketing operation. Such factors can be:

• The ad networks through which you run campaigns
• The campaigns that you run
• Ad sets in campaigns
• User attributes such as GEO location and type of device
• Retargeting campaigns

Let's look at some examples.

Visualizing revenue data

There are several pages in the dashboard that offer revenue data visualization.

Overview

The overview page shows the following:

Total revenue for organic and non-organic in-app events

Lifetime revenue per media source

Aggregated performance report

Revenue Per Event

ARPU - Average Revenue Per User

Cost - ROI

For more information, see our guide on the Dashboard Overview Page

Activity page

The activity page contains an Activity Summary table where you can see Activity Revenue and ARPDAU (active revenue per daily active user) per media source.

For more information, see our guide on the Activity Report Page

Events page

The events page shows the Events Drill Down table. You can see the accumulated revenue for each event per media source. You can also group by Event.

For more information, see our guide on the Events Report Page

Monetizing parameters

af_revenue is the only parameter that accumulates your users' revenue. Always use it with in-app events that represent actual revenue generation in your business logic.

The range of this value should be $-10,000 to $+10,000 or the equivalent original currency amount. Values outside of this range are included in raw data reports but not aggregate reports. 

af_revenue can also bear negative revenue values if you need to record events such as canceled transactions or refunds.

af_currency represents the currency that is stated in af_revenue (or af_price). If af_currency is missing from the event's parameters AppsFlyer sends it with the default value "USD".

You can use af_price as a monetary parameter that is not counted as revenue (such as in an “Add to Cart” event). This parameter refers to the individual item price. The total amount of all purchases appears under the af_revenue parameter.

Technical aspects

Revenue recording and attribution in AppsFlyer bears some technical aspects.

Recording revenue data with AppsFlyer

Whenever you send an in-app events such as purchase or flight booking, you send it with its associated revenue. The sole parameter that carries revenue in in-app events is af_revenue

• Recording Revenue in Android
• Recording Revenue in iOS
• Recording Revenue in Unity

Recording negative revenue

You can also record negative revenue in case a user cancels a purchase or if you issue a refund. To record negative revenue, all you have to do is append the minus sign (-) to the revenue value that you pass to af_revenue

Sharing revenue data with ad networks

You can share revenue data with Ad networks. To do so, you need to share revenue from in-app events with the ad network. You can also grant the ad network permission to configure revenue sharing by themselves.

To enable revenue sharing:

1. Choose the Integrated Partner
2. In the Integration tab, scroll to In-App Events Postback
   
   

   

3. After you map the in-app event, choose one of the options in the Send Revenue drop-down:
   • No values and no revenue
   • Values and no revenue
   • Values and revenue

It is recommended to share revenue if you want ad networks to optimize your campaigns and improve campaign results. However, sharing revenue is not mandatory.

Revenue currency

It's important to understand how AppsFlyer handles currency settings and currency conversion.

AppsFlyer handles the difference between app settings currency and in-app events currency using currency conversion.

The diagram above demonstrates the following process:

1. In-app events are sent - different currency for each event
2. AppsFlyer normalizes all currencies to USD
3. AppsFlyer processes revenue data
4. Revenue data in the dashboard is displayed in app settings currency
5. AppsFlyer populates revenue data in raw data reports in both event and app settings currency

AppsFlyer uses Open Exchange Rates for currency conversion. The exchange rate is updated on an hourly basis. Whenever AppsFlyer performs currency conversion, it uses the exchange rate of the last hourly update.

Currency conversion

Map<String, Object> eventValue = new HashMap<String, Object>();
eventValue.put(AFInAppEventParameterName.REVENUE,200);
eventValue.put(AFInAppEventParameterName.CONTENT_TYPE,"category_a");
eventValue.put(AFInAppEventParameterName.CONTENT_ID,"1234567");
eventValue.put(AFInAppEventParameterName.CURRENCY,"EUR");
AppsFlyerLib.getInstance().trackEvent(getApplicationContext() , AFInAppEventType.PURCHASE , eventValue);

Currency display

Currency is set in the app settings. The currency that you set in app settings, is the currency that appears in the dashboard. No matter what currency you send in in-app events, the revenue in the dashboard always appears in the currency that you set in app settings.