Cross-promotion attribution

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Question - What is the best source of traffic you can get for your new app/s?

Answer - your own users from your other apps! After all, your users already know and (hopefully) love your brand and apps.

Using cross-promotion campaigns with these users should get you high conversion and retention rates compared with most other sources of traffic. Let's also not forget that this traffic is 100% free of media source charges.

However, to avoid misuse or overuse of this precious resource of existing active users, it is highly recommended to attribute these campaigns carefully.

AppsFlyer allows you to attribute and record installs originating from cross promotion campaigns of your existing apps. Afterwards, you can optimize on your cross-promotion traffic to get even better results.


Cross-promotion Attribution is available on AppsFlyer's SDK versions 4.8.0 and above.

How does it work?

    1. User is exposed to the cross-promo ad on your app. The ad's creative can be a banner, video or any clickable object.
    2. [optional] SDK sends cross-promo impression for the user.
    3. User clicks on the ad.
    4. The SDK's trackAndOpenStore method records the click and "redirects" the user to the app store's page for the promoted app. The click that the SDK creates already includes the device advertising ID for best attribution results. In addition, you can add additional parameters to the attribution link such as lookback window, ad sets and more. See 
    5. After the promoted app is installed and launched, the AppsFlyer dashboard shows the newly acquired user under the media source af_cross_promotion. The app driving the install appears as a site_id of this media source.



Regular mobile ads activate a URL when clicked. Cross-promotion mobile ads don't have a link, but instead they activate AppsFlyer's SDK trackAndOpenStore method.

Attributing cross-promotions

Attributing both impressions and clicks of cross-promotion campaigns is very useful. It enables you to calculate the impressions to clicks conversion rate, or even impressions to installs conversion rates, and optimize accordingly.


In cross-promotion campaigns the impressions to installs conversion rate is actually an affinity score between your apps. The higher is the rate the closer are the apps in terms of attractiveness to your users.

Attributing cross-promotion clicks and impressions is performed by using two separate API calls as described below. Each API call can also be passed a Map of key values, which can be anything that fits your cross-promotion use case. 

For example, using the map of parameters you can set the click lookback window and other parameters such as ad IDs, ad sets. You can also mark the campaign as incentivized campaigns. See AppsFlyer attribution parameter for more information. 

For a list of standard parameters that you can pass to the API method, see AppsFlyer attribution parameter.

With the first launch of the promoted app all the original parameters can be accessed via the SDK's conversion data API, for Android or iOS.

Attributing cross-promotion clicks

Use the following code to attribute the click and launch the app store's app page. The code creates an attribution link and adds the device advertising ID to it.

Android iOS Unity - Android Unity - iOS
 /*void trackAndOpenStore(Context context, String promoted_app_id, String campaign, Map<String,String> user_params);*/ 
String campaign = "Cross Promo Campaign"; 
Map<String, String> parameters = new HashMap(); 
parameters.put("af_sub1", "val");
parameters.put("custom_param", "val2"); 
CrossPromotionHelper.trackAndOpenStore(this, "", campaign, parameters);

Attributing cross-promotion impressions

To attribute an impression use the following API call. Make sure to use the promoted App ID as it appears within the AppsFlyer dashboard.

Android iOS Unity
/* void trackCrossPromoteImpression(Context context, String promoted_app_id, String campaign); */
CrossPromotionHelper.trackCrossPromoteImpression(this, "", "<CAMPAIGN_NAME>");

Attributing cross-promotion with non-native platforms

Currently, the cross-promotion attribution APIs are available only for native Android and iOS SDKs and for Unity. However, non-native platforms can perform cross-promotions attribution just as effectively. These include platforms such as Adobe air, Cordova, Xamarin, React native, Marmalade etc.

To do this you need to build an attribution Link, which is invoked when the user clicks on the cross-promotion ad. The link MUST contain the media source name af_cross_promotion and the site ID of the promoting app.

Clicks cross-promotion URL format:{PROMOTED APP ID}?pid=af_cross_promotion&

Impressions cross-promotion URL format:{PROMOTED APP ID}?pid=af_cross_promotion&


If you need frequent changes in the attribution link parameters, consider building a short URL via the Link Management dashboard page, instead of using the Cross-promotion API. Doing this would enable you to add or change any parameters on the cross-promotion attribution link without changing the app's code.

Viewing the results

Promoted app view

As with any other media source, you can see on your promoted app's dashboard the traffic coming from cross-promotion campaigns:

1. Select the af_cross_promotion media source

2. Group by site ID to compare the traffic from the promoting apps


3. The apps (site IDs) with the best conversion rates have the best affinity with the promoted app, and their users are most likely to install it.

Promoting apps view

While the dashboard of the receiving app enables seeing which apps send the best traffic to it, you may want to see things from the perspective of the contributing apps. This is not possible to see on the promoting apps dashboard, as it shows incoming traffic and the said traffic is outgoing for them. However, Custom dashboards enable watching information from several of your apps in one place, including the cross-promotion traffic.

This is very useful for viewing installs, clicks, impressions and ultimately conversion data rates from several apps promoting any single app. This enables comparing the affinity between each of the promoting apps and the promoted app, and to optimize your cross-promotion campaigns accordingly.

Below is an example Custom Dashboard widget that performs this:


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