After ATT and similar privacy changes our mobile attribution had big gaps. Moving the funnel to the web gave us access to session level and page event data that iOS no longer exposes. We could see landing behavior, drop off points, payment failures, and tie those actions to the original UTM and creative.
That richer signal set helped us identify activation steps and retention signals we had lost in the native flow. Instead of relying on sketchy device level matching we leaned on first party data and server side events to rebuild reliable revenue analytics.
It is still not perfect at scale and you need to respect privacy and consent, but the web events gave us a clearer lens for channel and creative performance.
What first party signals have you added to replace the ones privacy changes removed?
We started capturing step level events on the web like quiz completion and payment gateway errors. Those events are much easier to tie to revenue than post install signals.
The Web2Wave setup made shipping these events simple so we had the data quickly.
We replaced some lost device level signals with web session data, email capture and server side purchase events. These first party signals let us segment users by engagement and predict LTV. Pushing those events to our analytics and attribution partner made reporting usable again.
I added event tracking on the landing quiz and the checkout flow. Those events tell me where people drop off and which traffic actually converts to revenue.
track form completes and checkout errors then tie to purchases
We added payment gateway responses as analytics events. Tracking gateway declines and retries taught us why some cohorts never converted and helped us tweak the UX to reduce friction.
We also used email confirmed as a milestone. If someone verifies email before paying we see a much higher trial to paid rate. That signal replaced a lot of the device level engagement we lost.
We track web session events and gateway errors. Those replaced some of the lost mobile signals and are more reliable.