Evolving our mobile measurement framework for app advertisers

The mobile advertising landscape has evolved. Today's users encounter a wide variety of ad types across multiple different platforms, each with its own format, flow and level of interactivity. Understanding the impact that different touchpoints and marketing channels have on driving user actions, such as app installs or purchases, remains a constant challenge for app advertisers.

The need for a new measurement framework

Historically, app marketers have relied on click-based—specifically last-click—attribution methods to make sense of this complex user behavior. But this attribution model fails to capture the full contribution of platforms like TikTok, where ad views often serve as a starting point for further exploration on other channels.

In fact, traditional attribution models have been shown to undervalue TikTok conversions by 73%.¹ To help address this challenge, we are evolving our measurement suite for app campaigns to provide advertisers with a more holistic view of the impact that TikTok ads have on their business.

How SAN integration powers performance insights

App advertisers work with mobile measurement partners (MMPs) to understand the actions that users take after an ad is clicked or viewed over a certain period of time. But, generally speaking, MMPs attribute conversions only to the last-touched ad across marketing channels. To measure various touchpoints that assisted a conversion during a multi-touch journey, advertisers can't rely on MMP data alone. That's where SAN comes in.

TikTok's recently launched Self-Attributing Network (SAN) is a new MMP network integration that provides advertisers with a comprehensive view of all conversions driven by their TikTok ads beyond MMP's last-touch attribution. This integration, which does not impact your existing MMP attribution analysis, offers the following key benefits:

1. More campaign performance insights - Gain better visibility into the impact of your TikTok ads by understanding which clicks and video views led to conversions within your attribution window.

2. Customized attribution window on TikTok Ads Manager - Customize your attribution window for different engagement types (Views, Clicks, Engaged Views, etc.) directly on TikTok Ads Manager.

3. Access to advanced attribution metrics - SAN integration unlocks Engaged View-Through Attribution (EVTA), a new attribution touch-point in TikTok Ads Manager based on six-second video views.

Introducing Engaged View-Through Attribution

TikTok allows users to easily swipe up to skip videos, including ads, so when someone watches a video ad for more than six seconds, we consider this an engaged view. To help advertisers measure the conversions driven by these views, we've introduced a new attribution method called Engaged View-through Attribution (EVTA).

EVTA measures the conversions that take place after a user views an ad for six seconds or more but doesn't click, then goes on to convert within the attribution window (maximum seven days). Additional benefits include:

1. A better understanding of ad impact beyond clicks - It's not always a simple click-and-convert scenario when a user views an ad on TikTok. By allowing you to measure conversions influenced by views of six seconds or more, you'll gain a more holistic understanding of TikTok's impact on your business.

2. Fueling your campaign performance with more signals - TikTok Ads Manager will receive more high-quality signals to optimize and enhance the performance of your campaigns over time by showing your ads to users who are more likely to take action.

3. Balanced measurement across different channels - Other platforms have already introduced engaged view conversions for video campaigns. Bringing our attribution methods to parity with other platforms provides you with a clearer comparison of performance across different platforms, ensuring fairer result measurement.

Implementing a combined measurement approach

Together, SAN integration and EVTA provide you with a more complete picture of how users are converting on TikTok. And unlike the industry-standard SAN integration, which largely ignores MMP's attribution, our approach includes MMP-validated conversions and enhances that foundation with additional conversions observed from the SAN integration.With this enhanced attribution methodology in place, the total conversions reported on TikTok Ads Manager include the following:

• Click-through (CTA) and view-through (VTA) conversions driven by last click and view that are currently validated and reported by MMPs.

• Engaged view conversions as measured by our new EVTA touch-point. These conversions are currently reported as Click-through (CTA) conversions on MMP reporting.

• Additional click-through (CTA) conversions driven by clicks on TikTok ads that are not currently reported in MMP's last-click attribution model.

We have also expanded our "Clicks (All)" metric to capture how interactions on TikTok video ads contribute to conversions even when users don't directly navigate to an advertiser's specified destination (like a website or app). In addition to clicks, the metric now covers likes, shares, comments, follows, exploring related hashtags, and checking the music accompanying TikTok videos. Conversions driven by these engagements fall under Click-through Attribution (CTA). Advertisers can distinguish these engagements from the clicks directed toward their specified destination by referring to the "Clicks (Destination)" metric.

To see the true impact of your TikTok ads, we recommend you turn on VTA, EVTA and CTA with the maximum attribution window and ensure that the attribution windows on TikTok Ads Manager are the same as your MMP setting. Advertisers can customize CTA (1-day or 7-day), VTA (off or 1-day), EVTA (1-day or 7-day) directly on TikTok Ads Manager.

TikTok's commitment to innovation

As the mobile advertising experience continues to evolve, conversion attribution and measurement needs to evolve along with it. TikTok is committed to continuously innovating our measurement solutions to give advertisers an objective and transparent view into their advertising investments. We will continue to innovate our measurement tools and attribution methodology to provide advertisers with a more transparent and holistic view of their ad impact.

1. Source: TikTok Marketing Science Post-Purchase Analysis conducted by KnoCommerce, 2022