Tagged: scales and modes

November 11, 2016

How to track Conversions for iOS App Sales

For the last version of Tessitura Pro 1.9.5, I created a short promo video and started a in-stream video campaign in adwords.

The most important aspect of a campaign is to be able to track conversions (how many views of the video turn into actual installations of the app)

Here are the steps I followed to make this happen.

Create and Upload the video to YouTube
Create a new Video campaign in google adwords

Make sure you choose Mobile app installs and find your app using the search in the Your mobile app drop down search boxOnce you’ve selected your app, new options will appear.

Choose the Bidding, etc…
I chose a specific Advanced mobile and tablet options since I want the potential viewers of my promo video to buy the app directly from within the video (actually it will take them to the App Store but on the same device they are viewing the video)

Then name your Ad group name for the campaign (you could have many different promo videos or different setting for the same video in your campaign, each of those would be an Ad group which is linked to one video).

And search for your video on YouTube.

Once you’ve selected your video you will have more options to choose from.
I am using an In-stream ad which will appear at the beginning of some other video, but you may choose a Video discovery ad type that will appear as a recommended video on some part of the screen depending on the device.

You will also need to name this specific ad in the Ad name box (since you might want to have the same video showing as a different kind of ad for example)

Then you will be shown the following page:
Click on the Conversions tool link
Find and click on the name of the conversion you’ve just created (in my case is Tessitura Installation, you may rename it as well)
On the next page choose how you will setup up conversion tracking.
I chose Put tacking code into the app
Download the Google Conversion Tracking SDK
Open your project in XCode, unzip the downloaded file and drag the entire folder into your project. Make sure you have the Add to target selected
The SDK library references the iOS AdSupport development framework which may not already be part of your project. To add this framework, open the Link Binary With Libraries dropdown under the Build Phases tab. Add the framework from the iOS SDK using the + button.
Also, you need to add -ObjC to the Other Linker Flags of your application target’s build setting:
1. In Xcode’s project navigator, press the blue top-level project icon.
2. Click on your target, then the Build Settings tab.
3. Under Linking > Other Linker Flags, add -ObjC to both Debug and Release.
Finally you need to add the [ACTConversionReporter…] code snippet to your AppDelegate.m in the didFinishLaunchingWithOptions
Now when you run your project you should get a successful ping to Google in your projects console’s window
If you go back to the conversions pages in Google Adwords you will eventually see a change in the Tracking Status column saying Recording Conversions (google says it take a couple of days, it work sooner for me)
It is important that you add a Call-to-action overlay on your promo video.

So go to your video edit page on your YouTube account and choose the Call-to-action overlay tab. Add a headline, a display URL (I used my website mDecks.com), a destination URL (use the complete iTunes Store url for your app without the https:// itunes.apple.com/us/app/tessitura-pro/id1144493337?ls=1&mt=8 ) and your app’s icon as a 74×74 image