App Event Tracking: Tie Mobile App Activity to CTV Campaigns

Let’s say you’re running a CTV campaign for a personal finance app.

Your ads are reaching the right people — financially conscious viewers who’ve been comparing credit card offers while frequently streaming content on CNBC. Installs are up. Everything looks good on paper.

But the question still remains: Are those installs turning into engaged, paying users?

Are people just downloading the app… or are they linking their accounts, using the budgeting tools, and exploring investment opportunities?

That’s where App Event Tracking comes into play, an attribution tool for connecting CTV ad exposures to real in-app actions.

What Is App Event Tracking?

App Event Tracking allows advertisers to link their campaigns to user behavior within their mobile apps. For instance, a media buyer could use it to measure which CTV audience segments are driving the most high-value app activity — like account sign-ups or credit card applications — and then shift spend toward the best-performing targeting tactics. Likewise, an in-house marketer could use App Event Tracking to see how different creatives influence in-app actions to improve product messaging.

While digital advertising has long excelled at tracking online conversions, connecting the dots between a CTV ad impression and specific in-app actions hasn’t always been as clear. Many advertisers have instead relied on rough correlations to quantify impact within the app. 

Luckily, with App Event Tracking, marketers can attribute specific in-app events — such as downloads, purchases, or loyalty sign-ups — directly to the CTV ads that influenced these actions. 

Benefits of App Event Tracking

For any brand, understanding the full customer journey is crucial. Thus, for brands with mobile applications that drive significant business outcomes, understanding how marketing efforts influence actions within the mobile app is a must.

App Event Tracking does just that, which helps inform how marketers measure and optimize their CTV campaigns.

Complete Visibility Into the Mobile Customer Journey

Americans spend an average of 4 hours and 12 minutes daily on mobile devices, according to EMARKETER. That’s why connecting ad impressions to in-app activity isn't just nice to have. App Event Tracking provides real-time reporting to help measure which tactics are driving specific app-related outcomes during a campaign.

Everything from account creations and trial sign-ups to in-app purchases and subscription renewals can be measured. The result? A comprehensive understanding of how your CTV campaigns influence every stage of the mobile customer journey.

First-Party Audience Segmentation & Retargeting

With App Event Tracking, advertisers can build and retarget audiences based on specific in-app behaviors. For example, a meal delivery app might choose to offer people who are actively engaging and rating recipes highly with a discount for referring a friend. 

This capability transforms the mobile app from a simple conversion point to a powerful engine for audience development and remarketing. By creating segments based on actual user behavior, advertisers can improve the relevance and effectiveness of retargeting efforts.

Cross-Device Attribution and Optimization

Connecting upper-funnel tactics like connected TV (CTV) to lower-funnel outcomes on mobile devices isn’t always simple. App Event Tracking bridges this gap by linking impressions across the biggest screen in the house to conversions on the smallest screen in buyers’ pockets.

Even better? This makes it a snap to optimize campaigns toward specific app-event goals — whether that's initial downloads, engagement with key features, or in-app purchases. In this way, App Event Tracking paves the way for more effective budget allocation, ensuring every dollar drives measurable results.

How Does App Event Tracking Work?

At Strategus, we partner with several leading mobile measurement partners (MMPs) to make App Event Tracking possible. Our vendor-agnostic approach ensures flexibility, with these third-party providers serving as the crucial bridge between CTV advertising and mobile app activity.

Here's a simplified breakdown of the process:

• Ad Delivery: When a viewer sees your CTV ad, impression and click data is captured.
  
  
• Mobile Integration: If that same user later interacts with your app, their actions are recorded through your app's existing MMP integration.
  
  
• Data Connection: The MMP connects these app events back to the original ad exposures, creating a complete picture of the user journey.
  
  
• Actionable Reporting: All this information flows into comprehensive reports that show which campaign elements are driving specific in-app actions.

The beauty of this system is that it uses your existing MMP relationship and SDK implementations, making it a seamless addition to your marketing tech stack.

Ideal Use Cases for App Event Tracking

App Event Tracking isn’t for every campaign, but when it fits, it’s like Cindarella’s glass slipper. 

This capability is only useful for businesses that own a proprietary app that’s available on the Apple App Store or Google Play. And ever then, not all brands with apps require this level of insight. If an app is simply designed to provide customer support, then connecting the dots between CTV ads and in-app activity might not be needed.

To put simply: This tool really shines when mobile app activity directly ties to business objectives.

App-First Businesses

For businesses where the app is the primary revenue driver — like mobile games, financial services apps, or fitness platforms — understanding the complete funnel from ad view to in-app purchase is critical. App Event Tracking provides the visibility needed to optimize acquisition costs against lifetime value metrics.

Subscription-Based Models

Subscription businesses can track not just initial downloads but the full conversion path through free trials, premium upgrades, and renewal patterns. This insight helps refine messaging to target users most likely to become long-term subscribers.

Omnichannel Retailers

Retailers with mobile shopping apps can connect the dots between awareness-focused CTV campaigns and specific shopping behaviors like cart additions, wishlist saves, and completed purchases. This creates a more complete picture of the shopper journey across devices.

User Engagement Campaigns

For established apps looking to increase feature adoption or engagement, App Event Tracking can measure how effectively CTV campaigns drive specific in-app actions beyond just opens, like feature exploration, content consumption, or social sharing.

Get Started With Strategus

Correlating customer touchpoints isn’t easy in our fragmented digital world. But at Strategus, we continue to evolve our attribution suite to offer the most robust CTV measurement around.

If your brand (or client) is looking to correlate CTV ad impressions to specific user behaviors within their app, then this is the solution you need. 

Contact us today to learn more →