The Total Economic Impact™ Of AppsFlyer
Cost Savings And Business Benefits Enabled By AppsFlyer
A Forrester Total Economic Impact™ Study Commissioned By AppsFlyer, October 2024
Privacy is becoming an integral part of what users expect from their online experiences. Data deprecation leads to signal loss by limiting the amount and quality of customer data available for marketers to use in their targeting and measurement efforts, hence weakening levers that mobile marketers once relied on to lift brands and performance.1 It diminishes marketers’ visibility across buyers’ nonlinear journeys and makes it increasingly difficult to extract actionable insights from mobile marketing ecosystems. Forrester recommends that organizations lean on a mobile measurement and analytics partner to solve for data deprecation and signal loss.2
AppsFlyer is a global leader in cross-device marketing measurement, analytics, and engagement. By partnering with AppsFlyer, organizations can gain valuable insights into their marketing strategies, allowing for more precise allocation of advertising spend to maximize return on ad spend (ROAS). AppsFlyer has advanced fraud protection that can safeguard advertising budgets from ad fraud and lead to substantial cost savings. Ultimately, AppsFlyer can empower organizations to optimize their marketing operations and reduce costs, time, and effort while driving greater efficiency and effectiveness.
AppsFlyer is a leading enterprise data analytics provider that specializes in mobile marketing analytics and attribution. Through its unified platform, AppsFlyer empowers brands to accurately attribute, analyze, and engage users by delivering trusted, actionable insights. With a comprehensive suite of services including deep-linking, fraud prevention, and privacy-compliant technologies, AppsFlyer enables businesses to drive data-informed strategies, optimize marketing investments, and elevate customer experiences while preserving end-user privacy.
AppsFlyer commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct a Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study and examine the potential return on investment (ROI) enterprises may realize by deploying AppsFlyer.3 The purpose of this study is to provide readers with a framework to evaluate the potential financial impact of AppsFlyer on their organizations.
Return on investment (ROI)
207%
Net present value (NPV)
$4.98M
To better understand the benefits, costs, and risks associated with this investment, Forrester interviewed four representatives with experience using AppsFlyer. For the purposes of this study, Forrester aggregated the interviewees’ experiences and combined the results into a single composite organization that is an enterprise company with global operations and $400 million yearly revenue.
Interviewees shared that before partnering with AppsFlyer, their organizations relied solely on data provided by the ad platforms themselves, which lacked an unbiased and accurate view of where their advertising spend was most effective. This dependence on platform-reported analytics made it difficult for organizations advertising across multiple platforms to gain clear insights into performance, resulting in challenges with properly attributing mobile ads and optimizing their marketing efforts. Additionally, managing multiple platforms and data sources consumed significant internal resources, resulting in a loss of operational efficiency.
After the investment in AppsFlyer, interviewees’ organizations gained a unified single source of truth on their advertising spends that seamlessly integrates with a wide array of ad platforms. This enabled more effective customer engagement within their mobile apps, resulting in more personalized experiences across apps and websites. Key results from the investment included increased profitability driven by improved ROAS, mitigation of costs associated with fraudulent impressions, operational efficiency gains in user acquisition and ad tech management, and more strategic allocation of advertising budgets.
Key Findings
Quantified benefits. Three-year, risk-adjusted present value (PV) quantified benefits for the composite organization include:
- Profit increase of $536,000 from ROAS improvement. By using AppsFlyer as a single source of truth for mobile measurement, the composite significantly improves its ROAS and increases profit. The organization immediately realizes this benefit by optimizing mobile ad spend across platforms to capture a higher ROAS than it could without AppsFlyer.
- Ad fraud cost mitigation of $1.8 million. Before using AppsFlyer, the composite suffered significant losses from fraudulent impressions. With AppsFlyer’s fraud prevention capabilities, the organization recovers part of these losses.
- Efficiency savings of $802,000 across the user acquisition and advertising technology team. The composite’s user acquisition and advertising technology team benefits from significant efficiencies by working with AppsFlyer. These savings span various activities, including the time needed to set up and manage integrations with ad platforms, to measure ad activities related to the most privacy-centric interfaces (e.g., SKAdNetwork) and to create campaigns.
- Mitigation of $4.3 million in wasted ad spend budget. AppsFlyer’s biggest impact on the composite organization is on its media buying efficiency. Before working with AppsFlyer, the composite needed to analyze mobile measurement data through the views of different ad platforms. This resulted in a significant portion of mobile search ad spend being inefficiently allocated and wasted. AppsFlyer enables the composite to effectively allocate all its mobile search ad spend, resulting in considerable budget mitigation.
Unquantified benefits. Benefits that provide value for the composite organization but are not quantified for this study include:
- Increased average revenue per paying user (ARPPU). AppsFlyer helps organizations improve ARPPU by revealing which ad platforms, campaigns, channels, and creatives deliver high ARPPU users. This reduces churn, enables gamification, and creates cross-sell and upsell opportunities.
- Increased ability to scale. Organizations can scale with AppsFlyer by leveraging it across various teams and business units. Additionally, it allows them to scale by enabling them to integrate with ad platforms in a few clicks and by unifying all measurement reporting into one single dashboard. Analytics teams also benefit from having more actionable and easy-to-understand data.
- Good user experience. Interviewees said they consider AppsFlyer’s user experience and user interface to be excellent.
- Improved ability to innovate. Interviewees said they regard AppsFlyer as a highly innovative leader in mobile measurement. They highlighted how AppsFlyer consistently develops cutting-edge solutions and keeps brands informed about and prepared for evolving industry trends. Interviewees explained that this proactive approach enables their organizations to stay ahead of change and continue driving business impact with confidence.
- Great user support. Interviewees emphasized that they trust AppsFlyer as a true partner by their side. They mentioned that customer support and account management teams are deeply involved and always available to support their organizations with any request.
Costs. Three-year, risk-adjusted PV costs for the composite organization include:
- Subscription costs and implementation effort costs of $1.7 million. AppsFlyer charges customers an annual subscription, and software engineers need to dedicate some time to initial implementation. For the composite organization, these costs total $1.7 million.
- Ongoing management costs of $732,000. The composite organization’s ongoing management of the AppsFlyer solution involves marketing activities, tech integrations, and updates, as well as performing data analytics activities on a regular basis to ensure the solution is running as effectively as possible.
The representative interviews and financial analysis found that a composite organization experiences benefits of $7.39 million over three years versus costs of $2.41 million, adding up to a net present value (NPV) of $4.98 million and an ROI of 207%.
Key Statistics
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Return on investment (ROI)
207%
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Benefits PV
$7.39M
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Net present value (NPV)
$4.98M
-
Payback
<6 months
Benefits (Three-Year)
Profit increase from return on ad spend improvement Ad fraud cost mitigation Efficiency savings across the user acqusition and advertising technology team Wasted ad-spend budget mitigation
TEI Framework And Methodology
From the information provided in the interviews, Forrester constructed a Total Economic Impact™ framework for those organizations considering an investment in AppsFlyer.
The objective of the framework is to identify the cost, benefit, flexibility, and risk factors that affect the investment decision. Forrester took a multistep approach to evaluate the impact that AppsFlyer can have on an organization.
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Due Diligence
Interviewed AppsFlyer stakeholders and Forrester analysts to gather data relative to AppsFlyer.
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Interviews
Interviewed four representatives at organizations using AppsFlyer to obtain data about costs, benefits, and risks.
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Composite Organization
Designed a composite organization based on characteristics of the interviewees’ organizations.
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Financial Model Framework
Constructed a financial model representative of the interviews using the TEI methodology and risk-adjusted the financial model based on issues and concerns of the interviewees.
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Case Study
Employed four fundamental elements of TEI in modeling the investment impact: benefits, costs, flexibility, and risks. Given the increasing sophistication of ROI analyses related to IT investments, Forrester’s TEI methodology provides a complete picture of the total economic impact of purchase decisions. Please see Appendix A for additional information on the TEI methodology.
Disclosures
Readers should be aware of the following:
This study is commissioned by AppsFlyer and delivered by Forrester Consulting. It is not meant to be used as a competitive analysis.
Forrester makes no assumptions as to the potential ROI that other organizations will receive. Forrester strongly advises that readers use their own estimates within the framework provided in the study to determine the appropriateness of an investment in AppsFlyer.
AppsFlyer reviewed and provided feedback to Forrester, but Forrester maintains editorial control over the study and its findings and does not accept changes to the study that contradict Forrester’s findings or obscure the meaning of the study.
AppsFlyer provided the customer names for the interviews but did not participate in the interviews.
Consulting Team:
Elia Gollini
Elina Bauwens
Drivers leading to the AppsFlyer investment
Interviews
| Role | Industry | Revenue | Number of employees |
|---|---|---|---|
| Senior director of marketing | Media and entertainment | $8 billion | 18,000 |
| User acquisition lead | Travel | $700 million | 1,200 |
| Senior marketing technology manager | Fintech | $250 million | 300 |
| Vice president of growth | Gaming | Approximately $30 million | Approximately 250-500 |
Key Challenges
Interviewees said that before working with AppsFlyer, their organizations did not leverage measurement partners and relied on the analytics and data insights provided by ad platforms. It was difficult and time-consuming to bring all the data together and understand which campaigns drove the best engagement and had the most downstream results on revenue to effectively improve ROAS.
The interviewees noted how their organizations struggled with common challenges, including:
- Buying journeys that transcended touchpoints and channels. Interviewees said that because buyers do not have linear journeys, it was difficult for their organizations to properly attribute mobile marketing without AppsFlyer. Instead, the organizations relied on the reporting and data of ad platforms, which tends to be self-attributing. Interviewees expressed a desire to increase the usage of their organizations’ mobile app to drive user engagement and loyalty, which in turn boosts monetization. This was hindered by the lack of accurate attribution, making it challenging to understand user behavior and optimize advertising efforts effectively.
- Difficulties in integrating with several ad platforms. Interviewees noted that before working with AppsFlyer, their organizations struggled to set up and manage integrations with various ad platforms. This challenge not only consumed significant time and money, but it also led to inconsistencies in data reporting and analysis. This further complicated mobile measurement.
- Lacking expertise in marketing technology. Interviewees mentioned their organizations lacked expertise in marketing technologies before working with AppsFlyer. This skills gap led to measurement issues and other inefficiencies within their organizations.
- Catering to both technical users and marketing users. Interviewees said it was difficult for their organizations to find a mobile attribution partner that could be leveraged by both highly technical users and marketers with less technical expertise.
Solution Requirements/Investment Objectives
The interviewees’ organizations searched for a solution that:
- Is at the forefront of innovation in the mobile measurement and attribution space.
- Integrates with a variety of ad platforms at the click of a button.
- Provides a single source of truth across various ad platforms.
- Helps maximize ROAS.
- Has a simple and elegant user interface (UI) and intuitive user experience (UX).
- Provides a comprehensive deep-linking solution.
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Offers global support to enable teams around the
world.
Composite Organization
Based on the interviews, Forrester constructed a TEI framework, a composite company, and an ROI analysis that illustrates the areas financially affected. The composite organization is representative of the four interviewees, and it is used to present the aggregate financial analysis in the next section. The composite organization has the following characteristics:
Description of composite. The composite organization is an enterprise company that operates globally and generates $400 million in yearly revenue. The composite has more than 600 employees and an annual advertising budget of $50 million. Before working with AppsFlyer, the composite was not working with another mobile measurement partner or mobile attribution partner.
Deployment characteristics. The composite organization begins using the AppsFlyer solution and gradually integrates with more ad platforms throughout the years. It integrates with four ad platforms through AppsFlyer in Year 1, six ad platforms in Year 2, and 10 ad platforms in Year 3. The composite uses AppsFlyer’s measurement suite, which includes the fraud prevention solution Protect360, attribution, and the SKAdNetwork/SSOT solution. On top of the measurement suite, the composite also uses OneLink (AppsFlyer’s deep-linking solution) as well as ROI360 (a suite of reporting tools that improves ad revenue accuracy), in-app purchases, and subscription revenue accuracy.
Quantified benefit data as applied to the composite
Total Benefits
| Ref. | Benefit | Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 | Total | Present Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Atr | Profit increase from return on ad spend improvement | $96,000 | $216,000 | $360,000 | $672,000 | $536,258 |
| Btr | Ad fraud cost mitigation | $720,000 | $720,000 | $720,000 | $2,160,000 | $1,790,533 |
| Ctr | Efficiency savings across the user acquisition and advertising technology team | $245,582 | $309,218 | $429,958 | $984,758 | $801,842 |
| Dtr | Wasted ad-spend budget mitigation | $1,020,000 | $1,721,250 | $2,550,000 | $5,291,250 | $4,265,646 |
| Total benefits (risk-adjusted) | $2,081,582 | $2,966,468 | $4,059,958 | $9,108,008 | $7,394,279 | |
Profit Increase From Return On Ad Spend Improvement
Evidence and data. Interviewees highlighted that AppsFlyer has had a substantial impact on their organizations’ profits because it lifts ROAS. They mentioned that AppsFlyer allows their organizations to deeply analyze advertising campaigns and make savvy adjustments to maximize ROAS based on its insights. They also said AppsFlyer served as a magnifying lens for mobile advertising efforts and that each of the three AppsFlyer products contributed to improving ROAS in the following ways:
- The interviewees said attribution in the measurement suite allows their organizations to understand which ad platform to prioritize and where to focus mobile advertising efforts. They explained that by identifying the most effective platforms, their businesses can allocate their budgets more efficiently and achieve better results.
- They said ROI measurement provides a unified view of campaign cost and attributed revenue and that this can improve ad revenue accuracy, in-app purchases, and subscription revenue accuracy. They also shared that it enhances the accuracy of revenue-to-net calculations for in-app purchases and subscriptions, which can provide a clearer picture of financial performance.
- Interviewees said AppsFlyer’s deep-linking and deferred deep-linking technology enables deep linking and that it can be used in various situations to direct consumers to mobile apps or a specific area within an app. They noted that it’s especially helpful for out-of-home advertising by ensuring seamless user experiences and higher conversion rates.
Interviewees also said the following:
- The vice president of growth at the gaming company mentioned: “AppsFlyer provides us the insights to do better user acquisition. It tells us why users dropped, and which ad platforms provide us the best user in terms of retention and payer conversion rate. We can then bring this insight to our product team and influence our growth strategy on where and through which channel we should acquire more users.”
- The user acquisition lead at the travel company said: “The main metric we use to measure AppsFlyer’s impact would definitely be ROAS. Without AppsFlyer, you’re spending the same amount on mobile advertising, but you’re not making as much money because you’re not actually spending it where you’re getting net new dollars.”
- The senior marketing technology manager at the fintech company highlighted that the ARPPU in their organization’s app has increased by 100% with AppsFlyer. They said AppsFlyer improves ARPPU by revealing which ad platforms, channels, creatives, and campaigns deliver high ARPPU users and that it highlights why users churn. This enables gamification to lift engagement and facilitates cross-selling and upselling by encouraging users to upgrade for added benefits.
Modeling and assumptions. Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:
- The composite’s mobile search budget is 24% of the total $50 million advertising budget.
- In years 2 and 3, the composite’s mobile search ad spend increases to 27% and 30% of the total advertising budget respectively. The organization aims to transition its website users to mobile users and increase the percentage of advertising budget dedicated to mobile efforts.
- The composite has a 10% operating profit margin.
Risks. This benefit may vary for organizations based on:
- The percentage of advertising budget dedicated to mobile search ad spend.
- The extent to which the organization increases its focus on mobile ads and is actively looking to increase the number of users in its mobile app.
- The organization’s operating profit margin.
Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 20%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $536,000.
Profit Increase From Return On Ad Spend Improvement
| Ref. | Metric | Source | Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A1 | Mobile search ad spend | Composite | $12,000,000 | $13,500,000 | $15,000,000 |
| A2 | ROAS before AppsFlyer | Interviews | 1.5x | 1.5x | 1.5x |
| A3 | ROAS with AppsFlyer | Interviews | 1.6x | 1.7x | 1.8x |
| A4 | Net ROAS improvement attributable to AppsFlyer | A3-A2 | 10% | 20% | 30% |
| A5 | Operating profit margin | TEI Standard | 10% | 10% | 10% |
| At | Profit increase from return on ad spend improvement | A1*A4*A5 | $120,000 | $270,000 | $450,000 |
| Risk adjustment | ↓20% | ||||
| Atr | Profit increase from return on ad spend improvement (risk-adjusted) | $96,000 | $216,000 | $360,000 | |
| Three-year total: $672,000 | Three-year present value: $536,258 | ||||
Ad Fraud Cost Mitigation
Evidence and data. Interviewees said their organizations also benefited from the fraud prevention solution Protect360. They explained that with AppsFlyer, their organizations can identify fraudulent clicks that occur in their mobile apps and that after identifying these fraudulent clicks, they have to follow up with the ad platform from which the fraud originated to get reimbursed.
- The senior marketing technology manager at the fintech organization said: “In our industry, we have a lot of fraud issues. We had around $800,000 yearly in fraudulent clicks, and AppsFlyer has enabled us [to spot] them.”
- The senior director of marketing at the media and entertainment company said: “We are able to pull information from the AppsFlyer dashboard and go directly to the specific ad platform, show them the ad fraud, and ask them to credit us back.”
- The vice president of growth at the gaming company said, “Our traffic becomes cleaner by using [Protect360] for a long time.”
Modeling and assumptions. Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:
- AppsFlyer identifies the fraud for the composite, then the organization follows up with the ad platform to recover the money.
- AppsFlyer is attributed with identifying and recovering 80% of the total value of the fraudulent impressions.
- The composite is attributed with identifying and recovering the remaining 20% of the value.
Risks. This benefit may vary for organizations based on:
- The total amount of fraudulent impressions the organization receives
- The effort invested by the organization to recover the fraudulent impressions’ money through the ad platforms.
Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 10%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $1.8 million.
Ad Fraud Cost Mitigation
| Ref. | Metric | Source | Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| B1 | The value of fraudulent impressions identified with AppsFlyer | Interviews | $1,000,000 | $1,000,000 | $1,000,000 |
| B2 | Attribution to AppsFlyer | Assumption | 80% | 80% | 80% |
| Bt | Ad fraud cost mitigation | B1*B2 | $800,000 | $800,000 | $800,000 |
| Risk adjustment | ↓10% | ||||
| Btr | Ad fraud cost mitigation (risk-adjusted) | $720,000 | $720,000 | $720,000 | |
| Three-year total: $2,160,000 | Three-year present value: $1,790,533 | ||||
Efficiency Savings Across The User Acquisition And Advertising Technology Team
Evidence and data. Interviewees said AppsFlyer acts as a unifying, single source of truth for their organizations. Interviewees highlighted that working with AppsFlyer resulted in significant time savings across various activities. They said their organizations now dedicate less time to building and maintaining integrations with ad platforms because AppsFlyer does that for them. They also said AppsFlyer’s SKAdNetwork solution saves time in all activities related to iOS attribution (which the organizations previously did manually) and that there are also significant time savings when setting up campaigns. Interviewees said that by streamlining these processes, AppsFlyer allows users to focus on strategic tasks rather than technical maintenance, which enhances overall productivity.
- The vice president of growth at the gaming company said: “Without [AppFlyer’s SKAdNetwork (SKAN) solution], we would need to have at least one analyst doing data analytics activities to better understand SKAN data and calculate organic and paid installs as well as putting together a report from each ad platform. We would also need another data pipeline and a data engineer to support these activities. This effort is saved 100% with AppsFlyer thanks to the SKAN functionality.”
- The user acquisition lead at the travel company said: “Having all data from different ad platforms centralized in AppsFlyer saves us lots of time. We would otherwise have to go individually to every single network and get data from them. It would be at least the effort of one engineer.”
- The senior director at the media and entertainment company told Forrester: “Without AppsFlyer, we would need six to 10 additional resources to maintain all the integrations with all our ad platforms. Additionally, we could only maintain the top 10 ad platforms. The others would have to be dropped. We currently work with 25 to 30 ad platforms thanks to AppsFlyer.”
- The senior marketing technology manager at the fintech company stated: “AppsFlyer saves us time in setting up campaigns. We would need three to four weeks to set up campaigns without AppsFlyer, including also sending data to ad platforms. With AppsFlyer, it only takes us 30 minutes to set up a campaign.”
Modeling and assumptions. Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:
- The composite integrates with four ad platforms through AppsFlyer in Year 1, six ad platforms in Year 2, and 10 ad platforms in Year 3.
- The additional resources needed per ad platform (which would be required to manage integrations with partners without AppsFlyer) is equivalent to 0.5 FTEs.
- The fully loaded annual salary for a software engineer is $126,900.
- The fully loaded annual salary for a senior marketing manager is $145,125.
- The time savings in setting up campaigns due to AppsFlyer are 70% in Year 1, 80% in Year 2, and 90% in Year 3. As the composite becomes more familiar with the AppsFlyer solution, it saves more time as it becomes more proficient.
- The composite has a 50% productivity conversion rate because not all saved time is put back to productive use.
Risks. This benefit may vary for organizations based on:
- The number of ad platforms with which the organization integrates.
- The level of data analytics and SKAN-related activity the organization has to carry out.
- The number of advertising campaigns the organization runs and the effort involved in each.
- Variation in the salaries of software engineers and senior marketing managers.
Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 10%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $802,000.
Efficiency Savings Across The User Acquisition And Advertising Technology Team
| Ref. | Metric | Source | Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| C1 | Ad platforms integrated with AppsFlyer | Composite | 4 | 6 | 10 |
| C2 | Additional resources per ad platform that would be required to manage integrations with partners without AppsFlyer | Interviews | 0.5 | 0.5 | 0.5 |
| C3 | Average annual salary for a software engineer | TEI Standard | $126,900 | $126,900 | $126,900 |
| C4 | Subtotal: Efficiency savings in setting up and managing integrations with ad platforms | C1*C2*C3 | $253,800 | $380,700 | $634,500 |
| C5 | Additional resources required for deep-linking measurement activities and iOS SKAN support activities | Interviews | 1.5 | 1.5 | 1.5 |
| C6 | Average annual salary for a software engineer | TEI Standard | $126,900 | $126,900 | $126,900 |
| C7 | Subtotal: Efficiency savings in data analysis activities thanks to deep-linking solution | C5*C6 | $190,350 | $190,350 | $190,350 |
| C8 | Additional marketing resources required for setting up advertising campaigns | Interviews | 1.0 | 1.0 | 1.0 |
| C9 | Time savings in setting up campaign due to AppsFlyer | Interviews | 70% | 80% | 90% |
| C10 | Average annual salary for a senior marketing manager | TEI Standard | $145,125 | $145,125 | $145,125 |
| C11 | Subtotal: Efficiency savings in setting up advertising campaigns | C8*C9*C10 | $101,588 | $116,100 | $130,613 |
| C12 | Productivity percent capture | TEI Standard | 50% | 50% | 50% |
| Ct | Efficiency savings across the user acquisition and advertising technology team | (C4+C7+C11)*C12 | $272,869 | $343,575 | $477,731 |
| Risk adjustment | ↓10% | ||||
| Ctr | Efficiency savings across the user acquisition and advertising technology team (risk-adjusted) | $245,582 | $309,218 | $429,958 | |
| Three-year total: $984,758 | Three-year present value: $801,842 | ||||
Wasted Ad-Spend Budget Mitigation
Evidence and data. Interviewees said that before using AppsFlyer, their organizations wasted ad spend by ineffectively allocating budget across ad platforms. They explained that a key advantage of using AppsFlyer is allocating search ad spend more effectively.
- The user acquisition lead at the travel company said: “Thanks to AppsFlyer, we have found out that some ad platforms and channels are nonincremental entirely, even though they look amazing on the surface. For example, in one of them, we were spending $60,000 a month. If we had taken the results at face value, we would have probably quintupled that budget to $300,000 a month. But, because we knew it was not actually that profitable, we ended up reducing our budget allocation to $0.”
- The vice president of growth at the gaming company mentioned: “It’s very hard to compare the performance of different ad platforms because each one has its own reporting, and they do not talk with each other. Without AppsFlyer, 20% to 40% of our mobile search ad budget would be misallocated. And the more channels you run, the bigger impact you will have if you are not using AppsFlyer.”
- The senior director of marketing at the media and entertainment company said, “Ten percent to 20% of the budget would be wasted without AppsFlyer, especially thinking about linear TV advertisement.”
Modeling and assumptions. Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:
- The composite’s mobile search ad spend budget is 24% of the total $50 million advertising budget.
- In years 2 and 3, the composite increases its mobile search ad spend to 27% and 30% of the total advertising budget respectively because it aims to transition website users to mobile. This increases the percentage of advertising budget dedicated to mobile efforts.
- The composite integrates with four ad platforms through AppsFlyer in Year 1, six ad platforms in Year 2, and 10 ad platforms in Year 3.
- The percentage of ad spend that would be wasted without AppsFlyer goes up from 10% in Year 1 to 15% in Year 2 and to 20% in Year 3 because the composite reaps more benefit from the more ad platforms on which it advertises.
Risks. This benefit may vary for organizations based on:
- The percentage of advertising budget dedicated to mobile search ad spend.
- The extent to which the organization increases its focus on mobile ads and is actively looking to increase the number of users in its mobile app.
- The number of ad platforms on which the organization advertises.
Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 15%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $4.3 million.
Wasted Ad-Spend Budget Mitigation
| Ref. | Metric | Source | Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| D1 | Mobile search ad spend | Composite | $12,000,000 | $13,500,000 | $15,000,000 |
| D2 | Percentage of ad spend that would be wasted without AppsFlyer | Interviews | 10% | 15% | 20% |
| Dt | Wasted ad-spend budget mitigation | D1*D2 | $1,200,000 | $2,025,000 | $3,000,000 |
| Risk adjustment | ↓15% | ||||
| Dtr | Wasted ad-spend budget mitigation (risk-adjusted) | $1,020,000 | $1,721,250 | $2,550,000 | |
| Three-year total: $5,291,250 | Three-year present value: $4,265,646 | ||||
Unquantified Benefits
Interviewees mentioned the following additional benefits that their organizations experienced but were not able to quantify:
- Increased ARPPU. Interviewees said AppsFlyer improves ARPPU by revealing which ad platforms, channels, creatives, and campaigns deliver high ARPPU users. They also said it helps reveal which users churn to inform more efficient remarketing, it enables gamification to lift engagement, and it facilitates cross-sells and upsells by encouraging users to upgrade for added benefits. These improvements helped the interviewees’ organizations improve ARPPU. The senior marketing technology manager at the fintech company said their organization has seen a 100% improvement in ARPPU during its first three years of working with AppsFlyer.
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Increased ability to scale. Interviewees explained that with AppsFlyer, various teams across
their organizations can access critical data that reveals the performance of
mobile marketing and leverage the platform’s powerful attribution
capabilities. The senior director of marketing at a media and entertainment
company said, “Different business units within the organization find out
about AppsFlyer and want to start working with it.”
Interviewees also said AppsFlyer allows their organizations to scale by enabling them to integrate with ad platforms in a few clicks instead of dedicating engineering resources for integration tasks. They explained that working with AppsFlyer provides their organizations with all measurement reporting unified into one dashboard instead of needing to hop across the reporting tools of multiple ad platforms. They also said analytics teams benefit from having more actionable and easy-to-understand data, so they need to spend less time cleaning data and can share the data more easily with other teams. - Good user experience. Interviewees regard AppsFlyer as a very user-friendly platform that does not require deep technical knowledge. They highlighted that its user experience and user interface aid users in quickly navigating the platform’s various functionalities. The user acquisition lead at a travel company told Forrester: “I have set up different cross-functional teams within AppsFlyer: from finance to accounting and legal. I just get them set up, and they’re really easily able to navigate through everything.”
- Improved ability to innovate. Interviewees consider AppsFlyer to be a very innovative company in the mobile measurement and attribution market. They said AppsFlyer is at the forefront of the market and that they are proud to work with the company because they know [their organizations] will be pioneers when [AppsFlyer] releases revolutionary features. The user acquisition lead at a travel company said: “AppsFlyer is at the forefront of ad tech, and they continue to innovate. Their new ‘engaged view’ feature will help us gain incremental value from AppsFlyer. There are a couple things that they’re innovating on, and it will be helpful and drive more incremental value for us in the future.”
- Great user support. Interviewees said AppsFlyer’s customer success team effectively supports users. They said the team is fluent in technical jargon, which tech-savvy marketers appreciate, and that it persuasively presents the value of AppsFlyer to senior stakeholders. Interviewees said they consider to AppsFlyer to be a trusted partner. The senior director of marketing at the media and entertainment firm said: “AppsFlyer is one of our strongest partners. We really trust them and have a really good relationship.” Additionally, the senior marketing technology manager at the fintech company said: “AppsFlyer CSMs (customer success managers) are great. They’re doing a really good job of making sure we’re getting full use out of the product, especially for people who are newer to the organization or not familiar with the AppsFlyer technology.”
Flexibility
The value of flexibility is specific to each customer. There are multiple scenarios in which a customer might implement AppsFlyer and later realize additional uses and business opportunities, including:
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Creative optimization. AppsFlyer offers a Creative Optimization product that can help
organizations understand the performance of their creative strategies and
optimize ad spend accordingly. The vice president of growth at the gaming
company said: “The Creative Optimization product provides us with deeper
knowledge on our creative performance. We can develop creative strategies in
a more efficient way and be more successful with them.”
The senior marketing technology manager at the fintech company added: “Creative Optimization is a huge cost-saver for us. We save at least $250,000 yearly on creative reporting. It was a very manual process before and would take about a week to do it. We have cut down that time to three days. On top of being a time saver, there are now four days on which we are not running poor performing ads, so that’s also saving us money.” - Accounting for web revenue. Interviewees said most mobile measurement partners (MMPs) solely focus on mobile revenue, but there is also demand for them to account for website revenue. The vice president of growth at the gaming company said: “With most MMPs, this revenue is missed from a measurement perspective as they only focus on mobile. AppsFlyer, on the other end, has just developed a feature that allows us to monitor it, and we have started to see some data coming in. This is a great progress making AppsFlyer an industry leader as they solved the issue that MMPs handle only mobile revenue.”
Flexibility would also be quantified when evaluated as part of a specific project (described in more detail in Appendix A).
Quantified cost data as applied to the composite
Total Costs
| Ref. | Cost | Initial | Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 | Total | Present Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Etr | Subscription costs and implementation effort | $36,240 | $660,000 | $660,000 | $660,000 | $2,016,240 | $1,677,562 |
| Ftr | Ongoing management costs | $0 | $294,423 | $294,423 | $294,423 | $883,268 | $732,185 |
| Total costs (risk-adjusted) | $36,240 | $954,423 | $954,423 | $954,423 | $2,899,507 | $2,409,747 | |
Subscription Costs And Implementation Effort
Evidence and data. AppsFlyer charges its customers an annual subscription that reflects the cost of the measurement suite, ROI360, and OneLink. It also includes the cost of implementation.
Modeling and assumptions. Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:
- The composite organization uses AppsFlyer’s measurement suite, ROI360, and OneLink.
- The fully loaded hourly salary for a software engineer is $61.
- The composite needs 540 hours for implementation of AppsFlyer.
Risks. This benefit may vary for organizations based on:
- The AppsFlyer products used.
- The effort needed for the implementation of AppsFlyer.
- The salaries of software engineers.
Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this cost upward by 10%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $1.7 million.
Subscription Costs And Implementation Effort
| Ref. | Metric | Source | Initial | Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| E1 | Subscription fee | Interviews | $0 | $600,000 | $600,000 | $600,000 |
| E2 | Total time needed for implementation (hours) | Interviews | 540 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| E3 | Average hourly salary for a software engineer | TEI Standard | $61 | |||
| Et | Subscription costs and implementation effort | E1+(E2*E3) | $32,945 | $600,000 | $600,000 | $600,000 |
| Risk adjustment | ↑10% | |||||
| Etr | Subscription costs and implementation effort (risk-adjusted) | $36,240 | $660,000 | $660,000 | $660,000 | |
| Three-year total: $2,016,240 | Three-year present value: $1,677,562 | |||||
Ongoing Management Costs
Evidence and data. To optimize AppsFlyer’s ongoing performance and value, interviewees’ organizations dedicated resources to train new team members on AppsFlyer, had engineers and developers manage AppsFlyer’s technical integrations and updates, and had data analysts create and analyze AppsFlyer’s reports.
Modeling and assumptions. Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:
- The fully loaded hourly salary for a senior marketing manager is $70.
- The fully loaded hourly salary for a software engineer is $61.
- The fully loaded hourly salary for a data analyst is $58.
Risks. This benefit may vary for organizations based on:
- The salary of software engineers, senior marketing managers and data analysts.
Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this cost upward by 20%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $732,000.
Ongoing Management Costs
| Ref. | Metric | Source | Initial | Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| F1 | Ongoing management time for marketing resources (hours) | Interviews | 0 | 1,040 | 1,040 | 1,040 |
| F2 | Engineering time for tech integrations and updates (hours) | Interviews | 0 | 1,456 | 1,456 | 1,456 |
| F3 | Developer time for tech integrations and updates (hours) | Interviews | 0 | 480 | 480 | 480 |
| F4 | Data and analytics time for reporting activities (hours) | Interviews | 0 | 936 | 936 | 936 |
| F5 | Average hourly salary for a senior marketing manager | TEI Standard | $70 | $70 | $70 | |
| F6 | Average hourly salary for a software engineer | TEI Standard | $61 | $61 | $61 | |
| F7 | Average hourly salary for a data analyst salary | TEI Standard | $58 | $58 | $58 | |
| Ft | Ongoing management costs |
(F1*F5)+((F2+ F3)*F6)+(F4*F7) |
$0 | $245,352 | $245,352 | $245,352 |
| Risk adjustment | ↑20% | |||||
| Ftr | Ongoing management costs (risk-adjusted) | $0 | $294,423 | $294,423 | $294,423 | |
| Three-year total: $883,268 | Three-year present value: $732,185 | |||||
Consolidated Three-Year Risk-Adjusted Metrics
Cash Flow Chart (Risk-Adjusted)
Total costs Total benefits Cumulative net benefits Initial Year 1 Year 2 Year 3-
The financial results calculated in the Benefits and Costs sections can be used to determine the ROI, NPV, and payback period for the composite organization’s investment. Forrester assumes a yearly discount rate of 10% for this analysis.
These risk-adjusted ROI, NPV, and payback period values are determined by applying risk-adjustment factors to the unadjusted results in each Benefit and Cost section.
Cash Flow Analysis (Risk-Adjusted Estimates)
| Initial | Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 | Total | Present Value | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total costs | ($36,240) | ($954,423) | ($954,423) | ($954,423) | ($2,899,507) | ($2,409,747) |
| Total benefits | $0 | $2,081,582 | $2,966,468 | $4,059,958 | $9,108,008 | $7,394,279 |
| Net benefits | ($36,240) | $1,127,159 | $2,012,045 | $3,105,536 | $6,208,500 | $4,984,532 |
| ROI | 207% | |||||
| Payback | <6 months | |||||
Appendix A: Total Economic Impact
Total Economic Impact is a methodology developed by Forrester Research that enhances a company’s technology decision-making processes and assists vendors in communicating the value proposition of their products and services to clients. The TEI methodology helps companies demonstrate, justify, and realize the tangible value of IT initiatives to both senior management and other key business stakeholders.
Total Economic Impact Approach
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Benefits represent the value delivered to the business by the product. The TEI methodology places equal weight on the measure of benefits and the measure of costs, allowing for a full examination of the effect of the technology on the entire organization.
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Costs consider all expenses necessary to deliver the proposed value, or benefits, of the product. The cost category within TEI captures incremental costs over the existing environment for ongoing costs associated with the solution.
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Flexibility represents the strategic value that can be obtained for some future additional investment building on top of the initial investment already made. Having the ability to capture that benefit has a PV that can be estimated.
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Risks measure the uncertainty of benefit and cost estimates given: 1) the likelihood that estimates will meet original projections and 2) the likelihood that estimates will be tracked over time. TEI risk factors are based on “triangular distribution.”
The initial investment column contains costs incurred at “time 0” or at the beginning of Year 1 that are not discounted. All other cash flows are discounted using the discount rate at the end of the year. PV calculations are calculated for each total cost and benefit estimate. NPV calculations in the summary tables are the sum of the initial investment and the discounted cash flows in each year. Sums and present value calculations of the Total Benefits, Total Costs, and Cash Flow tables may not exactly add up, as some rounding may occur.
Appendix B: Endnotes
1 Source: The Forrester Wave™: Omnichannel Demand-Side Platforms, Q3 2023, Forrester Research, Inc., August 24, 2023; Source: The Identity Resolution Landscape, Q4 2023, Forrester Research, Inc., October 23, 2023; Source: Your Guide To Collecting Customer Data More Effectively, Forrester Research, Inc., August 23, 2024.
2 Source: Data Deprecation Requires A Marketing Measurement Renovation, Forrester Research, Inc., March 7, 2023.
3 Total Economic Impact is a methodology developed by Forrester Research that enhances a company’s technology decision-making processes and assists vendors in communicating the value proposition of their products and services to clients. The TEI methodology helps companies demonstrate, justify, and realize the tangible value of IT initiatives to both senior management and other key business stakeholders.
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