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Paid ads fix organic's attribution gap
Correlation in organic
With organic, connecting RevenueCat, Superwall, or Stripe shows correlation spikes: a big view spike, then a look at whether revenue and installs went up with it. That leaves the age-old question of organic marketing, where the attribution is.
What paid ads show
Paid ads answer it. With direct UTM links and tracking, it's possible to see exactly how everything converts, including how many trial starts come in and how much of that converts. That is what justifies putting more spend behind certain videos.
Meta and Spark ads
Meta ads carry a button, and with it the attribution. TikTok Spark ads push an organic video onto the For You page as an ad with no anchor, which means no button to download the app. CPMs run cheaper, and CPM is the only thing measurable from them. Spark suits a video already doing well organically with a strong call to action.
How do UTM links track a single video?
A UTM link adds labels to a web address, such as the traffic source, medium, and campaign. When someone clicks and lands on the site, analytics software reads those labels and credits the visit to that exact link. Using a different link for each video shows which one produced each trial start. UTM stands for Urchin Tracking Module, named for the software company Google acquired in 2005 and turned into Google Analytics.
How do TikTok Spark ads work?
Spark Ads let a brand promote an existing organic post instead of building a separate ad. The creator generates an authorization code for the post and shares it with the brand, which then uses it in its ad campaign. The promoted post keeps its original likes, comments, and shares. Spark posts show in the For You feed with an ad label.
Why is attribution for organic content so hard?
An organic viewer might see a video, wait days, then search for the app by name, and no link records the connection. Apple made this harder in April 2021 with App Tracking Transparency in iOS 14.5, which requires apps to ask permission before tracking users across other companies' apps and websites. Many marketers lost much of the cross-app data they once used to connect a viewing to an install. Revenue dashboards can show a spike after a video, but they can't prove which video caused it.