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Facebook ads has a feature that it can knows how many apps are installed from advertising in facebook https://developers.facebook.com/docs/ads-for-apps/mobile-app-ads#advanced

I know google provide referrer/campaign feature to detect which campaigns, websites, and other apps are referring users to Google Play Store to download my app https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/android/v4/campaigns#overview . But when I see facebook sdk(android) source code, it doesn't use google campaign mesurement, so which technique it use to measure app installs? And can My app knows if it is installed from advertising in facebook or not(with google campaign, my app can catch the intent after installing and get referrer information to know utm_source)

Ikarus
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2 Answers2

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I did a research on this back in Q4/2015 and have found no way to manually track Facebook install ads in Google Analytics, because Facebook overrides the referrer field, which you'd read from INSTALL_REFERRER intent.

The only official info on this I was able to find is this question on FB help page

We do not support install tracking for web apps not hosted on facebook.com, but you could try using URL tags in order to track specific landing destinations within your app through a third-party analytics platform. Learn more here: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/1016122818401732/?ref=u2u

As an alternative, you can register your app with the Facebook SDK and measure your app installations that way. You can find out how to do that in this developer's guide: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/app-ads/measuring/?ref=u2u

As stated in the first paragraph, there are Facebook's measaurement partners, offering solutions for automating the measurement and pairing the data with your campaigns.

These partners have exclusive access to FB data and are able to track your installs (and generally any in-app activity) from ads.

In theory, if you're the app developer, you can try filling some arbitrary data (not UTM tags) into your ads' url_tags and check if it gets propagated to your app upon install (or deeplinking). If you're able to read the data in the app, you should be able to manually track the event in Google Analytics. But to use this in practice would mean tagging each ad with some unique value and then pairing it with app event. Which is basically what measurement partners do, but way more difficult, because you don't have the data they have.

David
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3

Facebook analytic provide that type to show how munch your application install that for use this link and follow steps..

here you have to must register your application on facebook devloper and impliment facebook sdk on your application.

For install check set below code on onResume method with particulate Activity class. 

@Override
protected void onResume() { 
super.onResume(); 
//For event in update your app install count..
AppEventsLogger.activateApp(this); 
}

Facebook event page in you can get count after some time on app installation.

follow below screenshot

Implimantation of Facebook SDK Change in manifest file and string resource file Write code in Activty class

Ravi Vaghela
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  • This method mostly relays information back to Facebook. But you don't get to collect much information on the app side. – Haluk Feb 18 '16 at 20:16
  • I would like to know how facebook does to track apps install(the mechanism), but not how to use facebook sdk – Ikarus Feb 20 '16 at 05:25
  • @Ikarus i have given screen shot for use SDK in your app see that – Ravi Vaghela Feb 20 '16 at 05:28
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    Thanks, but I didn't ask for how to use facebook sdk, Your answer digresses. I completed this project 1 year ago, and I agree with David's answer – Ikarus Feb 20 '16 at 05:39