Overcoming signal loss: Illuminating inDrive’s growth via the AppsFlyer Data Collaboration Platform

Overview

• Ride-hailing app inDrive was operating in the dark while working with self-reporting networks, due to user data limitations caused by signal loss. As inDrive continued its expansion into new markets, it was crucial for the marketing team to effectively track performance at all stages of the funnel. 
• Implementing AppsFlyer’s Data Collaboration Platform gave inDrive a fresh, consolidated understanding of its campaigns and users – while staying compliant with privacy regulations. 
• Now, inDrive can manage its marketing budget more effectively, relying on data-driven decisions.

Background

inDrive’s rise as the world’s second-largest ride-hailing app began on New Year’s Eve, 2012 in Yakutsk, Russia. Amid a chilling -45°C and a sudden increase in taxi fares, locals used social media to coordinate rides and negotiate fair prices. This community-driven response gave birth to what is today known as inDrive, which now operates in 710 cities across 46 countries with over 200 million installations.

Challenge

As inDrive continues its expansion into new markets, one of its main business challenges centers around reaching relevant audiences in new locations. Achieving market penetration in larger cities which already have an established ride-hailing presence is a significant obstacle.

In efforts to overcome this challenge, inDrive’s marketers run extensive social media campaigns targeting users in the major cities. Monitoring the performance of those campaigns, however, was proving challenging due to limited and fragmented data. 
As inDrive works mostly with self-reporting networks like TikTok, Meta, and Google Ads, as well as other walled gardens, they frequently found themselves operating in the dark due to limitations on the availability of user-level data. inDrive needed that data to accurately measure campaign success across channels. 

To support their expansion, it was crucial for inDrive to effectively monitor performance on both a campaign and ad set level from every stage of the funnel — both for the number of installs and the number of completed registrations per app. 

With their data in the dark, their entire growth plan was essentially having to operate blindfolded. inDrive’s Leading Digital Analyst, Andrei Marchenkov, estimates that around 35% of all of their paid install data was hidden, rendering campaign-level attribution “impossible”:

Regulations on SRNs’ privacy have significantly complicated the assessment of campaign performance at a detailed level. This challenge arose when attempting to analyze data from event values (payloads) or incorporating backend data into attributions, because it became impossible to ascertain detailed attribution (for example, campaign-level) due to restrictions.

Andrei Marchenkov, Leading Digital Analyst at inDrive

inDrive were already working with AppsFlyer as their mobile measurement partner (MMP), so in 2022 they started discussing possible ways to shine a light on their data in the dark. Being at the forefront of democratizing data availability in a privacy-centric manner, and working closely with the walled gardens, AppsFlyer created the ideal solution: Data Collaboration Platform. inDrive joined the beta of this new product in August of that year.

Solution

AppsFlyer’s Data Collaboration Platform is a form of data clean room: it offers a trusted, unbiased, and secure environment for sharing first-party user data, and enriches it with third-party data and campaign insights – in a way that conforms completely with all the global privacy regulations. 

The platform integrates with publishers throughout the ecosystem to gather data securely from the walled gardens, giving brands unparalleled measurement capabilities. For inDrive, with their network of walled garden partnerships, AppsFlyer’s solution provided a whole new level of insight into their marketing efforts. The team could access built-in insights into what was working and what wasn’t, and get actionable suggestions as to where to allocate their future ad budget in order to meet their targets.

Impact

With AppsFlyer’s Data Collaboration Platform, inDrive gained a fresh, consolidated understanding of their campaigns and users – while staying compliant with privacy regulations. Now, signal loss and being unable to directly access device-level data from the walled gardens are no longer an issue for their team.

AppsFlyer’s platform uses privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) to combine restricted data with inDrive’s own primary data. It then generates an aggregated report that enables the inDrive team to effectively calculate key performance metrics around installs and completed registrations.

Within the platform, inDrive marketers and business intelligence analysts can slice and dice their data, creating custom dimensions that give them the exact insights they need to effectively measure their app’s performance in new cities. That previously-hidden data in the dark is now visible to the inDrive team:

AppsFlyer’s data reports have enabled us to uncover up to 90% of previously “Restricted” attribution data. We can now view complete aggregated reports in our dashboards, providing accurate campaign-level CPI and breakdowns by custom dimensions.

Andrei Marchenkov, Leading Digital Analyst at inDrive

AppsFlyer has revolutionized inDrive’s measurement capabilities, giving the team full visibility over the performance of their campaigns across all channels. 

Andrei shared an example of three campaigns to show exactly how this has improved their marketing practices. By combining conversion data with their own data, inDrive’s marketers now have a report that demonstrates metrics in a clear and actionable way. Looking at the tables below, it’s clear that campaign 3 is significantly underperforming and the creatives and audience should be adjusted. 

This improved level of visibility – eradicating 90% of the previously in-the-dark data – means that inDrive now knows exactly how to allocate its marketing budget, making ad spend vastly more efficient and generating better results.

Looking forward

With Google following Apple’s cue and introducing further privacy changes in the form of Privacy Sandbox, along with an anticipated critical mass for SKAdNetwork 4/5, the future of marketing measurement will still have plenty of obstacles for brands to clear.

Additionally, as brands diversify to expand their campaigns to additional channels, such as retail and commerce media networks, they need a measurement platform that is robust enough to provide cross-channel metrics, with the flexibility to slice and dice their data to present real insights.

Now that inDrive is fully integrated with AppsFlyer’s platform, they’re not only benefitting from accurate, actionable app insights in the short term – they’re also well placed to expand to future growth opportunities, with AppsFlyer’s trusted and unbiased platform at their side.

As inDrive continues to expand and grow, AppsFlyer’s team will be there for every step of the journey.

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