Web2App · Published 2025-01-17 · 2 min read
How Web2App works in Facebook
Let us look at it through a subscription iOS app. To keep it simple, take the version without a pre-lander: users go straight to the store page. The process is illustrated in the attachment.
Phase 1. On the Facebook side
- Create a pixel ID and set up an ordinary sales web campaign.
- In the URL, put not a direct store link but the tracking URL your MMP generates — Adjust or AppsFlyer.
Facebook will pass the fbclid parameter into that tracking URL. The parameter is what attribution rests on: it ties the campaign to the conversion event.
On the MMP side
- Enter the pixel ID and access token created in the first step.
- Map the events. Here we have to tell the MMP that our internal event "app_purchase" is a purchase in Facebook's terms, and that "app_trial" is, say, Facebook's Subscribe event.
On the side of the subscription service SDK
- Link the service — Apphud or Adapty — to the MMP through the user identifier.
Phase 2. Cross your fingers and launch
- Installs are passed to Facebook by the MMP through the Conversions API. The MMP ties campaign to install through the fbclid and sends the data into the pixel. It received the fbclid from the tracking link. That part does not concern us — we never see it, the MMP takes it on.
- Adapty, RevenueCat or Apphud sends trial and purchase data to the MMP, matching on the user ID it received through the mobile app SDK. The MMP then forwards the event to Facebook as in the previous step.
Why bother? What about Facebook's own tools, AEM and SKAN?
Web campaigns are launched after the ordinary campaigns have failed to deliver.
And does it work?
If your niche is competitive, web campaigns will give you cheaper events than Facebook's standard AEM or SKAN campaigns. If the niche is open, start with the standard Facebook campaigns.
The campaign URL contains a tracking URL. Will Facebook not ban it?
You cannot use this approach in Google Ads, but Facebook permits it.
How else can tracking quality be improved?
Send the user to a custom product page rather than to the store itself. That way 100% of installs get tracked.
Will you help me set it up? Of course. Write to @SiberianPaaanda