What if I use a different mobile tracking service, such as Adjust or Branch?

That's fine, they should have most of the same settings as AppsFlyer when you do the project.

But, a note from our CTO on Branch:

• Branch was wildly inaccurate for a past client
• Branch didn’t have integrations direct to ad channel for install ads (maybe it does now?)
• Branch didn’t let you pass in data like adset/ad/campaign to get more granular with the data like appsflyer (maybe it does now?)

Technical Question: Can we track events server-side?

The longer version of the question: Some of our events don't fire on the client side. For example, when someone purchases a subscription to our product, they could get an error message: maybe they already have an account; maybe they didn’t supply a valid password, etc. Obviously, we want accurate and clean data wherever we can achieve that, but right now we don’t have a client-side ‘signup succeeded’ event; the opportunity to hook into that is server-side.

The problem with tracking server-side only is that you might lose contextual information about the user: things like UTM params, user device, browser information, where they came from, etc. You also lose your tracking from your ad channels, if you're running ads (because they rely on client-side pixels).

So...

Track events client-side whenever possible.

That being said, tracking server-side is still better than no tracking at all. If users are failing to sign up and encountering an error screen, and that’s not being reported, then server-side tracking could be implemented in the interim.

You can also pass things like UTM tags through to the server from the client wherever you can.

Why is AppsFlyer reporting different numbers than Facebook?

The difference is mainly due to the way Facebook and AppsFlyer report their data.The Facebook Ads Manager dashboard shows event data according to the date the user engaged with an ad. On the other hand, the AppsFlyer Events dashboard shows data according to the date the user installed the app. An example of this would be like the following:

1. User click on FB ad on June 1
2. User installs the app on June 2
3. User performs event on June 3

Facebook Ads manager will show the event under June 1, whereas AppsFlyer Overview and Events dashboard will show the event under June 2.The AppsFlyer raw data reports and Activity section will show the event under June 3.