myTracker: “We will not charge for the amount of data”

Alexander Semenov, Senior Editor App2Top.ru : The first time we heard about myTracker was in 2015, when the first public version of the service was launched. But the first analytics in Mail.Ru The Group appeared much earlier, 11 years ago. Tell me how it all started.

Dmitry Krutitsky

Dmitry Krutitsky, myTracker project manager: It really started more than 11 years ago in the IT-Territory studio.

The studio’s games have always been interested in new traffic, so at some point an affiliate program appeared with payments for the users brought in. She worked with the studio’s browser games (“Legend”, “Territory” and others).

Gradually, it became clear that we were not satisfied with working on the CPC model and needed to switch to CPA.Along with this understanding, the need for expanded tracking and analytics tools began to grow. The functionality of the internal analytical platform grew, registrations appeared, and then the rest of the project metrics, such as user activity and payments. In parallel, desktop projects of the already united holding Astrum Online Entertainment began to connect to the system.

Then it became clear that it is necessary to evaluate not only marketing traffic, but also SEO / organics in order to understand where to direct more forces and budgets. After that, the system began to collect all the data about the users of the games. Then we got rid of the “partner” part, leaving the tracking mechanisms and statistics to our own marketers.

After the merger Mail.Ru Group all the company’s projects gradually began to connect to the system.

The system received a special boost with the development of mobile projects, combining several solutions available in the group.

myTracker is the fruit of the joint development of the marketing department and the commercial department, the platform on which the work of all marketing and product teams is now tied Mail.ru Group. We count money, buy traffic, settle accounts with partners – everything is based on our data and tools.

The old version of the myTracker website reports that the service is an analytical platform. The new website says it’s about a “mobile marketing platform with predictive analytics.” Where is the truth?

Dmitry: A new website is essentially a new product. We have revised our attitude to the tracker, which we are ready to give to the market. We realized that the torn part of our toolkit, which was myTracker before the restart, would not solve the problems of developers and marketers, and therefore decided to give the whole system away.

The new myTracker is a marketing platform that will include all the tools that teams use Mail.ru Group. This is a unified system that is equally useful for product teams and marketing.

We will open the functionality gradually, adapting parts of our internal tools. At the start, the basic functionality of the tracker will be available, and then Predictive analytics tools will be tightened, first for marketing teams and then for product analysts.

How has myTracker changed after restarting?

Dmitry: For example, the possibility of attribution of the installation source was added, the approach to statistics was redesigned, and we supplemented the set of simple reports with a functional constructor that allows us to collect almost any necessary report based on raw data of the entire application. This results in a number of strong advantages:

• Enriched user data (+ the most accurate social dem)
• Extended set of metrics for any cross-sections
• Comparison of applications or groups of applications of the same developer by any metrics,
• A universal report builder that, in addition to standard DAU, MAU, retention, LTV and other reports, will allow developers and marketing teams to build any reports they may need, and all this for any cohort selected by campaign, traffic type, geography, partner, device information or custom events.

Which advertising networks do you support, is Facebook among them?

Dmitry: Our internal tools allow us to monitor all major networks and dozens of smaller ones in one way or another. And we will gradually bring it to the market.

Facebook requires a separate approach due to the policy of a closed partner system. But we are now actively discussing this issue within the team.

In the meantime, right at the start, you can track all major networks in myTracker that allow the use of tracking links.

Is there support for associated conversions?

Dmitry: Yes, the conversion model for the first interaction and the corresponding reports are initially available. In the future, there will be a reattribution for targeted actions.

How do you plan to deal with fraud (are there any tools at all that will signal if low-quality traffic has gone)?

Dmitry: We leave the issues of cutting off fraud to advertising networks. Our task is to calculate everything and collect as much data as possible. And that’s what we do. For ourselves, we use reports on product metrics in various cross-sections that allow us to see suspicious traffic in the form of anomalies. After all, in addition to fraud, there is a problem of low-quality traffic that does not perform in a particular application, and our reports allow you to regularly monitor basic metrics and respond promptly.

You call predictive analytics one of the key innovations of myTracker. Among other things, we are talking about automating the purchase of users. How will it work in your case? Mediation?

Dmitry: No, we are working on a more detailed level and so far with already launched campaigns. A person launches a huge set of campaigns at his discretion, manually or by any generator, connects his account to myTracker, specifies target metrics for which optimization is needed: CPI, any CPA.

Next, the system collects advanced statistics about purchasing channels, about user behavior inside the application and begins to manage advertising campaigns, optimizing target metrics, up to disabling ineffective campaigns.

This work was previously performed by our marketing teams, now we are able to significantly reduce the daily routine. We expect that after the launch of predictive analytics in general access, this functionality will be in great demand among any development teams: both small ones, where there are not enough hands, and large ones, where there are a huge number of campaigns and much needs to be kept under control.

The announcement says that the system will make “automatic forecasts and “advise” developers and publishers of applications on how to conduct the most effective advertising campaign.” Please give an example of how this will happen?

Dmitry: In the basic version, this is a set of predictive metrics: conversions to payers, dumps, LTV and others, which, along with the usual metrics, are available to users of predictive analytics and are selected in the report designer.

These metrics allow you to evaluate the quality of traffic in a fundamentally different way: you do not need to wait weeks and months for real data to be “dug up”, you can make a decision in advance based on forecasts.

You see your traffic costs, current metrics are next to it, forecasts are immediately shown – and you act. And the system tells you what to pay attention to by presenting scoring campaigns, channels and other reports. Only this will allow developers to save significantly on user acquisition and direct their efforts to the most active and promising users.

And I remind you that in order for predictive analytics mechanisms to work for a particular application, myTracker needs to accumulate historical data on this application. Then our algorithms will be trained on this data, and predictive tools will be available for you. That is why we enter the market in advance and give developers the opportunity to start collecting the most expanded data right now, so that they can then brew a “miracle potion” from them.

There will also be cohort analysis in myTracker. What are the segmentation restrictions?

Dmitry: There are no restrictions. We have any slices available for the application, they are built dynamically on raw data and therefore there are no restrictions.

Can you name a complete list of metrics that myTracker can track “out of the box”?

Dmitry: In total, we have more than 80 selectors in our reports.

Basic metrics:

• User Activity (Launches, Updates, Activity Days, Audience Core, Returns, Unique Launches, DAU, WAU, MAU, and exactly the same set of Lifetime metrics with the sum of the indicator for the entire lifetime of the application, despite the selected report interval)
• Sessions, Interrupted sessions (number and time)
• Basic metrics (New Installations, Impressions, Transitions, CTR, CR, First Launches, Effective Installations, ARPU)
• Finance (Currencies, Goods, Income, Transactions paid for the First Time, DPU, WPU, MPU, ARPPU, Campaign Cost)
• User retention (Retention and Rolling retention)
  and all metrics are available for any combination of cuts:
• Geography (Country, Region)
• Social dem (age, gender)
• Information about the device and the application (Application version, SDK version, Device Manufacturer, Screen Dimensions, OS, Model, Operator, Connection Type, Bluetooth, Language, Time Zone),
• Configurable events (Event Names, Quantities, Parameter Names, Parameter Values, Unique Records)
• Time sections (Days, Weeks, Months, Quarters, Years, Days of the Week, Hours),
• Sources (Campaigns, Partners, Traffic types, IDs from advertising networks).

Will there be ASO functionality?

Dmitry: We actively use internal ASO tools, with its help our ASO team works wonders and brings tens of millions of organic installations per year to our applications. I cannot name the exact date when we will publish these tools, while the basic functionality of the tracker is in priority.

You say that myTracker is an absolutely free tool. Do I understand correctly that it processes any amount of data from any audience size for free?

Dmitry: That’s right. We are already collecting data from 400 million devices into our database, we have solved the problem of scaling and processing such data arrays, therefore we are ready to easily double and triple the amount of data collected. Here the developer has nothing to fear – we will lovingly collect all the data for him and store it. We will not charge for the amount of data or the number of devices.

How do you earn from the tool? Through myTarget?

Dmitry: Yes, we have a large company, many divisions bring profit and myTarget too. We are developing myTracker, including for our projects, in order to earn even more on them and publishing the toolkit outside practically does not increase costs. An open tool gives a better understanding of the market and the features that are needed, and this is a sufficient incentive for us.

If there is a good response, perhaps we will add a new killer toolkit to the myTracker platform, which we are currently using for ourselves, and we will already provide it on a paid basis.

We also plan to perform individual marketing research for external customers on any data, including on the basis of myTracker. For example, we plan to publish in the near future a study of the Russian mobile market based on depersonalized myTracker data.

We have the strongest Research and analytics department, which provides a full range of research services, including testing concepts, studying current and potential audiences, provides recommendations for improving the user experience based on internal expertise, segments the audience, makes forecasts, enriches user portraits with other data.

U Mail.Ru Group has not only mobile analytics, but also solutions for PCs and consoles. Is it worth waiting for their launch in open access?

Dmitry: Yes, of course, our toolkit works for all platforms inside Mail.Ru Group. But it’s too early to talk about opening all platforms outside. First, we plan to give an advanced myTracker toolkit for mobile developers.

I see. Thanks for the interview.

Screenshot of the myTracker service admin panel