Flurry appcircle :how does it work under the hood?

Question

Appcircle is a cross selling solution: it lets a publisher to seel an application within its own Iphone application. When such a purchase is done the publisher earns a commission. To do so appcircle should be able to associate the click on the buy button to a successful selling transaction on the app-market. I wonder how this is done and if it is possible at all. Luca

Answer 1

I don't know for sure, and I'm only going by what I know of the iOS platform rather than any internal knowledge of AppCircle.

I imagine that it works by UDID. Something like this:

• User downloads app with AppCircle integrated
• AppCircle informs flurry server of the iOS device UDID and makes a note that it own's this app
• User clicks a link to buy an app via AppCircle banner - the link will likely be a redirect which first informs the flurry server that the banner was clicked and that this user may purchase a particular app
• User purchases and downloads advertised app from app store
• Advertised app (also has AppCircle integrated) informs flurry server of UDID
• The link is made that this user now has both apps associated with the UDID and the note that was made when the AppCircle banner was pressed
• Assumption is made that the user purchased the app via AppCircle.

Of course, this could be entirely wrong. The first problem is what if a user clicks the AppCircle banner, but doesn't make a purchase, and then some time later purchases the app directly? The assumption could still be made that the user bought and downloaded the app because they saw it on AppCircle, but the inverse is true that they could have just purchased it independently, yet the developers still get the cross-selling revenue...

Other people's views will be interesting to read.