High level goal: Have my Android app code be aware of the Google Ads ad which the user clicked to download my app
Current attempt at a solution: Implementing deferred deep linking (using GA4F) via this documentation (following that documentation exactly). The url formats that I’ve tried in the "App Url" in Google Ads are (all of which are covered in deep link intent filters, and Verified by Google Ads):
- https://www.bodbot.com/
- https://www.bodbot.com/ad_link/test_1
- https://www.bodbot.com/ad_link/test_1?id=[app-id]&utm_source=google-ads&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=test_campaign
What’s working: 100% of the desired functionality when testing per the above documentation
What’s broken: The same code running in production. At best, the app is occasionally getting the deep link url "https://play.google.com/apps/launch?id=[app-id]"
Question: How do I troubleshoot this?
Side thoughts:
- I also have InstallReferrer API installed and it does work baseline (ie, receiving utm_source: google, utm_term: [search term]), but not for the above url example I’ve provided with expected parameters; I didn’t expect it to work, but some references I’ve seen indicate that InstallReferrer is necessary for Deferred Deep Links…but I don’t understand how it’s supposed to work (given that the InstallReferrer API is expecting play.google urls)
- All I want is to achieve the above high-level goal of knowing client-side the clicked-ad-to-download source. I’m happy to try alternate approaches/tools/APIs/etc, as long as they aren’t tools that cost money (e.g. AAPs like Adjust/AppsFlyer)
Thanks for reading this far! I’m happy to provide additional detail here! I didn’t provide code because I am replicating the provided documentation exactly, and the test environment is working exactly as expected – which indicates to me that the client code is not a problem. But I’m happy to provide code here if that is helpful – just didn’t want to create too much noise.
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