Interview

MdotM's Rodney Witcher on the opportunities arising from replacing UDIDs with AdTruth's DeviceInsight tech

Combining in-app activity with mobile web traffic

MdotM's Rodney Witcher on the opportunities arising from replacing UDIDs with AdTruth's DeviceInsight tech
MdotM's situation aptly demonstrates the impact of the mobile industry's hurried move away from UDIDs.

Part of the just announced ODIN working group, the mobile monetisation platform also has to support other solutions to ensure it can track the process that occurs when a user clicks on a mobile ad and installs a game or app.

Even more problematic is that it's still not clear to anyone if or why Apple is rejecting apps that use the device ID method.

"It's a case of maintaining our inventory during this potential disruption," explains director of business development Rodney Witcher.

"Some of our major suppliers are moving over to ODIN, while some are using OpenUDID. On that level, we're following the market."

Broad umbrella

The result is MdotM has to be able to deal with whatever standards are being used.

"There's a potential disconnect if someone's passing us a ODIN that we have to match to OpenUDID," Witcher states.

For that reason, it appears most companies on the content side are sticking with the tried and tested UDID; at least until Apple makes a formal announcement.

Of course, this is only workable until that announcement, which is why most of the big players on the mobile advertising and monetisation side of the industry are taking advantage of UDID's 'at some time' deprecation to move to other solutions right now.

Another way to track

In this context, MdotM has been testing AdTruth's DeviceInsight fingerprinting technology since December to provide additional flexibility.

"Because we've been able to compare how it works against UDIDs, we can tell it's working well," Witcher says.

Indeed, because it's not a device ID approach, it's enabled the company to track of users across mobile web and app activity.

"For us as a performance-based install business, this is really valuable," he points out.

"We can track users coming in from mobile search or from email links. It potentially opens up a lot of new inventory."

However, given the fluid nature of the situation, MdotM isn't relying on any one solution, and is continuing to test other technologies; at least until the industry comes up with a consensus.
Contributing Editor

A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon is Contributing Editor at PG.biz which means he acts like a slightly confused uncle who's forgotten where he's left his glasses. As well as letters and cameras, he likes imaginary numbers and legumes.