So we started looking into attribution for advertising campaigns, and using deeplinking to do off-platform advertising through various advertising channels, currently focused on TikTok and Facebook.
The issue is, currently, when we plugin the deeplink URLs into either platform as the URL for the ad, we get the following behaviour:
Using the appsflyer link, on Android, you are taken to the Google Play Store to download Roblox. This happens even though Roblox is already installed. Clicking the Play button in the Google Play Store opens Roblox, but DOES NOT deeplink to the place.
Using the web link, it opens the correct webpage - HOWEVER, if you are not logged into Roblox in your browser, you get a Roblox 404 error page instead.
This behaviour is consistent with both Facebook ads and TikTok ads.
When using the links directly, it works correctly - but NOT when going through an ad.
This effectively means we are paying to promote Roblox as a platform, and not our game.
We also attempted a TinyUrl version in case the ad platforms were pruning the arguments, but experienced the same issue.
Note that on TikTok, if you close out of the Google Play Store, you return to the webview, at which point you can use the […] menu to ‘Open in Browser’, which follows the correct flow. This leads me to think it’s specific to using the AppsFlyer URL in an embedded webview.
All of this is to say, we cannot use deep linking to attribute users coming from advertising campaigns (or, in it’s current state, run ads to our game at all), which effectively means we can’t run meaningful campaigns and gather relevant information (such as retention and monetization) split by attribution source and min/max our UA.
Expected behavior
What I expect to happen, is that when using the AppsFlyer link on an advertising platform, when a user interacts with the ad, it should directly open the Roblox App (if it’s installed) and take the user to the place specified automatically.
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