What is Android WebView Apps in Affiliate Marketing

WebView is an Android system component that allows you to embed web pages in mobile applications. The site opens inside the application without going to the browser. In fact, WebView is a mini-browser. Everyone who opened a link to an external resource in a messenger from a mobile phone faced them.

A webview application in affiliate marketing is an application in which a web page of a target resource with an offer product is embedded: an online casino, a dating service, a bookmaker, etc.

How to work with WebView applications 

Webmasters use WebView applications to direct traffic from a traffic source (for example, Facebook) to the application, and from there the traffic flows to the landing page of the offer. This format of working with traffic is considered an alternative to the classic “promotional material + pre-lander + landing” combination. The application acts as a pre-landing page. 

How it works:
 

The most popular WebView applications are now in the iGaming vertical. Gambling games cannot be advertised without restrictions, but harmless free apps can be advertised as much as you like. 

The installed application is always at hand for the player and from time to time reminds of itself with the help of push notifications and SMS from the service operator. They report new bonuses, updates, free spins and so on. If the application is on the side of an advertiser or an affiliate program, the latter can use push notifications to increase the Retention Rate. 

If during registration the advertiser collects the user's phone number, then the user can be pushed, including by SMS and / or calls from the call center.

For the user, the application is the shortest path to the offer. It is not as easy to get rid of as a page in a browser, which again increases the chances of a conversion.
 

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Why only Android? Is it possible to work with iOS?

It is worth mentioning that we are talking about Android applications. WebView on iOS works the same way, but App Bay is primarily a story about the Android OS. Apple apps cannot be shared across multiple accounts. In addition, Apple traffic is almost not attributed in any way, which makes it difficult for webmasters to send it to iOS applications. Although iOS app rental services have been available in the webmaster community for a long time.

Since the application can be used by several webmasters at once (and often the affiliate network shares the app to the maximum to many accounts), it is very important to attribute traffic when setting up an advertising campaign. Attribution is the process of associating conversions with specific clicks.

The difficulty is that the usual trackers cannot attribute WebView traffic. To do this, you have to use deeplinks and namings. These are ways to track users who land on the app through your ad campaign.

Deep link is used to track incoming traffic, however, it can be disabled after installing the application, and because of this, part of the traffic is counted as organic. That is, it is not considered yours. In some cases, traffic losses reached 80%.

Naming is the unique name of the campaign in the traffic source. It is also designed to track that the traffic comes from your advertising account. This is the most popular attribution method, as it practically does not lose conversions. 

Deep link is applied at the ad level, naming is applied at the stream level.

How to work with gambling applications in conjunction with Facebook, we told in the article: "How to drive traffic to apps from Facebook".
 

Placement of the application on Google Play and moderation

Before promoting a link to an app, the app itself needs to be published on the store. Finding an app in the official store increases user confidence and has a positive effect on CR from installation to registration. It just so happens that the average person believes that content on Google Play is better than content found online. 

If you're using an affiliate network, advertiser, or rental app, it's already published. To do this, developers use white, a primitive functionality of the application, which is designed to mislead moderators. It hides targeted content from bots and moderators.

White app can have the format of a simple arcade, clicker, reader, photo editor or text interactive. The white view, screenshots, videos and description of the application in the store should be in the same style and minimally correspond to the offer. For example, it will be strange to see a clicker in the desert setup in a dating app.
 

How the moderator sees the application

How the user sees the application
 

Why was your app removed from Google Play

However, even after hitting the store, the application may soon be removed. This can happen for a number of reasons:

• If the moderators consider the design of the characters and other graphic elements used to be non-unique.
• If the application has bad reviews and is often complained about.
• It can also be removed if the percentage of non-unique, borrowed code is very high.
• It also matters if the app has links to banned apps/accounts in Facebook Ads.

WebView applications tend to have a relatively short lifespan.
 

Comment from the editors of AffJournal

Working with WebView applications does not require a webmaster to have experience in mobile development, and to understand the process, a simple understanding of mobile attribution is enough. You should understand the user flow of the funnel and what the WebView application is for moderators and users. The applications themselves can be rented, requested from an affiliate program, bought on the stock exchange, ordered development from a freelancer, or get into programming yourself.