Notes from the front of mobile growth.
Attribution, deep linking, privacy, fraud, and the bits of mobile that nobody warns you about until you ship them.
Featured · 7 min read
The Firebase Dynamic Links replacement: a migration guide
Firebase Dynamic Links is shut down. What you lost, how to replace deferred deep linking and smart routing, and how to migrate without breaking live links.
Ahsan
LinkTrail Engineering
Stop sending paid installs to your homepage
You paid for a tap on a specific product, then dropped the user on your home screen. A deferred deep link carries that intent through the install — here's how.
Influencer attribution: giving UGC channels the credit they earn
Influencer attribution is systematically undercounted: blended dashboards starve probabilistically-matched channels. Slice by match type and budget follows.
One link for every channel: smart links for TikTok, email, SMS, and QR
Smart links route every tap by device — TikTok, email, SMS, QR, desktop — one URL that lands users in the right place and tags itself per channel.
Re-engagement deep links that don't dump users on 'Welcome back'
Re-engagement deep links land returning users exactly where they left off — whether the app is still installed or has to survive a reinstall on the way.
Promo codes that survive the install
Deep-linked promo codes survive the install gap: carry the code in the deferred payload, apply it automatically on first open, and guard against abuse.
Web-to-app handoff for a freemium funnel
Web-to-app handoff without the restart: pass onboarding state through the install so users resume mid-flow — the activation lift freemium funnels compound on.
Managing link verification across multiple apps and bundle IDs
One AASA, several bundle IDs, debug plus release fingerprints — kept correct automatically as you add build targets.
Building an install-attribution pipeline with webhooks
Stream install.attributed events into your warehouse, verify the signatures, and reconcile probabilistic, deterministic, and SKAN in one place.
The post-IDFA attribution playbook: signals, scoring, and what to ship next
Mobile attribution after ATT: the matching waterfall, how to score probabilistic matches honestly, and the reporting trap that quietly skews budgets.
Why deferred deep linking still matters in 2026
What deferred deep linking is, why the install gap still exists in 2026, and how carrying context through the app stores roughly doubles first-open conversion.
Probabilistic attribution: building a device fingerprint scorer that doesn't lie
How probabilistic matching works: the five device signals, the weights, the precision-recall harness — and the consent requirement most guides skip.
SKAdNetwork 5: what changed and what to ship this quarter
SKAdNetwork 5 migration guide: re-engagement postbacks, coarse conversion values across the new windows, and how it carries over to AdAttributionKit.
Measuring install lift: the growth marketer's incrementality guide
Incrementality testing for mobile installs: a working definition of lift, a clean measurement design, and the three places your ROAS numbers are lying.
App Links vs Universal Links: the practical setup guide nobody wrote
iOS Universal Links vs Android App Links: how AASA and assetlinks.json work, the MIME and cache pitfalls, and a checklist that opens the app every time.