Kontagent and HasOffers say they were caught off guard by Facebook’s sudden termination of their Mobile Measurement Program partnerships for violating the terms of service agreement. Facebook has told the app developers that rely on the two companies for mobile app campaign analytics that they’ll lose data access on April 15 and to find new partners.
In an email to HasOffers customers (forwarded anonymously to Marketing Land) Facebook says as of the 15th, the mobile analytics company “will no longer have access to past or future mobile measurement data” and offers three suggestions for new Mobile Measurement Program (MMP) partners.
We’re awaiting response from Facebook as to whether a similar email was sent to Kontagent customers and if the same three partner alternatives were suggested to all customers. Kontagent says Facebook has been contacting their customers. We’ll update here when we learn more.
Both Companies Say Facebook’s Decision Was Swift and Unannounced
In their respective blog posts on the matter, both CEOs, HasOffers & MobileAppTracking’s Peter Hamilton and Kontagent+PlayHaven’s Andy Yang, indicated they were not given advanced warning about the terminations.
Hamilton wrote,
“We first disclosed all of our data storage and deletion processes with Facebook during an audit in September. We sought clarification on certain issues and offered solutions to allow our products to work within Facebook’s terms. We believed we were working collaboratively with Facebook to comply with their requests. Regardless of their recent and sudden decision, we remain hopeful and open to working with Facebook in the future.”
Yang, like Hamilton, emphasized that Facebook has confirmed “no data leakage, user privacy or security integrity failures occurred,” also made it clear that Facebook did not give the company advanced notice or an opportunity to fix the problems before terminating the MMP partnership (bolding mine):
“Storing the encrypted data beyond the required timeframe was an error on our part and could have been easily resolved had we been given the opportunity to remedy the situation.”
Yang wrote, “We feel each of these requirements can be quickly addressed and we hope to have to the opportunity to participate in MMP again.”
Laura Perez, marketing director for Kontegent+PlayHaven tells Marketing Land that just 15 of its more than 22,000 customers will be affected by the termination. Those 15 are the only customers running app install campaigns on Facebook and using Kontegent’s attribution product.
“We will continue to provide social analytics such as virality via Facebook. While we will not be providing the information available from Facebook’s MMP, we will however continue to provide a mobile analytics solution for our customers that allows them to monitor the performance of their app, determine the value of their users, and take action to influence those metrics,” says Perez.
Several hundred HasOffers customers using the MobileAppTracking (MAT) platform will be affected, said Peter Hamilton by email. “Facebook attribution directly accounts for less than 1 percent of our revenue, but due to their position in the market and the quality of users, it is a major impact to our clients’ marketing campaigns,” he said. MAT integrates with more than 375 other advertising partners and platforms, according to the company.
Whether Facebook will allow the two companies back into the MMP program after a time-out period is unclear, but this action certainly acts as a clear warning to current and future partners to follow the letter of Facebook’s TOS contracts.
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