Singular

Overview

Singular provides a platform for mobile app developers and marketers to unify marketing data, measure attribution, prevent fraud, and gain insights into campaign performance. The service aggregates data from various advertising networks and internal sources, offering a consolidated view of marketing spend and return on investment. This consolidation is intended to streamline the process of analyzing user acquisition and engagement across different channels, including paid advertising, organic search, and referrals.

The platform’s core functionality includes mobile attribution, which links app installs and in-app events to the specific marketing campaigns that drove them. This enables developers to understand the effectiveness of their advertising efforts and optimize their spending. Singular also incorporates fraud prevention tools designed to identify and block fraudulent installs or engagement, helping to ensure that marketing budgets are allocated to legitimate user acquisition. Real-time data processing and reporting are available for monitoring campaign performance and detecting anomalies.

Singular is designed for organizations that manage multiple mobile marketing campaigns and require a unified system for data analysis. It supports a range of SDKs, including those for iOS, Android, Unity, React Native, and Flutter, facilitating integration into diverse mobile applications. The platform also offers API access for custom data integration and extraction, allowing developers to incorporate Singular's data into their existing business intelligence systems. Compliance with data privacy regulations such as GDPR and CCPA is a stated feature, alongside SOC 2 Type II certification, addressing enterprise requirements for data security and privacy practices.

Beyond attribution, Singular offers cost aggregation, which standardizes and centralizes marketing spend data from various sources. This enables marketers to compare campaign costs and performance metrics on an equitable basis. The platform also includes ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) and data warehousing capabilities, providing tools for data management and integration with other analytics platforms. This comprehensive approach aims to provide a single source of truth for mobile marketing data, supporting strategic decision-making and operational efficiency for app developers focused on growth.

Key features

• Unified Marketing Analytics: Consolidates data from various marketing channels and ad networks into a single platform for comprehensive analysis.
• Mobile Attribution: Accurately attributes app installs and in-app events to specific marketing touchpoints, helping to measure campaign effectiveness (Singular Support, API Integrations documentation).
• Cost Aggregation: Centralizes and normalizes marketing spend data from diverse sources, providing a unified view of advertising costs.
• Fraud Prevention: Utilizes algorithms and detection mechanisms to identify and block fraudulent installs, clicks, and in-app events, protecting marketing budgets.
• ETL and Data Warehousing: Offers tools for extracting, transforming, and loading marketing data, along with data warehousing capabilities for long-term storage and analysis.
• Deep Linking: Facilitates personalized user experiences by directing users to specific content within an app based on the source of their click.
• Privacy Compliance: Supports adherence to data privacy regulations such as GDPR and CCPA, with SOC 2 Type II certification for data security (Singular, homepage).
• Reporting and Dashboards: Provides customizable dashboards and reports for visualizing key performance indicators and tracking campaign progress.

Pricing

Singular operates on a custom enterprise pricing model. Specific pricing tiers and features are not publicly disclosed on their website and require direct consultation with their sales department for a tailored quote. Pricing is generally structured based on factors such as the volume of attributed installs, the number of integrated data sources, and the specific features required by the client.

Common integrations

Singular offers SDKs and API integrations to connect with various platforms and services:

• Mobile SDKs: Direct integration with native iOS (SwiftUI documentation), Android (Android Developers documentation), Unity, React Native (React Native documentation), Flutter (Flutter documentation), Cordova, Adobe Air, and Xamarin applications.
• Marketing Platforms: Integrates with numerous ad networks, demand-side platforms (DSPs), and supply-side platforms (SSPs) for data aggregation.
• Business Intelligence Tools: API access for exporting data to BI platforms like Tableau, Power BI, or custom data warehouses.
• Cloud Storage: Supports data export to cloud storage solutions such as Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage (Google Cloud Storage documentation), and Microsoft Azure Blob Storage.
• CRM Systems: Potential for integration with CRM platforms to enrich customer profiles with attribution data.

Alternatives

For mobile app developers and marketers seeking attribution and analytics solutions, several alternatives to Singular are available:

• AppsFlyer: A mobile attribution and marketing analytics platform offering similar capabilities in fraud protection, deep linking, and reporting.
• Adjust: Provides mobile measurement, fraud prevention, and cybersecurity solutions for app marketers, focusing on data privacy and security.
• Branch: Specializes in deep linking and mobile attribution, enabling seamless user journeys and cross-platform measurement.
• Segment: A customer data platform that collects, unifies, and routes customer data to various analytics, marketing, and data warehousing tools.
• PostHog: An open-source product analytics suite offering event capture, feature flags, and session replays, suitable for developers seeking self-hosted options.

Getting started

To integrate Singular into a React Native application, you would typically install the SDK and initialize it in your project. The following example demonstrates a basic setup. This assumes you have a React Native project already set up.

First, install the Singular React Native SDK:

npm install singular-react-native
cd ios && pod install # For iOS projects

Next, initialize the SDK in your application's entry point, typically App.js or index.js. Replace YOUR_API_KEY and YOUR_SECRET with your actual Singular credentials, which can be obtained from your Singular dashboard (Singular Support, API Integrations documentation).

import React, { useEffect } from 'react';
import { Platform } from 'react-native';
import Singular from 'singular-react-native';

const App = () => {
  useEffect(() => {
    const singularConfig = new Singular.SingularConfig(
      "YOUR_API_KEY",
      "YOUR_SECRET"
    );

    // Optional: Set a custom user ID
    // singularConfig.withCustomUserId("user_12345");

    // Optional: Enable SKAN (for iOS 14.5+)
    // if (Platform.OS === 'ios') {
    //   singularConfig.withSkAdNetwork(true);
    // }

    Singular.init(singularConfig);

    // Example of tracking an event
    // Singular.event("rn_app_opened");

    return () => {
      // Clean up or close sessions if necessary (Singular handles most lifecycle events automatically)
    };
  }, []);

  return (
    <!-- Your app's UI -->
    <View style={{ flex: 1, justifyContent: 'center', alignItems: 'center' }}>
      <Text>Welcome to your app!</Text>
    </View>
  );
};

export default App;

After initialization, Singular will automatically track app lifecycle events such as installs and sessions. You can also track custom events using Singular.event("eventName", { /* event attributes */ }) to gain deeper insights into user behavior within your app.

For more detailed integration guides, including advanced features like deep linking, deferred deep linking, and in-app event tracking, refer to the official Singular documentation specific to your chosen SDK (Singular Support, Singular Help Center).