What Is an MMP? AppsFlyer vs Adjust vs Singular Explained
Every app marketer runs into MMPs sooner or later. What they do, and how the big three differ, from a practitioner's point of view.
Run app ads for long enough and someone will ask, "Is the MMP set up?" This story explains what an MMP is, why you need one, and how the big three, AppsFlyer, Adjust and Singular, differ.
What is an MMP?
An MMP (Mobile Measurement Partner) is a third-party measurement company that decides which ad an install or a purchase came from.
Media such as Meta, Google and TikTok each claim that an install happened because of their ads. Run ads on three networks and the sum of their reported installs is often far higher than your real installs. The MMP acts as a neutral referee and reports performance against one standard.
What an MMP does
- Attribution: decides which campaign gets credit for events such as installs and purchases
- Deep linking: sends users who tap an ad straight to a specific screen in the app
- Fraud prevention: blocks invalid traffic such as bot installs and click spamming
- iOS privacy support: measures users who haven't given ATT consent through Apple frameworks such as SKAN
- Data consolidation: compares cost and performance across networks in one dashboard
The big three compared
| AppsFlyer | Adjust | Singular | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Origin | Israel, 2011 | Berlin, Germany, 2012 | San Francisco, USA |
| Known for | Among the market leaders, with the most network integrations | Acquired by AppLovin in 2021, strong in gaming | Strong in cost data consolidation and ROI analysis |
| Key features | OneLink (deep links), Protect360 (fraud prevention) | Fraud prevention suite, automation | Cost Aggregation, creative analytics |
| Best for | Commerce and fintech teams using many networks | Game studios | Teams that want precise ROAS by network |
Which MMP should you choose?
- First check that the networks you use most are officially integrated.
- Pricing is mostly quote-based and depends on monthly installs and events, so get quotes from two or three vendors.
- If iOS is a big share of your users, ask for a demo of the SKAN dashboard and how well conversion value setup is supported.
- If you want to do analysis inside the MMP, Singular is a sensible starting point; if breadth of integrations matters most, AppsFlyer.
Summary
An MMP is the reference point for deciding where to spend more of your ad budget. Once app ad spend reaches a few thousand dollars a month, it is close to essential.
Next, we explain in plain terms what SKAN is and why iOS measurement got harder.