# US 2018/0322525 A1 · Attribution of a new application installation on a mobile device by analyzing network traffic of the device > Agents: this data is available as JSON from the patentgrep API and MCP server — see https://patentgrep.com/llms.txt - Number: US 2018/0322525 A1 - Document ID: US20180322525A1 - Status: Published application - Kind: A1 - Application number: 15/587,352 - Filed: 2017-05-04 - Published: 2018-11-08 - Earliest claimed: 2017-05-04 - Assignees: App Annie Inc. - Applicants: App Annie Inc. - Inventors: Mark Wilson Ungerer; Chang Sun; Jia Wang; Yu Chen - Web page: https://patentgrep.com/patent/US20180322525A1 ## CPC - G06Q 30/0242: Determining effectiveness of advertisements - G06F 8/61: Installation - G06F 16/953: Querying, e.g. by the use of web search engines - G06Q 30/0267: {Wireless devices} - H04W 12/033: of the user plane, e.g. user's traffic - H04W 12/35: {Protecting application or service provisioning, e.g. securing SIM application provisioning} - G06F 16/951: Indexing; Web crawling techniques - H04L 63/0272: {Virtual private networks} - G06Q: INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY [ICT] SPECIALLY ADAPTED FOR ADMINISTRATIVE, COMMERCIAL, FINANCIAL, MANAGERIAL OR SUPERVISORY PURPOSES; SYSTEMS OR METHODS SPECIALLY ADAPTED FOR ADMINISTRATIVE, COMMERCIAL, FINANCIAL, MANAGERIAL OR SUPERVISORY PURPOSES, NOT OTHERWISE PROVIDED FOR - G06F: ELECTRIC DIGITAL DATA PROCESSING (computer systems based on specific computational models G06N) - H04W: WIRELESS COMMUNICATION NETWORKS (broadcast communication H04H; communication systems using wireless links for non-selective communication, e.g. wireless extensions H04M1/72) - H04L: TRANSMISSION OF DIGITAL INFORMATION, e.g. TELEGRAPHIC COMMUNICATION (arrangements common to telegraphic and telephonic communication H04M) ## Abstract A system determines attribution of an application install on a mobile device that includes a virtual private network (VPN) application. An application executing on a mobile device may display a third party application advertisement. The VPN application detects a click on the third party application advertisements by monitoring the network requests and records a display time of the advertisement. Further, it detects the download and installation of the third party application by monitoring the network requests and comparing it against a rule from the rules dictionary, and records the installation time of the third party application. If the installation time is within a predetermined threshold time of the display time of the third party application advertisement, an attribution count is updated and is reported to an analytics engine. ## Claims ### Claim 1 A method for attributing an application install on a device, the method comprising: monitoring network requests from one or more publisher applications on a mobile device, wherein the one or more publisher applications display an advertisement for a third-party application; detecting one or more impressions of the advertisement by determining that the network requests were made by one of the publisher applications to a network address associated with the advertisement; logging the detected impressions and their associated publisher applications; detecting an installation of the third-party application on the mobile device; logging a time of the installation of the third-party application on the mobile device; determining an attribution of the installation of the third-party application to one or more of the impressions by applying an attribution model to the logged installation and the logged impressions; and reporting the determined attribution to an analytics engine. ### Claim 2 (depends on 1) The method of claim 1, wherein detecting an advertisement further includes detecting a network request to the mobile application displayed in the advertisement. ### Claim 3 (depends on 2) The method of claim 2, further comprising determining a landing page for the detected network request to the mobile application. ### Claim 4 (depends on 1) The method of claim 1, further comprising storing in a rules dictionary, a rule for identifying a request to access an application store by an application that executes on a mobile device, where each rule further includes an identifier for an event associated with the request to access an application store. ### Claim 5 (depends on 4) The method of claim 4, wherein the event includes at least one of a download, install, upload or a re-download event. ### Claim 6 (depends on 1) The method of claim 1, wherein detecting a third party application installation further comprises: monitoring network traffic on the mobile device; searching the rules dictionary for a rule having a regular expression that identifies a request to access an application store and applying the rule to the monitored network traffic to find a match; and identifying, an installation event for a third party application, from the matched monitored network traffic, by comparing an installation event identifier of the rule to the matched monitored network traffic. ### Claim 7 (depends on 1) The method of claim 1, wherein detecting a third party application installation further comprises: extracting an icon from the advertisement; and comparing the icon extracted from the advertisement with an icon of an application installed on the mobile device. ### Claim 8 A computer program product for attributing an application install on a device, the computer program product comprising a computer-readable storage medium containing computer program code for: monitoring network requests from one or more publisher applications on a mobile device, wherein the one or more publisher applications display an advertisement for a third-party application; detecting one or more impressions of the advertisement by determining that the network requests were made by one of the publisher applications to a network address associated with the advertisement; logging the detected impressions and their associated publisher applications; detecting an installation of the third-party application on the mobile device; logging a time of the installation of the third-party application on the mobile device; determining an attribution of the installation of the third-party application to one or more of the impressions by applying an attribution model to the logged installation and the logged impressions; and reporting the determined attribution to an analytics engine. ### Claim 9 The computer program product 8, wherein detecting an advertisement further includes detecting a network request to the mobile application displayed in the advertisement. ### Claim 10 The computer program product 9, further comprising determining a landing page for the detected network request to the mobile application. ### Claim 11 The computer program product 8, further comprising storing in a rules dictionary, a rule for identifying a request to access an application store by an application that executes on a mobile device, where each rule further includes an identifier for an event associated with the request to access an application store. ### Claim 12 The computer program product 11, wherein the event includes at least one of a download, install, upload or a re-download event. ### Claim 13 The computer program product 8, wherein detecting a third party application installation further comprises: monitoring network traffic on the mobile device; searching the rules dictionary for a rule having a regular expression that identifies a request to access an application store and applying the rule to the monitored network traffic to find a match; and identifying, an installation event for a third party application, from the matched monitored network traffic, by comparing an installation event identifier of the rule to the matched monitored network traffic. ### Claim 14 The computer program product 8, wherein detecting a third party application installation further comprises: extracting an icon from the advertisement; and comparing the icon extracted from the advertisement with an icon of an application installed on the mobile device.