How SoundCloud Uncovered Hidden Revenue by Bringing Mobile Measurement Standards to Web

Overview

• SoundCloud is a global audio platform where independent artists and creators upload, distribute, and build an audience for their music, while listeners discover and stream it — with both groups moving between web and mobile at the moments that matter most.
• Mobile had long been measured with real-time attribution, cohort reporting, and optimization signals feeding back to ad networks. Web never had the same standard, and was tracked as a separate, less sophisticated story.
• Bringing that mobile-grade sophistication to web revealed that 1 in 10 users acquired on web became active on SoundCloud’s mobile app, a ratio that, on a platform with SoundCloud’s reach, translates into a substantial number of conversions that device-level attribution had been crediting to organic, with no link back to the web campaigns that started the journey.

Background

SoundCloud isn’t optimizing for a single customer journey. It’s managing two. On one side are listeners, discovering and consuming content. On the other are creators, building audiences and growing their presence on the platform. The two journeys look different, but they overlap, and neither happens in just one place. Both audiences cross between web and mobile at the moments that matter most: a listener might discover content on mobile but subscribe on web; a creator might engage on one device and take a high-value action on another.

For SoundCloud’s marketing analytics team, led by Senior Manager Mike Kelly, the gap wasn’t a lack of data. Mobile had years of measurement maturity behind it: real-time signals, defined attribution windows, cohort reporting, postbacks feeding straight into optimization. Web had none of that infrastructure. The two platforms weren’t just measured separately, they were measured to entirely different standards, which made it easy to underestimate web’s contribution when it was the channel that started the journey.

The Challenge

Before bringing mobile-grade measurement to web, SoundCloud was effectively running two separate analyses of its business. As Kelly put it, “web and mobile were two separate conversations, two separate reports, two separate sets of conclusions about what was working.”

Alongside the separation was a significant gap in sophistication that had a direct cost: web attribution had no way to connect a user’s initial acquisition to their later activity on mobile. So when those users picked up the app, their sessions were credited to organic, fully disconnected from the campaign that brought them in. 

“The value wasn’t just measuring web: it was measuring web with the same level of sophistication as mobile. Now web and mobile are one story, and that’s changed where we invest.” 

Mike Kelly, Senior Manager, Marketing Analytics, SoundCloud

The Solution

SoundCloud adopted AppsFlyer’s cross-platform measurement to bring the same standard the team already trusted for mobile: real-time attribution, flexible windows, and optimization signals feeding back to ad networks, to its web properties. Instead of treating web as an acquisition channel supporting the mobile app, SoundCloud could finally recognize when a single customer journey continued from web to mobile, or vice versa.

The Impact

Once web was held to the same measurement standard as mobile, the blind spot became visible immediately: 1 in 10 users acquired on web went on to become active on SoundCloud’s mobile app. On a platform with SoundCloud’s reach, that ratio translates into a substantial number of users. Under the previous setup, those mobile sessions were being counted as organic and as separate users entirely, splitting a single customer journey into two disconnected ones simply because web couldn’t be measured to the same standard as mobile.

The downstream effect matched the scale of the gap. Mobile was driving significantly more Day 30 revenue than the team had previously attributed to it, and some of SoundCloud’s best-performing campaigns, the ones driving users who went on to be active across both platforms, had been systematically undervalued because web measurement wasn’t sophisticated enough to give them credit.

That shift reached beyond reporting accuracy. With a true, mobile-grade picture of which campaigns were creating cross-platform value, SoundCloud could direct budget toward the channels actually building its highest-value user base, turning a measurement upgrade into a more disciplined, defensible approach to growth investment.

“Once we connected those journeys, the signal flowing back into our optimization systems changed. And when the signal changes, the decision changes.”

Mike Kelly, Senior Manager, Marketing Analytics, SoundCloud

Looking Forward

For subscription businesses like SoundCloud, value is rarely created in a single moment or on a single platform. By treating web as an equal citizen to mobile, measured and optimized to the same standard, SoundCloud’s marketing team now sees its listeners and creators as the cross-platform audiences they actually are, and invests with the confidence that comes from measuring the full picture.