The statistics available inside of the Adobe Developer Distribution portal are very weak, to say the least. Literally the ONLY kind of metrics I see available are “acquisitions for this listing” by month.
Is there anywhere I can go where I can view more advanced analytics?
Additionally, is there any way to implement some kind of integration with my Adobe Listing Page + Google Analytics/Google Ads? This would be extremely helpful for helping to optimize advertising/marketing campaigns over time. Currently everything is just a gigantic black box.
Thanks.
Some alternative workaround methods I’m considering trying:
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Send traffic to an intermediate landing page, and have an “Install” button on there which I measure conversions on. (That button could then just redirect them to the Adobe listing page for the plugin, I suppose.) This wouldn’t be perfect, as maybe some who click Install wouldn’t actually fully complete the process – however I imagine the correlation would be close enough that this method would allow me to approximate the actual conversion rates to like a 70-80% degree of accuracy (which is definitely better than the complete black box I’m currently operating inside of.)
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Just completely HOST the plugin on a standalone website. Honestly the inability to measure any sort of analytics or conversions makes the Adobe marketplace a very poor distribution channel. If there’s no way to measure or optimize anything over time, it makes creating a standalone website where I can offer the plugin a much more attractive alternative. (This is definitely NOT the preferred option due to how extremely complicated it would be. Yes, I could get the best data for sure – however it would be a very complex undertaking, to implement a totally separate codebase for the manually-installed plugin, complete with user logins, paid subscription checks to either allow or block the functionality, etc. I COULD technically do it this way, however, to get the best possible data – as I could measure actual completed conversions.)
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On plugin install, prompt the user to specify how they heard about the plugin. (This sounds like an awful user experience. AND the data would still be super broad and not fine-grained enough to allow solid optimization.)
The intermediate landing page is probably the preferred approach. The fact that I add this intermediate step might cause some to drop off from the install process – but the ability to measure and optimize conversions would be well worth it. All this really requires is: 1) Set up a landing page of my own for the plugin; 2) Integrate that landing page with Google Analytics, where I measure “Install” button clicks; 3) Modify my PPC advertising campaigns so they all include advanced URL/UTM parameters that would allow me to effectively track the “Install” clicks associated with each advertising campaign/ad group etc; then 4) change all advertising campaigns to direct users to this landing page instead of the Adobe listing page, as they currently do. It’s the least amount of work to give me the data I’m going for.
If I really was concerned about the dropoff rate that this intermediate step might cause, I could even just funnel a fraction of the total traffic to this intermediate landing page – sending the rest to the Adobe landing page. So it would allow me to still collect the data, and optimize over time – but without sending all traffic to it and triggering the potential dropoffs from adding too many steps to the install process.
Keep in mind, if you’re implementing any kind of 3rd party solution, this has to be disclosed somewhere in the plugin. If you decide to use Google Analytics (or similar), there has to be an option to opt out and so on… Too much trouble IMO, if you’re distributing via Marketplace and don’t have much resources to manage everything
I’ve already reported to Adobe during meet-ups and I think I’ve sent an email (when I was asked to) with suggestions about insights, but no reaction 
I just can’t wrap my head around - Adobe has huge Adobe Analytics platform, but can’t give any insights to developers (acquisitions alone doesn’t say anything about how plugin is doing)
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Yeah, it’s a major opportunity for Adobe to improve the developer platform. To be clear, I wouldn’t be adding Google Analytics anywhere inside of the plugin code – at least to measure simple things like the install rate. What I’ll probably end up doing is just sandwiching an intermediate landing page between the Adobe listing page and whatever website I send the original traffic from. That way, I can use this middle page to measure de facto conversions by seeing what percent of traffic clicks the Call-To-Action button. I may not be able to measure install rates on the Adobe listing page, but I CAN do it on a custom website that I send traffic to.
But in terms of more advanced info like, churn rates and so forth, there’s really very little way to learn much from simply seeing the net number of acquisitions per month. For that sort of thing, a Google Analytics integration inside of the plugin would almost certainly be required. I’ll probably hold off on any sort of advanced stuff like that for the time being, however.