How to Market Your App Effectively

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If you’ve developed and published an app in the app stores, you’ve probably realized that you need to market your app in order to be succesful. In this blogpost, we will give an overview of how you can market your app the right way.

Where Should You Market Your Mobile App?

At first you have to make up your mind about which platform your app is published on and which service you want to use to market it?

iOS vs. Android

If you developed your app for both Android and iOS, on which platform should you start to market your app?

Keep in mind that iOS app marketing is more expensive than Android app marketing. Additionally, consider that iOS users are willing to spend more money for apps than Android users.

On the other hand, you need to be sure that only 12,5% of all smartphones operate with iOS whereas Android stands for more than 80% of the market share.

Which Services Should You Use to Market Your App?

There are quite a few service providers that can help you get off to the right start. In order for you to spend your money wisely, you should first consider where you need professional help the most.

User Acquisition Through Ad Networks

In order to push your app in the app store you can consider buying downloads of your app. There are two ways of doing that: Non-incentive and incentive.
Ad networks make sure that the product being advertised and the publishing site fit together, adding authenticity to the advertisement.

Building Your Own Brand

To make your app well known among potential users, you need to build your own brand for the app.
You can do that by creating an informative website that tells users what the app can do, why they should use it and how they can use it.
Of course, you should also include a link to the app store and your contact information.
This leads to another important step: Create your own social media channels on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or YouTube.
The benefits of them can be found here.

How Should You Market Your Mobile App?

Before planning your app marketing campaign, you need to set up your budget. To calculate your budget, you have to know different operating numbers.

Two very important key figures are the Cost per Active User (CPAU) and the Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV). With these numbers you know what it costs to acquire a user and the user’s worth for your app.

Paid App Marketing

When first starting your app you can’t be sure about your apps key metrics:

  • What is your average retention rate?
  • How much will an active user really cost you?
  • And how much money will he generate on average in his lifespan?

There are two ways of paid app marketing: the incentive app marketing and the non-incentive app marketing. Even though these two ways of market your app are
very different, both can be used at the same time.

We are recognized as a top Paid Media & Pay Per Click Company on DesignRush.

Incentive App Marketing

If you make use of the incentive app marketing, you will reward users for downloading and opening your app. Typical rewards could be giveaways, discount codes or upgrades on the game.

Incentive app marketing is an affordable way for new app providers to advertise, even if you have a small budget. You can even set a budget for a specific period of time and when the funds have been used up, the campaign stops and you will be notified.
Incentive app marketing is a tool to reach a great amount of potential users. Nevertheless, it is crucial to know that many users might only install the app to receive the award and delete it shortly after.

Therefore, the retention rate will be much lower compared to non-incentivized app marketing campaigns. This is a crucial piece of important information for calculating your budget.

Non-Incentive App Marketing

When a user decides to download an app out of interest, it is called non-incentive app marketing. Typical tools of non-incentive app marketing are banner advertisement, app reviews, social media marketing, influencer marketing or even offline marketing.

Non-incentive app marketing reaches an exact group of users that are already interested in your kind of app.

Compared to incentive app marketing, the amount of users being reached is relatively small, but the users are more likely to continue using your app, hence the retention rate will be higher compared to incentive app marketing.

In order to reach high-quality users and a huge group of users, a mixture of both incentive and non-incentive app marketing is the key.

More on this topic can be found in this article.

Social Media App Marketing

If you want to acquire a broad and high quality audience, you can contact an influencer on the social media. The influencer takes the role of a testimonial, who actively promotes your app on his/her various social media channels.

The benefit of this kind of marketing is that the influencer’s followers have a high amount of trust in their idol. They trust the influencer when he/she recommends an app and are therefore more likely to download the app as soon as possible. Possible influencers are YouTubers, Bloggers or Instagram-Stars.

Of course, you should also create your own social media channels, for example on Facebook or Twitter, and make sure that you spread the word about you app. Like this, you do not have to invest much time to start social media app marketing.

What Are the Best Ways to Market an App?

There are plenty of ways to market your app. What kind of app marketing you choose depends on your app, your company and the market you operate in.

It is always a good idea not to focus too much on only one way of app marketing, but instead to combine different tools to reach as many potential users as possible.

Furthermore, it is important to develop an app marketing strategy that is authentic.

Of course, your budget always plays a big role as well. Hence, you should always compare the CPAU for every channel to check if the chosen channel is worthwhile and necessary for your campaign. Likewise, it is important that the costs are lower than your CLTV.

If you want your app to be successful in the crowded market, you will need a great app marketing strategy. AyeT-Studios can you help you to plan such a campaign customized for your specific app and your needs.

The Most Common Mobile Campaign Types

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Wherever you go, mobile follows! Since the daily screen time is shifting more and more in the direction of mobile devices, advertisers and marketers need to spend their marketing budget on campaigns especially for mobile devices. In the following post, we want to give you a general overview of the types of mobile campaigns.

User Acquisition

User acquisition is an important factor for app marketers and developers. There are are various ways how to advertise an app and to calculate the budget for different campaigns.

Install Campaigns (CPI)

Install campaigns are the easiest to understand: The advertiser pays the publisher for every install generated (Cost Per Install / CPI). In general, the install result in a rewarded for the user or be non-incentivized. Should the advertiser want the campaign to be incentivized, he/she can expect the download rates to be very high because users mostly install the app in order to get a reward. For the publisher, incentivized installs are quite interesting, because they only want to deliver installs and do not care what happens after the install. For marketers, non-incentivized installs are more interesting because a (probably) targeted group of users downloaded the app following their own interest. This implies a higher retention rate and thus more revenue for the developer of the app. To conclude, the difference between rewarded and non-incentivized installs reaches as far as the shifting of risk with regard to marketer and publisher. Rewarded installs equate to a low risk for the publisher but high risk for the advertiser. Non-incent installs equate to a high risk for the publisher, (as it is not clear what percentage of his/her audience will install the advertised app) and low risk for the publisher.

Action Campaigns (CPA)

Action campaigns are always rewarded for the user, as there is an objective, which has to be fulfilled. The reward could be an extra life for a game or virtual currency for a reward app. This type of mobile campaign allows the advertisers to spend budget only if the user completed a specific action in their app. This leads to the user getting to know the product a bit better, increasingthe chances for continued use. As with the incentivized install campaigns, there is a risk for the advertiser: the audience of the publisher might only take the specified action to get the reward. However, as there is a specific action to be fulfilled and the user gets to know the app better, the retention rate is mostly higher than with standard CPI.

Mobile Video

Videos are THE ad format to meet the needs of app developers and users equally. What makes them so unique and efficient for both parties?

From a marketing point of view, videos as advertisements are very unique because it is so versatile to monetize and to calculate the bid. What advertisers should know first: a study showed, that 71% of mobile game players think that video ads are the preferred way to “pay” for an app.
When using video ads, marketers can also choose to reward users or to leave it non-incentivized. The possibility to choose the right bid-type is what makes it special.

The three main bid-types are Cost Per Install (CPI), Cost Per Click (CPC) and Cost Per View (CPV). Cost Per Install is used in the same way as in the “Install Campaign”. CPI video ads can be both, rewarded and non-incentivized: the advertisers pay the publisher for installs delivered. The CPC bid-type only rewards the user when he/she interacts with an add and gets directed to a landing of a mobile browser or the page of an app store. As the action of clicking means less work for the user than installing an app, the reward is mostly a bit smaller. However, this can also imply that the user interacting with the video is generally interested in the product. Non-rewarded video ads behave similarly. With this mobile campaign type, the publisher carries the risk and the advertiser only pays when a user is interacting with the ad.

Display Ad Campaigns

Display ads like banners and interstitials are the oldest advertising formats on mobile devices and have their roots in real life advertising. The bid type is CPM (Cost Per Mille) and non-incentivized for the users. Hence, the advertiser pays the publisher for every 1000 times the ad is displayed in his/her app or website. The better the targeting is, the higher the CPM will be.

Lead Generation Campaigns

To get in contact with an audience and to reach out to users’ personal devices is very important for brands and companies. To generate these leads, there are two main campaign types: sign up-campaigns and purchase campaigns. To get more detailed information, click here.

Sign Up Campaigns

Sign up campaigns are used to subscribe user to the newsletter of an advertiser or let them create an account on their website. This means the growth of the customer base and turning them into loyal, returning customers. The bid type for this mobile campaign type is Cost Per Lead (CPL) as the publisher gets paid for every subscription or other lead the advertiser chooses. So, like with install campaigns, the publishers carries most of the risk, as he need to generate leads in order to get payed. The campaigns can be rewarded or non-incentivized.

Purchase Campaigns

It’s another possibilty to let the user make a purchase directly on the site of the publisher. The bid type is Cost Per Order/Cost Per Sale (CPO/CPS). Advertisers can use this campaign type to bring attention to a certain product or to deliver on sales targets. This type of campaign may also be rewarded, for example with a discount or special sale. All in all, the publisher has the risk as he/she only gets paid when the user actually makes a purchase. For the advertiser, this campaign type is interesting because it is very easy to calculate the revenue of this mobile campaign type.

Brand Marketing

Brand marketing on mobile devices is crucial when trying to achieve brand awareness. As mobile devices dominate our daily lives, they are the perfect hotbed to make your brand famous. Brand marketing on mobile devices is mostly done with the help of display campaigns like banners, interstitials and mobile videos. Social media is also an important factor to generate brand awareness. The ad-formats for brand marketing were mentioned in the previous article. These are banners, videos and intersitials. As the advertiser wants to drive awareness for a brand in general and not a product, these ads are mostly non-incentivized. For the advertiser, it can be enough if the audience just recognizes the brand’s existence.

Retargeting

A very interesting field of mobile marketing is retargeting, because the target users are based on previous actions they made on the internet. If a user was on a website or previously saw a certain offer, his/her device will be marked with the help of a cookie. The advertiser can then show his advertisements to the user on other websites via an ad exchange. Oftentimes, retargeting is used when a customer has seen a product or an app, but did not buy/install it. It is mostly combined with less expensive ad formats (like banner ads) to significantly increase the conversions. It has been shown that creatives implemented with a call-to-action (CTA) are even more successful in converting visitors of a website to customers.

With the help of ayeT-Studios, you can choose from all different campaign types to generate users, leads, purchases or even brand awareness. Try it for free!

 

 

 

 

Why You Should Use Rewarded Videos!

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Rewarded Videos are THE ad format to meet the needs of app developers and users equally. What makes them so unique and efficient from both points of view?

Let’s find out!

What Is Special About Rewarded Videos?

A rewarded video is a short video clip, on average 15 to 30 seconds long, which is designed for in-app environments and of non-skippable nature. It offers users a reward in return for watching the video, although the download itself is the user’s choice. Thereby, it represents a mixture of incent and non-incent advertising.

That’s not the only feature of rewarded videos: they also provide huge advantages for both the user and the advertiser! On the user’s side, interaction with this ad format is by choice since rewarded videos are fully opt-in. Users only have to watch videos if they want to receive rewards. Hence, this format doesn’t disrupt the user experience but increases user engagement with the advertisement. On the developer’s side, the previous point is very important: higher engagement rates also cause increasing revenue and higher viewability rates for advertisers. This interplay of both sides allows advertisers to monetize their app with advertisements and without disturbing the experience for the user.

That’s the theory behind the advantages of rewarded videos. Let’s see, if users actually interact with rewarded videos and don’t feel disturbed by them.

How are Users Reacting to Rewarded Videos?

Last year, the study “In-Game Advertising the Right Way: Monetize, Retain, Engage” disclosed how rewarded videos can help developers monetize their app and drive up user engagement. For that, over 2,000 mobile game developers and players were surveyed. In the following, we want to summarize the findings of this study.

  1. Players said, oftentimes they choose rewarded videos to pay for an item within the game like virtual currency, boosters or game lifes.
  2. Users prefer rewarded videos instead of fullscreen-pictures, banners and interstitial videos.
  3. Almost 80% of all players are willing to engage with rewarded videos in return for a reward: 18% said always, 44% said sometimes and 16% said rarely. Only 22% chose never as their answer.
  4. Just one of 10 app developers saw their retention drop: on average, it increased by 39% and decreased by 9%.
  5. With retention, the amount of revenue increased for many developers simultaneously. 52% of developers regard rewarded video ads as the biggest source of revenue in comparison to other advertising formats.
  6. For 86% of all developers, rewarded videos did not have any negative effect on in-app purchases. On average, 14% of users spent less, 16% spent more and the remaining 70% paid the same as before.

Best Practices for Rewarded Videos

Finally, we want to give you a few tips for using rewarded video ads to their full potential and to your full advantage.

Placement and Frequency

Place your ad where it is directly visible for the user! It should strike his/her attention so that he/she won’t oversee it. In addition, it is advisable to display a rewarded video from time to time but not too often. The keyword we’re looking for is “Frequency Capping”: the user should not assume that the ads will be displayed in every session or after every level. Instead, it should be something special for him/her if it shows up randomly in the game. By that, he/she will understand the value of the rewards he/she receives and be more willing to buy them later on. Thereby, rewarded videos are supposed to increase in-app purchases. However, the value of the video rewards shouldn’t exceed that of the in-app purchases. For that reason, ensuring that every user sees a limited amount of rewarded videos is also a part of frequency capping.

Value and Immediate Utility

The reward, which a user receives for watching the ad, should be helpful and beneficial for the game flow. This can be the respective virtual currency of the game, an additional life or useful power-ups. Additionally, the user should be able to utilize his reward immediately, e.g. to complete a nearly lost game level successfully. Like that, he could revive his avatar or get additional moves, in a game like Candy Crush. Thus, they also have the opportunity to reach a new personal high score through rewarded videos.

All in all, rewarded videos are a great format to engage users and to ensure they won’t leave your app if they are stuck at a specific point!

Pay Per Engagement

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There are many possible pricing models you can choose from to pay for mobile advertising campaigns. Since we already talked about CPI, in this article, we will address another common pricing model: Pay per Engagement.

What is Pay per Engagement?

Generally, there is no clear definition for this campaign type. Though traditionally, it is oftentimes viewed as a combination of two pricing models: CPA (Cost Per Action) and CPC (Cost Per Click). In this context, the term “engagement” signifies any interaction of the user with the displayed ad. At that, possible engagements range from closing the ad to stopping it from playing a video. Therefore, most advertisers define a specific action within the app as the engagement they want to pay for, for example clicking the ad.

The trigger for this campaign idea is the theory that the hardest advertising task is to gain the attention of a (potential) user or customer. Nowadays, cost per engagement is synonymously used with CPA: You set an action or engagement goal for the user upon which completion you have to pay the publisher.

How to Calculate Your Pay per Engagement

To calculate how much you have to pay for users to fulfill a specific action in your app, use this formula:

Calculation of cost per engagement

In detail, your total advertising spend is the amount of money you spent on ads that are supposed to trigger certain engagements. Then, you have to divide this value by the total number of engagements and interactions with specific content you measure at the end of your campaign. These interactions can vary from clicking on or expanding an ad or liking and sharing content.

The Best Ad Format for Engagement Campaigns

Advertisers who want to acquire high quality users should combine engagement campaigns with offerwalls. An offerwall is a display of various app advertisements that give users rewards in return for a specific action. For many developers, this action is simply downloading the app – although that often leads to low-quality users.

However, engagement campaigns encourage users to try the offered app by only rewarding those, who e.g. reach level 2 in the game. Like that, it is easier for users to find an app they wouldn’t have discovered otherwise in the app stores. Besides, engagement campaigns are very cost effective: you only pay for the users who actually fulfill the demanded action. Imagine: you create an offerwall campaign on a CPE basis and set the action on reaching level 5 of your game. Admittedly, you will see lots of users who install the app since it offers a reward – but you don’t have to pay for all of them! Only for those who actually interact with your app long enough to reach level 5.

For this reason, an offerwall and pay per engagement complement each other perfectly: the offerwall brings many users to the app but is lacking in quality, while CPE provides less but high-quality users.

Pay per Engagement Campaigns at ayeT-Studios

App based engagement campaigns are a special ad format offer by ayeT-Studios. Different to CPI, advertisers don’t pay for the install but for the actual engagement time of the user. Therefore, the users get a reward when they engage continuously with your app, which increases engagement significantly. We call this Rewarded Engagement Time.

Your advantages: You don’t need any third-party tracking due to our own tracking technology. Additionally, the maximum bid you set determines how long a user will be rewarded for engaging with the app. Furthermore, we will refund any remaining budget to your campaign, if a user doesn’t deplete it within 30 days.

 

What is Pay Per Install?

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There are many possible pricing models you can choose to pay for mobile advertising campaigns. In this article, we will explain a very common pricing model: pay per install, also known as CPI.

The pay per install model is a common pricing model for mobile marketing and advertising campaigns. It is also well-known under the term cost per install and the abbreviation CPI.

Cost-per-install is one of the many metrics, by which people measure their advertising budget. The advertiser only pays the ad network once the app is installed instead of just the advert being viewed (known as the CPM, or cost-per-mille, model). The difficulty is that ad networks have to address the right audience and place the ad in environments where conversion rates are high.

Generally, CPI campaigns belong to the world of mobile marketing as they are unique for mobile apps. In detail, app developers or specifically advertisers can place ads across various types of media to popularize their app. The goal is to convince consumers of installing the application they are advertising. At this, the advertiser only has to pay a set rate when a user actually installs the app.

How can I Calculate the Costs for a Campaign?

The general formula for calculating your pay per install is quite easy to apply. You divide your overall ad spend by the number of times your app was installed because of that campaign.

Cost per install - User Acquisition

Since an install of the app is more valuable than a simple impression, the costs are consequently higher. Sometimes about $3, although that depends on the platform (iOS/Android), the kind of app and the type of advert (e.g. interstitials, banners etc.).

Which CPI Campaign Types are Available?

Install campaigns can be realised through the bid type CPI and we generally distinguish between incent and non-incent campaigns.

Incent Install Campaigns

With the incent version, users get a reward for the download of an app and the advertiser only pays for the completed install.

Incent install campaigns are preferably realised through offerwalls. An offerwall is a mobile ad format which displays different apps and offers users a reward in return for downloading the app.

Non-Incent Install Campaigns

Here, you create a banner ad, for example from the creatives of the app, and place it within other apps for users to see. At that, the user won’t get a reward for installing the app – they rather decide to try it out of curiosity.

Although this campaign type leads to less installs, they are of high-quality since the user interacts more frequently with the app. However, non-incent campaigns are often more expensive than incent campaigns and you have to plan a bigger budget.

CPI Campaigns at ayeT-Studios

Besides these standard CPI campaigns, we also offer special campaign types for our customers.

High Retention Install Campaigns

When you buy app downloads the user has to keep your app for at least three days before getting a reward. Thereby, your retention rate and consequently your Apple App Store or Google Play Store ranking improves significantly.

Managed Install Campaigns

With our managed campaigns, you get country targeted installs with high volumes within three days. This service includes our media buying experts, who tend to every aspect of your campaign and leverage various traffic sources that match your individual requirements. Additionally, we will optimize your campaign constantly to improve your ad spending.

If you are looking for a burst campaign to place your app at the top of Google’s or Apple’s Store charts, this is the right campaign type for you.

Mobile Lead Generation

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As the importance of mobile devices is growing and growing, the necessity for completely optimized landing pages and creatives is undeniable.

In the following, you will learn about what kind of campaign types you can use to generate leads and the details of taking care of the campaigns.

What is special about the creatives to generate mobile leads:

When thinking about generating mobile leads, you are trying to interact with the users on their personal devices. Here are some tipps on how the creatives should look and behave.

1. Everything on the page should be interactive

As users navigate on mobile devices with their fingers, the content on your page should be interactive. If you have graphical assets on your page, they should all lead the user to a specific destination. Even the background of a picture could lead to a landing page.

2. Do not hide content behind hover events or triggers

Make yourself clear: users do not have a mouse, which makes it different for them to navigate. Mobile device users do not have the option to “hover” over content and engage with it. Mobile users can merely “tap” (the equivalent to a mouse click). As a consequence, do not hide content behind any hovering creatives when designing them for mobile devices.

3. Reduce the amount of form fields for mobile devices

If you plan to generate newsletter subscriptions or to get on any other personal user data, keep in mind how the user fills in the mandatory fields. As it takes a bit longer to fill out forms on mobile devices, you should reduce them to a minimum. You could for example combine the “first name” and the “last name” field to a “full name” field, or leave some fields out like date of birth or company name.

4. Use alternate calls to action

You have to rethink the way your calls to action are set up. An obvious lead for a smartphone could be the initiation of a phone call. However, try to bring a variety of CTAs in your content, like a link to a social media platform. As the screen of mobile devices is smaller than the screen of desktop computers, users have to scroll much more to view it completely. So you have to show the CTA more frequently to generate the same amount of leads.

5. The order of content is more important on mobile devices

On the screen of mobile devices, content can only be viewed vertically. This means you really have to bring it in a very easy-to-understand order.
We suggest the following order:

  • Introduce yourself – Company slogan/logo at the beginning
  • What is the purpose of the content?
  • Why should the user do what you are suggesting?

Conclusion

There are so many things to have in mind when designing a creative for mobile devices. All the suggestions we gave you before are just the tip of the iceberg, and the mobile world is changing constantly with increasing speed. You have to be brave enough to test new ideas, adapt and evolve alongside your mobile customers.

Which campaign types and cost models can you choose from?

Since you now know how a creative for mobile lead generation should appear, we want to introduce to you the campaign and bid types an advertiser can choose from. In general, lead means to achieve three things: a subscription for a newsletter, an account creation and/or a purchases.

Subscription Campaign

Subscription campaigns on mobile devices can be rewarded or non-incentivized. The advertiser can choose from many different possibilities for approaching the user. This could be a banner, an interstitial, a piece of rich media content or many others. In most cases the bid type for subscription campaigns is CPL (Cost per Lead), so the advertiser only pays the publisher if a predefined lead is completed. This reduces the risks for the advertiser as he only pays when a marketing goal is completed, and raises the risks of the publisher because he might have to display the advertisement several times until a user is converted and he gets paid. This results in a higher price than campaigns using cost models like Cost Per Click (CPC) or Cost Per View. You can leverage the traffic of a CPL campaign when incentivizing it. This could be the set-up of an account, an extra life in game, or something else a (potential) customer could benefit from. You can expect to generate more leads when incentivizing the user, but other relevant KPIs like retention rate or Customer Lifetime Value won’t be as high as the KPIs of leads generated by non-incent leads.

Purchase Campaign

The ultimate goal for most companies is to generate purchases. Purchase campaigns and subscription campaigns are very much alike in their appearance. The bid type for this campaign is CPP/CPS (Cost Per Purchase/Cost Per Sale). The advertiser only pays the publisher, if a customer completes a purchase. This campaign type makes it very easy for the advertiser to calculate the revenue. It also tends to be quite expensive because the publisher/marketer has to target very precisely the right audience or display the ad often enough to generate purchases. To make this worth their while, advertisers have to invest a bit more, but they can also incentivize the campaign to drive even more awareness for a specific product or deliver on sales targets. A combination of a subscription campaign and a purchase campaign could be realized, if the advertiser gives a (future) customer a discount for a purchase if he/she subscribes to the newsletter.

With the help of ayeT-Studios, you can be sure to reach the right audience and get many newsletter subscriptions, account set-ups or even purchases. In our dashboard you can choose from incent and non-incent campaigns. Try it for free now!

Mobile Brand Marketing

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Every company, which uses a brand marketing strategy, wants its product to be famous and well known. Statista predicts that more than 2,3 billion smartphone users will be on this planet in the year 2017. This fact makes the mobile sector an essential keystone of the most brand marketing campaigns. In this article, we want to give you a general overview of the assets and possibilities you have to leverage your brand recognition.

Display Advertising

The most common way to use mobile marketing as a tool to increase brand awareness is the so called non-incent advertisement. These types of ads have a long history and their roots reach back to classical non-digital marketing. We will now give you information about the most common non-incent advertising assets.

Banner

A banner ad is a rectangular graphic ad, either text or image based. It is placed on the side edges of a mobile interface and stays on screen while the user interacts with the app.

Ad servers deliver those banner ads to a certain application or website. If a banner ad is displayed, the user can click on it and is then taken to the App Store or a corresponding landing page.

Interstitial Ads

According to the IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau), advertisers can place interstitial ads before, in between or after the primary content experience. In any case, there should be a natural break, for example when the user is navigating between content. On the contrary, ads that overlay or cover the content a user is looking at interrupt the user experience and aren’t considered interstitial but pop-up ads.

Video Ads

Since all forms of moving images or active content are really popular these days, video ads are a great format choice for mobile ads. They embody an opportunity to effectively reach a high percentage of mobile users.

The IAB generally distinguishes between three different forms of video advertisements:

  1. In-Stream: The video ad appears pre-, mid- or post-roll within the environment of a video content the user chose to watch, e.g. a video on YouTube.
  2. Out-Stream: The video ad appears within other content that either includes text or images.
  3. Other Non-Video Environment: The video ad appears in other content environments like in-feed or between content lists. Additionally, the advertiser can place his/her video ad within another display advertisement.

Native Ads

A native advertisement matches its environment in an application or on a website visually and behaves consistently with the native user experience. Like this, the advertisement should feel just like natural content to the user and it should avoid distracting the content experience.
Well-known examples for platforms, which use this type of advertising are social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr.
Furthermore, they can appear in many different ways:

  • Content Recommendation
  • Search Ads
  • In-Feed Ads
  • Promoted Listings
  • In-Ad With Native Elements
  • Custom Ads

The main goal of native ads is to address the target audience to an enjoyable extent without being obtrusive.

Rich Media Ads

The idea of rich media ads is to encourage users to interact and engage more with the ad by combining different features like video and audio. Additionally, users can activate certain effects where an ad expands, floats etc.

Social Media

Social Media is very suitable to increase the popularity and the awareness of a brand. A good brand promotion strategy is a good start – but another part of the effort can be shouldered by influencers and marketers who make sure the audience gets to know your brand.

Social media brand promotion combines the basics of marketing with the far reaching access offered by social media.

Advertisers have to decide which platform would reach out to their target audience in the most effective way.

With Linkedin and Tumblr as exceptions, most other social media platforms are used with smartphones and tablets.

How do people use social media platforms © Statista

 We will now give a comprehensive overview of the biggest platforms and how to increase your brand’s awareness.

Facebook

Facebook is by far the largest and farthest-reaching social media platform.

There are 2 main promotion strategies:

  • Advertisers can choose to use a Facebook feature to their advantage by creating a page. However, this may pose the risk of not having the reach nor the impact a client wants for their product.
  • Sponsored or paid advertisements on Facebook allow the site to advertise to users directly: This strategy provides a more forward and personal approach, as most marketing efforts are tailored to a user by assessing his/her interests.

Twitter

Twitter has a penchant for allowing products and content to go viral almost overnight.

For promoters this platform opens a large range of possibilities. Twitter not only offers a wider audience which is simpler to access, but also offers the added benefit of interpersonal communication with the consumers.

Many consumers use Twitter to directly address large franchises and companies with their queries and complaints, and often get quick, individual replies. This makes the Twitter audience one that could allow most efficacy when running social media brand promotion.

Instagram

Instagram is the largest visually-oriented social media network. Of the 500 million monthly active users, many have made successful careers out of posting pictures and featuring products as a form of paid promotion.

For the promotion of a brand on Instagram, some advertisers may hire users with significant followers and reach, and have them get the message across. Instagram has proven to be remarkably effective and popular for social media brand promotion.

Own App

Another step is creating your own app for mobile devices to advertise your brand. This is most suitable for brands and companies, which are also working the field of ecommerce. In the last years, the revenue from mobile sales has risen by over 600%.

 

The Growth of Mobile Commerce © ayeT-Studios

With existing ecommerce companies (i.e. Amazon or eBay), the chance a user will look for another shop to make a purchase is much smaller. Also, the owner of the app can use push notifications to inform his/her users about new products, sales or other special events.

 

ayeT-Studios offers an all-in-one service for brands. We use the most advanced techniques and present advertisers a very efficient self-service platform, which can leverage their brand’s awareness.

Which Factors Affect the App Store Rankings?

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Whether you choose to develop an app for Android or for iOS – to stand out you have to reach a good position in the store charts.

In this article, we will analyze in detail, which factors affect the app store rankings in Apple’s App Store and the Google Play Store – and how.

The App Store Ranking Factors

Naturally, neither Google Play nor the Apple App Store disclose their ranking algorithms publicly. Thus, we can not be absolutely sure about which criteria actually influence the ranking of your app.

Nevertheless, we composed a list of factors many people believe to have an effect on the app store rankings.

Downloads

The number of downloads is a key factor for your app’s ranking in both app stores. The more users download and install your app, the better your position in the app store ranking.

If you have a good marketing strategy and promote your app effectively, you can even increase your downloads. Learn here, how you can help your app to a ranking boost.

Revenue

Your app’s revenue has no influence on your ranking, at least in Google’s Play Store. The reason for that is the unwillingness of most Android users to pay for apps. Therefore, free apps account for the majority of app downloads in the Play Store.

The situation in Apple’s App Store is the exact opposite: here, the users pay significantly more often for their preferred apps. Hence, the amount of revenue will most likely affect the app’s ranking – at least within the Top Charts “Paid Apps”.

App Usage

Observe closely how your users are interacting with your app! At that, App Starts – how often your users open the app – are especially important. This is a critical factor since not only the amount of downloads affects your ranking but how often users actually use your app. Additionally, this data is helpful for measuring app engagement and retention.

Ratings and Reviews

Your app’s ratings and reviews are important for multiple reasons. On one side, they influence decisions of downloading the app or not. The majority of users is more inclined to download an app that has many positive ratings and convincing reviews.

On the other side, this study shows a connection between positive reviews and changes of the app store rankings. The gist is that the better the ratings of the app, the lower the likelihood of a worse ranking.

Keyword Relevance

At this point, we face a very important part of App Store Optimization: selecting the right keywords for your app. It is important that your keywords represent the features and the benefit of your app while being relevant for search queries. This is necessary for users to be able to find your app later in the app store. This aspect is a ranking factor for both the App Store and Play Store.

However, watch out for keywords that are overly popular. Oftentimes, the competition for these keywords can be way too high and you seldom have the chance of reaching a good app store ranking.

Read this article to find out how you can still find the perfect keywords for your app.

Updates

Many people assume that an update temporarily improves the app ranking in the App Store, unlike in the Play Store. However, every update has to pass through its own review and approval process. Similar to the initial launch of the app, Apple could reject it at this point as well. One little hint: you only have the possibility to change your app store keywords and other metadata in combination with an update.

So: plan every update and make sure that it works smoothly and offers an improved experience for your users. Then, an update is a good opportunity to receive new and positive ratings and reviews.

Retention and Number of Uninstalls

While the number of downloads has a positive effect on the app ranking, the uninstalls seem to have a negative impact in the Play Store. For instance, the chance for a feature in the category “Top New Free Apps” decreases. Interesting to know: such a feature is only possible within the first thirty days after the app launch.

Thus, it is necessary to publish a bugless app that users want to interact with straightaway. For that, you need a precise pre-launch strategy, that increases engagement and decreases the amount of uninstalls.

Country

In both app stores, the ranking position depends on the country. On one hand, there are country-specific rankings, and on the other there are global rankings.

In terms of country-specific rankings, the decisive factor is localisation. This includes important changes for different versions like translating text to the respective language or adopting regional formats for time and date. Also, a very important step is the cultural adaption of the app. Regarding the use of symbols and colors, different cultures could have different meanings for them as well. Furthermore, you have to change the characters and, for some countries, the reading direction. As an app developer, you can’t forget these steps to ensure that you address users with different origins correctly.

Social Proof

This factor rather applies to the Google Play Store since Apple doesn’t consider any social media at this point. Google takes all activities relating to your app into account that happen within the Google+ network or other social networks like Facebook and Twitter. They most likely affect your app store ranking positively since they underline your app’s relevance and quality.

Backlinks

Like social proof, backlinks are only a factor in the Play Store. Similar to SEO, backlinks probably have a positive effect on your Play Store Ranking. However, that depends on the quality, amount and relevance of the backlinks that lead to your Play Store page. The better these three criteria, the more this factor affects your app ranking for the better.

But be careful: Even though relevant backlinks can benefit your app, irrelevant links could do more harm than good. Therefore, you have to establish a process to monitor and retrace all backlinks to your Play Store page.

Overview of the App Store Ranking Factors

Finally, we want to give you an overview of the important app store ranking factors and which store considers them.

Play Store App Store
Downloads ✓ ✓
Revenue (only paid apps) ✗ ✓
App Starts (usage) ✓ ✓
Number & Value of Reviews ✓ ✓
Keyword Relevance ✓ ✓
Recently Updated ✗ ✓
Retention/Uninstalls ✓ ✗
Country ✓ ✓
Social Proof ✓ ✗
Backlinks ✓ ✗

Differences in factors, which influence your rank in the app stores © ayeT-Studios

With the help of this table, you can figure out which factors you have to optimize in order to reach a good ranking in your chosen app store.

 

What is Location Based Marketing?

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Location-based marketing (or location-based advertising) is one of the new and trending topics in the mobile advertising world. Advertisers use the possibility to track users locally and provide location-based advertisements on their mobile devices.

Types of Location Based Marketing

In general, there are two concepts in location-based marketing: push and pull. You can categorize the push approach into two categories: Firstly, the not requested service is more frequently used. This means the user will get án advertisement based on his/her location until he/she decides not to get them anymore.
Secondly, the user can allow certain advertisers which or how many advertisment he/she receives.
The other case is the pull approach in which users are looking for a specific information, like a restaurant close to them. Advertisers who have a location based advertising strategy, can then provide the users with coupons or specific ads to get them to their store.
Location-based advertising is closely related to mobile advertising, which is divided into four types:

  • Messaging: like SMS or through the help of an messaging service like WhatsApp,
  • Display: Banners, Interstitials or
  • Search
  • Product placement

How Does Location Based Marketing Work?

Should advertisers want to use push-based LBA, they have to collect data of their potential users, like mobile phone number, email address, first name or other relevant informations.

When having all the necessary data together, the advertiser sends a message asking the user to confirm a subscription for a location based advertising service. If he/she agrees, the company can now provide them with rewards and geographically based offers.

Location based marketing according to the pull model gets in touch when the user is looking for location based information. Companies specialized their service and implemented i.e listings of yellow page companies. Thus, the user sees advertising on his portable device in response to his/her queries.

With the help of ayeT-Studios, you can also target your app marketing campaign to specific countries. Just select from our drop down menu!

What is the Benefit of Location Based Marketing

The most obvious benefit of location based marketing is the accuracy with which users are targeted. For example, if a user buys a specific book in a bookstore and accepts to be in the LBA program, the store can easily retarget the user when he/she is close to the store and present similar books or another book from the same series. The user is much more likely to visit the store again.

The second benefit of location based advertising is the fact that it makes the advertisement personal; it responds to the actual location of a customer and thus has a smaller chance to be recognized as spam.

A third benefit is the humongous amount of location based data collected. Advertisers can use services of data companies to enrich their marketing companies and scale their campaigns to reach out to many more potential customers.

Examples of Location Based Marketing Techniques

In the last part of this blogpost, we want to go a bit deeper and describe some of the possible location based marketing techniques:

Geo-Aware Targeting

Geo-Aware Targeting can be described as the origin of location based advertising, since it first appeared in the year 2010. With the help of geo-targeted data (given by the mobile provider) advertisers can display advertisements in real time on the screen of users who are close to a certain location. This advertising method is very effective to lead customers into a store.

Hyper-Contextual Targeting

Hyper-contextual Targeting is the next level of Geo-Aware Targeting because it combines and interprets different sets of data to a contextual result. This method is used to generate a meaningful advertisement for the user and tries to get direct purchases for the advertiser.

An example of hyper-contextual targeting could be a banner campaign in a suburb area, in which crime rates have been rising. A provider of security systems could target people living in this area and even get his/her banner delivered in the evening and night where the need for safe spaces is more imminent.

Place-Based Targeting

This location based advertising method refers to targeting a specific area in a specific time frame. The best and easiest example would be a big sports match at a stadium. Advertisers with a sports-related background could easily profit if they display advertisements to visitors of the match during this particularly time frame.

Geo-Fencing

This implies setting up a virtual “fence” around a targeted location using longitude and latidude information. This method is trying to get foot traffic i.e. to your store. If you own a shop in a mall you want the visitors to recognize your place. By setting the virtual fence around the borders of the mall, you can offer visitors coupons and special prices. When you own a restaurant you can also run your campaign around lunch or dinner time.

Geo-Conquesting

The fourth LBA method is special because it does not necessarily aim at potential users when they are close to your store, but it targets customers who are close to your competitors businesses. This method is often used by companies of the financial sector, telecommunications or restaurants.

ayet-Studios offers advertisers the option to target specific countries for their app marketing campaigns. It is very fast, easy-to-use and effective. Try it yourself!

 

 

How to Boost the Rank of Your App

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If you already have an app in the app stores, you should always look for new users. The most effective way to acquire new users constantly is a good position in the app stores.

There are some possibilities to boost your rankings in the app store. Some of them are for free and for some of them you have to pay. In this article, we will show you the best practises to choose from.

How Does Your App Rank in the Stores Right NOW?

At first, you have take a look at how your app is currently ranking in the app stores. The most important thing to know is how good your selected keywords rank in the charts. (If you want to read a more detailed guide on how to find the most fitting keywords read here) Google and Apple both do not provide details of where which keywords ranks in the charts. So you have to get that information from an external provider. We can recommend to use the service of AppAnnie or Sensor-Tower. A basic version of their service is available for free so you can try whether it works for you or not without spending any money.

Free possibilities to boost the ranking of your app

Free, in most cases, means free of charge, but not free of investment. The money you save has to be spent equivalently in time you have to put into work.

What you surely already know is the importance of app store optimization. (If you read here, you will find a very detailed guide on how to do app store optimization the right way)
You can make the biggest impact on organic installs and rankings when updating the store page of the app. If you found out for which keywords your app is ranking, you have to decide whether these keywords fir your marketing strategy. Maybe you found some keywords in the ranking, which you didn’t even know about! 
When updating the description, short description, screenshots and promo videos, the ranking algorithm is very likely to improve the rankings of your app to see whether the new features appeal to the user. You can also implement a feedback function in your app. The ranking algorithms of both app stores are rewarding highly rated apps with excellent visibilities in their stores.

Paid possibilities to boost the ranking of your app

The possibilities to boost your app in the app stores with the help of money are borderless. It is simple but true: the more users your app has, the higher your app’s app store rank will be. So when you spend money on advertising your app, in most cases your rankings will also improve.
There are two options on how you can acquire new users: You can reward them to use your app or you choose the non-incent way.
Rewarded installs have many faces. A very famous way to use rewarded installs is to use this advertising method in another app. Many games use lives or tires in their game cycle. So, the publishers of these apps let their users watch short videos, banners or even visit an app store page in exchange for the possibility to continue the gameplay. The other way to reward the users is to directly pay them to install and/or use the app of another developer. Mostly, this is organized by an offerwall where the users can see what they get to earn what kind of reward.

ayeT-Studios offers an all in one service where you can combine the advantages of rewarded and non-incent advertising to bring users to your app and therefore boost the rankings of your app.

All in all, we would suggest to combine all the methods we mentioned in this post to have the biggest impact. So, you should culminate all of your marketing efforts. Update your app store page, implement a review-CTA, buy banner and video ads and also reward other users to get impressions and leads. This way you can sky rocket your user flow and the rankings in the app stores.