To attract the attention of potential users for your app or mobile game, you have to market it. In this article, we will introduce you to effective app marketing strategies and explain them thoroughly.
Ways to Market Your App or Mobile Game
To get started, we collected a few strategies – both free and paid – in this overview:
| Free Options |
Paid Options |
- App Store Optimization
- Social Media & Landing Pages
- App Review & Promotion Sites
- Blogs
- Media Kit & Press
|
- Ad Networks
- Incent / Non-Incent Campaigns
- Various Combinations of Ad Formats & Bidding Types
- Influencer Marketing
|
Overview of effective free and paid app marketing strategies © ayeT-Studios
For more detailed insight on these methods, read our article about the basics of effective app promotion.
Special Options to Market an Android or iOS App
Besides the general strategies, we want to introduce you to some strategies that specifically apply to both Android and iOS apps.
Android App Marketing
Connect your marketing campaign with Google Adwords! This online advertising tool by Google lets you promote products via various ad formats, displayed on different channels. You can promote Android apps with it, too.
There are two campaign types you can choose from:
Universal App Campaign
This option enables you to promote Android apps via different ad formats and on several networks available by Google. Text and visual elements are taken from your app’s app store page (one more reason for ASO).
This campaign type is based on a CPI bidding system, meaning you can choose how much you are willing to pay for users installing or opening your Android app. This way, you can promote your Android app and increase your marketing budget if the results are satisfying.
Mobile App Installs Campaign
With such campaigns you only target one network to generate app installs. Depending on the specific campaign model, you can choose between CPA, CPV, and CPI as your bidding option to promote your Android app.
There are three different campaign models, each of them targeting another network:
- Display network app installs campaigns (text or image app install ads)
- Search network app installs campaigns (text app installs ads on)
- TrueView for app installs campaigns (video ads on YouTube)
According to your Android app promotion strategy and your target audience, you can select the campaign type that best fits your needs. With Google’s bidding system, you can adjust it to your current marketing budget. Click here for more information about mobile app installs campaigns with Google AdWords.
iOS App Marketing
Apple offers two options for your app marketing:
Search Ads
With Search Ads, iOS app developers are able to place their app on top of search results. Since more than half of app downloads are generated through search in the App Store, this is one great opportunity to promote your iOS app more effectively.
With its self-service dashboard, creating a Search Ad campaign is very easy. There is no minimum spend for it and costs only incur when users tap the ad. Apple has set a bidding system for this feature, which makes it possible to set a price according to your current budget.
In combination with ASO, you can take advantage of your app’s information (e.g. description) and graphics (e.g. screenshots) through “Search Match”. This feature takes metadata of the app from the App Store for your iOS app marketing. You can also either use keyword recommendations made by Apple or select keywords on your own, just like Google AdWords. It is not possible to change the ad creative, this data will only be taken from your metadata.
Furthermore, relevance is more important than bidding regarding apps being displayed via Search Ads. Here, Apple again shows that it prefers high-quality to monetization. Hence, when you’ve already done a great job with your ASO, you can draw on it.
Check out Apple’s website for more detailed information.
Apple’s Editorial Choice
This is no direct promotion tool for app developers but it may attract them to create the best app possible. Apple’s editors choose great iOS apps continually that are displayed in these special sections of the App Store – so Apple will promote your iOS app.
Next to its appearance, features and quality, your app can also get the chance to be placed by lowering its price for a limited time. So, consider offering a discount from time to time.
Rewarded vs. Non-Incent App Marketing
If you want use app Marketing to push the quantity of installs for an app, there are different ways to do so. You can buy installs and choose between incentivized and non-incentivized types, meaning:
- Users will either receive a reward for installing your application (incentivized) or
- they will download your app out of true interest and without being rewarded (non-incentivized).
Both types have different advantages and disadvantages.
Incentivized
In general, you can choose between two app promotion strategies when driving incentivized installs for your app. One of them is based on the amount of installs generated in a certain time whereas the other one considers the loyalty of your users.
Advantages and Disadvantages
As mentioned before, one advantage is the number of installs you can generate in a small period of time and the resulting boost of rank. Another important factor you should keep in mind is the cost for each kind of install:
The CPI (=cost per install) for incentivized installs is way cheaper than that of an app promotion strategy only based on non-incentivized ones. The downside of incentivized installs is that users might download and install your app only for the reward, resulting in less user engagement, lower lifetime value and smaller retention rates.
Non-Incentivized
The advantage on one side is the disadvantage on the other: Since users won’t receive a reward for installing your app, you have higher costs in order to generate the same amount of installs of an an incentivized campaign. If you’ve just started your app business, this could take a big chunk of your marketing budget.
Conclusion
Now, the most important question needs to be asked: Which type of install is suitable for your app promotion strategy?
Can you choose a method where you only deal with the benefits and leave the drawbacks behind?
- Take advantage of both of them. The mixture of rewarded and non-incent installs helps your app marketing strategy gather pace up and your app will climb up the charts.
App Marketing Campaigns
The main goal of app marketing is to acquire new users but there are various ways to advertise an app. These not only differ due according to the ad format, but also according to who is carrying the risk – the publisher or the advertiser?
Install Campaigns
With this app marketing campaign type the advertiser pays the publisher for every generated install (CPI). The install can be rewarded for the user or be of non-incentivized nature. If the advertiser wants the campaign to be incentivized, he/she can expect the download rates to be very high. Users install the app in order to get the reward.
For the publisher, incentivized installs are quite interesting, because they only want to deliver installs and do not care about what happens after the installation. For marketers, non-incentivized installs are more promising because a targeted group of users downloaded the app of their own interest. This results in higher retention rates and consequently a higher revenue for the developer of the app.
So, the difference between rewarded and non-rewarded installs also underlines the shifting of the carried risk between marketer and publisher. Rewarded installs pose a low risk for publishers but a high risk for the advertiser. Non-incent installs imply 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
Action campaigns offer a reward to the user, as there is always an objective the user has to fulfill. This mobile campaign type allows the advertisers to spend budget only if the user has fulfilled a specific action in their app. Like that, he/she gets to know the product a bit better and might continue to use it. Although the risk for the advertiser is the same as with incentivized install campaigns, the audience of the publisher might only take the action to get the reward.
Mobile Video Campaigns
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).
Here, the model 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 advertiser pays the publisher for delivered installs. The CPC bid-type only pays the user when he/she interacts with the ad and gets directed to a landing of a mobile browser or the page of an app store. As the action of clicking implies less work for the user than installing an app, the reward is a bit smaller. This can also mean that the user interacting with the video is generally interested in the product. The same applies to non-rewarded video ads. With this mobile campaign type, the publisher carries the risk and the advertiser only pays when a user interacts with the ad.
Non-Incent Video Ads
In terms of incent video ads, you have various options of implementing them in your app marketing strategy. You can either:
- place them in social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google or some video-focused ad networks,
- place them before, within or after a video on YouTube,
- include them on your app’s website or landing page or
- create videos for your app store page.
With all these methods, you are able to give more detailed insight into the functions and benefits of your app. If you create a professional and compelling video, it might just convince users of downloading your app!
Rewarded Video Ads
A rewarded video is short video clip, on average 15 to 30 seconds long, that is non-skippable and designed for in-app environments. It offers users a reward in return for watching the video, though the download itself is the user’s choice. Thereby, it represents a mixture of incent and non-incent advertising.
That is not the only feature of rewarded videos: they also provide huge advantages for both the user and the advertiser and benefit them alike! On the user’s side, they interact with this ad format by choice since rewarded videos are fully opt-in. Users only have to watch the video if they want to receive the reward. Hence, this format doesn’t disrupt the user experience but increases user engagement with the advertisement. On the developer’s side, this last point is very important: higher engagement rates also mean increasing revenue and higher viewability rates for advertisers. This interplay of both sides allows advertisers to monetize their app through advertisements without disturbing the experience for the user.
There are many more campaign types you can use to market your app, click here for more information.
App Marketing Costs and Budget
Knowing how to calculate your budget is crucial when wanting to conduct successful app marketing. First, you should select your key performance indicators (KPI) upon what you would like to achieve with your app. Following, we are going to present to you some of the most common calculations that you can use to calculate your budget for your user acquisition strategy.
Cost Per Install
The cost per install (CPI) measures the app marketing costs for ads that trigger an installation of your app. CPI varies a lot according to the ad formats you use. If you are using non-incent banner ads, you will most likely pay more for each install than when buying downloads via an incentivized offerwall. If you use an incentivized offerwall you can calculate very precisely how many installs you will get for a certain amount of money.
Cost Per Acquisition
This simple yet interesting formula helps you calculate app marketing costs because you can measure very clearly how effective your marketing efforts are. It is not limited to a specific model like CPI or CPAU.
For the mobile advertising industry, this pricing type is more commonly used for setting actions like completing a tutorial, reaching a certain level, registering an account or subscribing a newsletter.
Cost Per Active User
The cost per active user measures the app marketing costs for reaching users that will use your app actively. Every company needs to define for themselves what ‘active’ means. In this case, you might also hear the term ‘retention rate’.
Average Revenue Per User
The average revenue per user is the amount of revenue each of your active customers (on average) contributes in a specific period of time.
There are many more KPIs to optimize your app marketing strategy. Click here to get the full overview.
App Marketing Solutions
In this section of the article, we want to introduce and explain app marketing solutions that we developed for our customers.
Programmatic Buying
With Real Time Bidding (RTB), you can buy ad spaces like mobile banners, interstitials, and mobile video in real time via OpenRTB protocol.
The OpenRTB compliant ayeT-Studios DSP is the most versatile programmatic and managed supply source for precise and targeted buying of inventory. Our demand side platform comes with integrated programmatic and managed supply sources from thousands of publishers.
IAB Ad Unit Standards
Since our services fully support the IAB standards, ayeT-Studios can guarantee access to premium, brand-safe inventory across all supply sources. Since we are compatible with HTML5, Vast and VPAID 2.0, you can take full control of your media buying and maximize flexibility of where your ads can be served.
Data Driven Optimization
Rely on our data-driven approach and proprietary optimization algorithms to improve your advertising outcomes. Our algorithms will optimize your campaigns based on massive amounts of historic data, new data processed on a daily basis and a combination of multiple data points in order to make informed predictions, on which users will most likely show the highest interest for your ad and consequently result in a conversion.
In particular, all technical data points, such as the device model, operating system, location, and time, will be intelligently weighted, thereby enabling precise addressing of target audiences and informed decisions to buy inventory on a real time basis.
Fraud Prevention
We prevent your ad spend from possible fraud with the help of proprietary technology, strong partners, and a dedicated team.
We combine automated real-time data analysis and hands-on examination of accumulated historical data by our experts to identify abnormalities and fight publisher fraud. That way, we provide the highest level of security for your media buying. Additionally, you can monitor your performance and data in real-time with our dashboard.
In detail, we fight fraud by:
- Measuring performance discrepancies
- Using third party ad tracking
- Detecting non-human traffic (NHT)
- Monitoring statistical indicators
- Built-in proprietary technology to:
- Analyse abnormal user behavior
- Measure unexpected CTR/CR ratios
- Detect abnormalities in traffic quality in real-time
- Examine suspicious performance distribution
ayeT-Studios Dashboard
With our self-serving dashboard, we can provide our customers with full control over their media buying and marketing outcomes. You just have to setup a campaign by choosing a campaign type like install campaigns, engagement campaigns, banner ads or mobile video. If you want to target a specific audience, you can set granular data like targeting location, language, device, OS type and more. To guarantee a fully transparent campaign performance, we cooperate with third party tracking providers Appsflyer, Tune, Adjust or Kochava. Furthermore, with our dashboard, you can react to real-time reports fast and optimize across all supply channels.
To sum up all the advantages of our dashboard:
- Self-serve capabilities
- Real-time reporting
- Buy from ad exchanges and premium publishers
- Manage and optimize all your ad campaigns with ease
- Optimize across all supply sources
- Precise targeting
- Integrated third party tracking
- Multiple bid types available
ayeT-Studios secures public funds “Niedrigschwellige Innovationsförderung”
/in Company Updates/by ayetstudiosayeT-Studios is happy to announce that it managed to secure public funds in a project application send to the NBank. Title of the project application was:
“Further enhancement of the mobile marketing platform from ayeT-Studios”
We are happy that our application was selected among many others worth supporting and we thank the whole NBank team for supporting us along the application process. The goal of the project is to further enhance the offerwall and the adjacent platform functionalities with a focus on user-based ad serving.
Where are the funds coming from?
The project is funded and supported by the European Fonds For Regional Development (EFRE) and by Stronger Developed Region (SER) by the state Lower Saxony.
Project content
ayeT-Studios was founded in 2014 and has since developed from an app publisher to an advertising platform with the aim of efficiently and programmatically connecting advertisers and publishers.
In early 2018, the ayeT-Studios publisher platform was introduced to offer publishers (app publishers) an advertising-based opportunity to monetize their apps. The first advertising format at that time was the Offerwall. In the following 12 to 18 months, the platform was primarily developed horizontally. In addition to the existing Offerwall, the advertising formats Rewarded Video, Video and Interstitials were added.
The exchange with customers since the beginning of 2018 showed that the individual advertising formats often lacked the technical and functional depth to either fully meet the requirements of the publishers or to keep up with the performance of some market-leading competitors.
Performance comparisons among advertising platforms are often carried out by publishers using KPIs like earnings per click (EPC) or effective cost per million (eCPM). That way publishers can measure the efficiency of monetizing their own inventory (traffic). The goal of the publisher is to sell every impression or click as good as possible. The goal of the advertiser, however, is to buy every user as profitably as possible.
Finding the most efficient solution to this optimization problem is task of the advertising network in order to be attractive for advertisers and publishers.
As part of the application for Niedrigschwellige Innovationsförderung, several work packages were defined to solve this optimization problem. These work packages can be roughly divided into the following main groups:
In addition to expanding the functionality for publishers and advertisers (new publisher and advertiser features), the avoidance of inefficiencies, which generally have a negative impact on performance metrics for advertisers and publishers, should be mentioned. Inefficiencies can be avoided in particular if fraud is minimized. For this, a user-based serving of ads is essential.
The contact with customers as well as the analysis of the strongest competitors within the past 12 to 18 months have shown that further vertical development of the platform is the next logical step for ayeT-Studios. The main focus should be to improve the most used advertising format of ayeT-Studios, the Offerwall, as well as working on the expansion of the associated platform functionalities.
App Monetization
/in Blog/by Pascal LudyniaHow to Monetize an App
/in App Monetization/by Pascal LudyniaHaving your own app available in the app stores with thousands or even millions of users, is the dream of most developers. Well and frequently used apps offer their owners the possibility to earn a decent income. In this article, a general overview of the different available monetization models and their considerable positive and negative aspects are expounded.
App Monetization Models
When thinking about monetizing their apps, developers can choose from a broad variety of possibilities. There are three questions, the developers have to ask themselves:
You should keep in mind to balance your effort in acquiring new users compared to earning revenue. Some apps can be monetized directly after the user installed them, while other monetization models work more adequately when the user is given time to engage with an app, before the developer can use its potential. The developer can decide on how his/her timetable and whether or not the possibility to decrease revenue initially in order to accumulate new users is a good plan of action. Developers should decide on and integrate their monetization method before launching their app in the app stores. This way, the app can be both a useful tool for the user and a business for the developer. In most cases, the possibility to mix different monetization methods to maximize the revenue turns out as advisable.
Paid Apps
This is probably the most straightforward monetization model. It simply states that your app is not free, if a person wants to use it, he/she has to purchase it from an app store. Hence, the developer makes a profit right when the app is installed.
For paid apps, it is extremely crucial to have an appealing app store page along with a unique name, interesting screenshots and a well written description, pointing out significant benefits. If you’re interested in-app store optimization (ASO), read our comprehensive article. The advantage of this monetization model is that developers earn money with every download, and users are more likely to engage properly with the app since they already spent some of their money for it. Furthermore, paid apps possess the possibility for a cleaner interface because no in-app advertising is needed. Attributable to the high competition within app stores, paid apps have to be more innovative and fulfil their purpose flawlessly, serving the user’s anticipations. The negative side of the paid app monetization model is the fact that the app stores are already crowded with (good) apps for nearly any purpose. In most cases, there is also a free app, which does a specific job similar to its paid counterpart, but with a different monetization model. Over the last years, paid app monetization models are a shrinking part of the app store revenue.
The decreasing revenue of paid apps from 2011 to 2017 © statista/ayeT-Studios
Ad Revenue
This monetization model allows developers to offer their app in the app stores for free. The goal for the developer is to gain a decent user-base and gather user information and information about the users’ interactions within the app. The collected data is sorted and sold to advertisers specialized in targeted ad placements. A good example for the ad revenue monetization model is the social media platform Facebook. Facebook’s users do not pay directly to use the platform, but their data is used to sell highly targeted advertisements.
App developers can choose from a broad variety of ad formats. There are different options for the publisher (developer of the app) to get paid when implementing advertisements on his/her app. For example, a publisher can be paid if a user sees a banner while using the app, but there are also cost models where the advertiser only pays the publisher after a certain action was taken by the user. If you want to know more about the different cost models, feel free to read our article.
The negative side of the ad revenue monetization model is the fact that it is not very innovative in its form and the publisher runs the risk of annoying his users with ads, who will then stop using the app as a result. App developers also have to think about which ad format to choose, because the space on the screen is limited and oversized ads could be recognized as disturbing by the user.
Some developers also choose to implement an option for the user to make the app ad free. This is another version of the app: ad-free and with a price tag. Another possibility would be for the payment of the “ad free fee” to be inside the app. Some publishers integrate an option where users can pay directly in i.e. Euros or Dollars, while other publishers decide let users pay for the ad removal with an integrated in-app currency. You will learn more about in-app currencies later in this article.
Freemium
Freemium is a cross of the words free and premium. With this monetization model, the user can download and try an app for free, but some parts of the app are separated with a paywall, meaning the user has to spend money in order to get the full version of the product. This monetization model works great with mobile games, where, for example, the first levels are free, enabling the user to get to know the game and its mechanics. At some point, to continue playing or to unlock more levels he/she has to pay. The more the users engage with the game in the beginning and the more fun it is, the higher are the chances that they will turn into paying customers.
This monetization strategy allows you to tease users with a “light version” of your app and hook them so that they buy additional features. Freemium developers can showcase their apps and get a large engaged user base. The difficult part is to find the perfect spot between too little free functions (the user does not engage properly) on the one hand, and too many free functions (the user sees no point in paying for additional content) on the other hand.
In-App Purchases
In-app purchases are exactly what they sound like. To summarize, this monetization model refers to selling virtual goods inside of your app which is, in most cases, free. Apple separates in-app purchases into 4 categories:
Consumable
Consumables are bought by the users any time they want them and cannot be downloaded twice for free. These consumables could be game currencies, game hints, extra health or lives in a game, extra experience or a package of exports to a new file format.
Non-Consumable
These are extras connected to your account. You buy it and you can use it forever. In addition, the non-consumable stays with your account if you change your device or reinstall the app after a break. This could be the upgrade to a pro edition of an app, the removal of ads, full game unlock, unlimited hints, extra characters, extra accessories, bonus game levels, city guide maps, etc.
The positive side of this monetization method is that if you have programmed a good app that users like to engage with, you can generate revenue during a long period of time. Additionally, this kind of monetization is quite risk free, because only engaged users are paying for it and there are no additional marketing costs. It is important to note that users, which have already made an in-app purchase, are more likely to have a higher retention.
The negative side of the in-app purchase is that the app store usually takes a cut of the generated revenue. In some cases, in-app purchases have a bad reputation, especially in the gaming sector.
Non-Renewing Subscriptions
This could be extra content, which the user can get access to for a fixed period of time. Users can renew their subscription when the preset period is over. A very good example is the subscription for a streaming app.
Auto-Reneweing Subscriptions
This subscription model also buys content for a specific time frame, but will renew itself automatically at the end of each billing cycle. For the subscription to end, the user will have to terminate it. Some good examples for this method is a newspaper subscription or the subscription for a streaming platform like Netflix or Hulu.
The beneficial side of a monetization model based on subscriptions is that subscribed users are in general more loyal and will return frequently. In addition, it generates a constant revenue flow throughout the year. The downside of this model is that it is not suitable for all verticals and categories.
Rewarded Advertising
App developers can also choose to reward their users for interacting with an ad. This could be an extra life for a game or some boosts or hints in a game, or even discounts in a shopping app. Advertisers look out for publishers with a decent amount of traffic and pay them i.e. for installs, subscriptions or views of a video clip. The publishers display the ads to their user bases and reward them for interacting. You can get a more detailed overview of incentivized and non-incentivized advertising here.
On the positive side, rewarded advertising offers the user a real value while the publisher also generates revenue at the same time. However, not all rewarded advertising methods are suitable for every app. For example, if there is an offerwall in a mobile game, the users do not want to exit the game just to earn the in-app currency. For games, rewarded videos or interstitials seem to be the most fitting model.
Conclusion
The trend seems to go in the direction of blended models of app monetization. Thus, the combination of two or more monetization models seems to be useful, although it will not fit every kind of app. You might on the one hand integrate a banner advertising SDK and also make it freemium. However, some monetization model combinations do not work well. For example, if a user already made a subscription and pays a monthly fee to consume content, he/she will likely be unhappy with interstitial or video ad interruptions.
We would like to invite you to use our SDK and earn money with your users. We at ayeT-Studios developed an easy-to integrate SDK with a lightweight filesize of only 175kb. It is completely free to use and you can start to earn money very fast. Click here and start generating revenue!
How to do App Monetization Right
/in App Monetization/by Alina DettmerLike all creators, developers want to make enough profit with their app to justify all that work they put into it. In this article, the options you have as a publisher and which tools will help you with mobile ad monetization will be explained.
Mobile Ad Monetization
Ad monetization refers to the making of money from a mobile app without charging users for it altogether. Most users hesitate when asked to pay for apps since the vast majority of them are available free of charge. However, according to The Verge, free apps are the source of 98 percent of Google Play revenue.
There are a few different models to follow when monetizing your app without charging your users for it:
In this article, the options of monetizing a mobile app through in-app advertising will be the focus.
Which types of Ad Monetization exist and what tools can you use?
In the following, we will explain different types of ad monetization in greater detail. Additionally, we collected a few tools to help you implement app monetization into your marketing strategy.
In-App Ad Monetization
With in-app advertising, app owners have the opportunity to sell advertising spaces to advertisers or publishers and make a profit with their app. Mainly, the real-time-bidding market controls and determines this whole process. This means, every time the app is loading, the highest bidder of a real-time auction can place his ad within the sold advertising space of the app. You can provide your own advertising spaces for advertisers through ad networks or ad exchanges.
So, the main idea of in-app advertising is placing a banner or any other form of advertising inside an app. The biggest advantage of in-app advertising is the direct interaction of the user with the app as the ad is displayed. This is why most people will react to the ad, as opposed to traditional display advertising where it might even be overseen. The main problem here is the banner blindness of many users, which means that users ignore banners altogether or even get irritated by them, which degrades the user experience. Therefore, you have to be careful and balance the amount of advertising and content. Should the user feel restricted by it, he/she might react annoyed and abandon the app.
Thus, the success of in-app ad monetization depends on your ability to evade banner blindness and to balance advertisement and content.
Native Ad Monetization
You can describe native advertising as paid content that matches a publication’s editorial standards while meeting the audience’s expectations. Although, some people view it as some kind of deception since advertisements are hidden between generic content, as you match them by appearance. Some even compare it to product placement.
Defined by the International Advertising Bureau, these are the six main ad units for Native Advertising:
Since native advertising is relatively new, its technique is not as mature as display advertising quite yet. You can tell, because there are no definite options to optimize or analyze its success or to target one specific audience.
Always find the right balance between ads and relevant content to avoid angering your users! Also, you should always mark ads as such, for example as “sponsored content”, to avoid getting accused of deception. Additionally, this is a form of highlighting the ad instead of hiding it which corresponds with the FTC Guidelines for Native Advertising.
Native Advertising should always offer an added value for users: it is not a collection of random advertising deals but ads that match the content of the website. This not only refers to the appearance but to the writing style and topics as well. Further, you should have a wide range of native ads since multiple can be displayed at the same time.
Advantages for Your Mobile Ad Monetization
Now, we want to look a the advantages of native advertising for mobile ad monetization. For one, native ads perform ten times better than any other ad format. Additionally, they gain three times the amount of attention as display ads. The reason for this is the smaller size of mobile screens, whereby the user sees the ad very quickly. Naturally, more attention leads to more clicks. For instance, native ads have a click-through-rate of 0,15%, which is higher than that of display advertising (0,06%). Hence, native ads are also a particularly great tool to monetize mobile web traffic. The following chart shows the estimated growth in native advertising revenue over the next years.
Furthermore, native ads have 23 percent higher ratings in terms of quality than display ads do. According this fact, it can be said that users prefer mobile native ads over other ad formats.
In conclusion, native advertising is a great chance for advertisers to increase their revenue. The most important feature of native advertising is the transparency for the user where the content ends and the advertisement begins. To address the user successfully, you should only choose to cooperate with companies or brands that fit your own opinions and your users’ interests.
Global Traffic Monetization
The easiest way to reach a wide audience is to spread your ads on international websites. This way, you are able to monetize the traffic you generate in other countries.
1. Clarify important legal questions!
When you want to monetize the traffic of a specific country, you need to know its legal situation. If not, you take the risk of violating existing market rules and guidelines. Thus, as a first step, you need to inform yourself about current laws and regulations.
For instance, there are countries that have a very strict cookie policy like the UK. If these rules are broken, the advertisers could face some severe penalties.
2. Use a Supply Side Platform (SSP)
If your goal is to acquire advertisers that want to reach global audiences, you should connect with an SSP. They have access to global demand and you have the opportunity to test the value of your international traffic.
Be sure to keep inventory price differences from country to country in mind. The key factor for optimal CPMs, fill rates and revenue is the quality of your ad – high viewability and no fraud. Although, ad placements on your own side might get better results, placements you run with an SSP have higher impact and also higher CPMs. Especially, if your content and users are in great demand with global brands.
3. Team Up with an already Established Platform
Following the previous point, we recommend working together with a partner of your current publisher monetization platform. This is an additional option of gaining access to new markets and driving revenue for international inventory. Besides that, they already have a good reputation in big markets, which gives validity to your campaigns and evokes trust internationally.
4. Understand your International users
It is very important for you to know where the visitors of your site come from. That way, you can inform the SSPs and publisher-monetization-platforms to make sure that they serve ads to relevant international audiences. This will lead to better performance of your campaigns and in the end to higher CPMs.
All in all, global traffic monetization might bring you additional value. However, you have to analyse the areas where most of that traffic originates from and what you have to consider, especially in terms of laws and regulations. Also, always run tests with an SSP first, to see how users react to your ad inventory.
Ad Monetization Platform
If you decide to contact an ad monetization platform to help you with your app monetization, you need to take the following performance metrics into consideration:
Before partnering up with a specialized company, look closely at how they can actually benefit you.
Mobile Ad Mediation
Ad Mediation is a technology that allows publishers to distribute and monetize their advertising inventories more efficiently.
Publishers usually have more advertising inventories than they can sell on their own. Since ad mediation is working through multiple ad networks, it enables publishers to optimize the distribution of their advertising inventory. That means they can match the right networks to the right inventory. This way, publishers can optimize the fill rates of their inventories and their eCPM (effective cost per mille) so they can get the most out of every impression.
The main benefit of ad mediation is that it enables publishers to distribute between different ad networks with just a single SDK. Thus it makes the delivery of advertising inventory to the suitable ad network a lot easier because app developers don’t have to manage the distribution individually for every single ad network.
Ad mediation usually works according to the waterfall system. It is based on a list of integrated networks, which are prioritized according to their previous sales. When choosing an ad network, the ad mediation solution starts by requesting the network at the top of the waterfall. It then makes its way down to the next one if the first ad network has no availability. This way, ad mediation can guarantee to generate the highest paid ad for the inventory of the publisher.
How to Choose the Right Ad Format for Mobile Ad Monetization
In the following, you will be introduced to the ad solutions ayeT-Studios is offering to publishers who want to monetize their app. You will also learn about the ways, in which each ad format can benefit your app.
Rewarded Offerwall
With an offerwall, publishers can display various advertisements that feature other apps and different rewards.
Then, users can choose from a wide variety of relevant offers and decide which ads they want to engage with.
Rewarded Video
With rewarded videos from ayeT-Studios, publishers have the opportunity to reward the users of their app with virtual in-app currency.
In turn, this will most likely lead to an increase of user engagement and in-app purchases.
Rewarded Interstitial
Publishers can place rewarded interstitial ads in between levels to gain the attention of their users. The main point is that there is a natural breaking point within the app flow so the user experience won’t be disturbed.
With rewarded interstitial ads, the user gets the chance to earn in-app currency.
Tips and Best Practices for Mobile Ad Monetization
Lastly, we have a few tips and best practices for successful mobile ad monetization.
Give Variety to Your Ads
You should never show the same ad over and over again since this could cause ad fatigue. This implies that your users get used to the ad and interact less with it. Therefore, we advise you to vary the ads and to continuously show new ads as well.
An extra tip: ads, which the user sees early on in the app flow are much more likely to convert than an ad, which the users sees after a longer period of time. You can observe the same phenomenon with users who interact with the app for quite some time. Ads that are seen by newer users have higher conversion rates. Long-term users on the other hand react less to advertisements over time. So, if you focus on optimizing conversion rate, maybe you should avoid displaying ads to “older” users.
Let Users Avoid Your Ads if They Want to!
Give your users the option to avoid ads if they don’t want to see them or feel disturbed while interacting with the app. For instance, you can do that by offering a respective in-app-purchase. It is also a good idea to provide added value for the user with additional game items or special features.
Pre-Cache to Avoid User Frustration
With pre-caching you make sure that your ads are loading fast enough. Ads that take forever to load not only frustrate users, they also make conversions more difficult. On one hand, this might be acceptable with some formats that are often overlooked or don’t disturb the user experience like banner or native ads. On the other hand, ads that cover the whole screen and thereby some of the content as well, affect the user experience negatively. Regarding rewarded videos, this leads to a negative effect on app retention since the app can’t answer the user’s expectations.
Therefore, pre-caching is an important step in your mobile ad monetization. If you cooperate with an ad network that offers pre-caching you should implement this into your app. If not, the cooperation could be rather risky. And if you place your ads through direct deals, you should analyse the content delivery network (CDN) and its caching policies thoroughly.
Analyse the Performance of Your Ads
Keep track of the ads that you release to see how users interact with them. This is especially important if you cooperate with various ad networks at the same time and need to manage different ad units. Oftentimes, there are three major problems that can arise quickly:
But you can avoid these difficulties early on if you frequently analyze the performance of your ads!
Mobile Ad Monetization Trends
At last, we want to look at a few trends and innovations that will change the monetization landscape. For one, all video formats but especially rewarded videos will gain more strength over the next years due to its user engaging nature.
Similar to videos, playable ads give users the possibility of testing a new app or game before downloading it.
At the moment, the newest form of advertising is augmented reality. So, we will certainly see more augmented reality formats like videos with the opportunity of monetizing apps soon.
All in all, mobile ad monetization is a large field with many opportunities for both publishers and advertisers. The most important goal is to catch the attention of many users AND to convert them into loyal customers.
China’s “Singles’ Day” Goes Mobile
/in Industry News/by Pascal LudyniaWhat “Black Friday” is for the American market, is called “Singles’ Day” in China. Singles’ Day, originally created for single people by Chinese students in the nineties, has become the biggest online and offline shopping day in the country. Alibaba capitalised on this day and racked up an astounding US$ 25.3 billion (RMB 168.2 billion) through Alipay. This implies an increase in the Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) by 39% compared to 2016.
Through Alipay, the mobile and online payment system of Alibaba, 90% of the GMV was generated on mobile devices. This shows an increase in mobile sales by about 8% from last year’s 82%. Over the last years, mobile purchases have been increased more and more.
The growth of mobile purchases during Singles Day in China (©Alibaba/ayeT-Studios)
Not only are the percentages of mobile purchases ordinary, but the amount of payment transactions is at its peak with 1.48 billion per day, and 256,000 transactions per second as well.
Daniel Zhang, the CEO of Alibaba Group says that “more than $25bn of GMV in one day is not just a sales figure. It represents the aspiration for quality consumption of the Chinese consumers, and it reflects how merchants and consumers alike have now fully embraced the integration of online and offline retail.”
This year during the Singles’ Day, there were 60,000 international brands available to Chinese consumers, consumers from 225 countries and regions have completed transactions. There were 167 merchants generating more than RMB100 million in sales, 17 merchants surpassed RMB500 million (US$75.4 million) in sales, and 6 merchants surpassed RMB1 billion (US$150.9 million) in sales.
From these numbers it is only a matter of time until Singles’ Day will be a worldwide shopping event.
How to do App Marketing
/in Mobile Marketing/by Alina DettmerTo attract the attention of potential users for your app or mobile game, you have to market it. In this article, we will introduce you to effective app marketing strategies and explain them thoroughly.
Ways to Market Your App or Mobile Game
To get started, we collected a few strategies – both free and paid – in this overview:
Overview of effective free and paid app marketing strategies © ayeT-Studios
For more detailed insight on these methods, read our article about the basics of effective app promotion.
Special Options to Market an Android or iOS App
Besides the general strategies, we want to introduce you to some strategies that specifically apply to both Android and iOS apps.
Android App Marketing
Connect your marketing campaign with Google Adwords! This online advertising tool by Google lets you promote products via various ad formats, displayed on different channels. You can promote Android apps with it, too.
There are two campaign types you can choose from:
Universal App Campaign
This option enables you to promote Android apps via different ad formats and on several networks available by Google. Text and visual elements are taken from your app’s app store page (one more reason for ASO).
This campaign type is based on a CPI bidding system, meaning you can choose how much you are willing to pay for users installing or opening your Android app. This way, you can promote your Android app and increase your marketing budget if the results are satisfying.
Mobile App Installs Campaign
With such campaigns you only target one network to generate app installs. Depending on the specific campaign model, you can choose between CPA, CPV, and CPI as your bidding option to promote your Android app.
There are three different campaign models, each of them targeting another network:
According to your Android app promotion strategy and your target audience, you can select the campaign type that best fits your needs. With Google’s bidding system, you can adjust it to your current marketing budget. Click here for more information about mobile app installs campaigns with Google AdWords.
iOS App Marketing
Apple offers two options for your app marketing:
Search Ads
With Search Ads, iOS app developers are able to place their app on top of search results. Since more than half of app downloads are generated through search in the App Store, this is one great opportunity to promote your iOS app more effectively.
With its self-service dashboard, creating a Search Ad campaign is very easy. There is no minimum spend for it and costs only incur when users tap the ad. Apple has set a bidding system for this feature, which makes it possible to set a price according to your current budget.
In combination with ASO, you can take advantage of your app’s information (e.g. description) and graphics (e.g. screenshots) through “Search Match”. This feature takes metadata of the app from the App Store for your iOS app marketing. You can also either use keyword recommendations made by Apple or select keywords on your own, just like Google AdWords. It is not possible to change the ad creative, this data will only be taken from your metadata.
Furthermore, relevance is more important than bidding regarding apps being displayed via Search Ads. Here, Apple again shows that it prefers high-quality to monetization. Hence, when you’ve already done a great job with your ASO, you can draw on it.
Check out Apple’s website for more detailed information.
Apple’s Editorial Choice
This is no direct promotion tool for app developers but it may attract them to create the best app possible. Apple’s editors choose great iOS apps continually that are displayed in these special sections of the App Store – so Apple will promote your iOS app.
Next to its appearance, features and quality, your app can also get the chance to be placed by lowering its price for a limited time. So, consider offering a discount from time to time.
Rewarded vs. Non-Incent App Marketing
If you want use app Marketing to push the quantity of installs for an app, there are different ways to do so. You can buy installs and choose between incentivized and non-incentivized types, meaning:
Both types have different advantages and disadvantages.
Incentivized
In general, you can choose between two app promotion strategies when driving incentivized installs for your app. One of them is based on the amount of installs generated in a certain time whereas the other one considers the loyalty of your users.
Advantages and Disadvantages
As mentioned before, one advantage is the number of installs you can generate in a small period of time and the resulting boost of rank. Another important factor you should keep in mind is the cost for each kind of install:
The CPI (=cost per install) for incentivized installs is way cheaper than that of an app promotion strategy only based on non-incentivized ones. The downside of incentivized installs is that users might download and install your app only for the reward, resulting in less user engagement, lower lifetime value and smaller retention rates.
Non-Incentivized
The advantage on one side is the disadvantage on the other: Since users won’t receive a reward for installing your app, you have higher costs in order to generate the same amount of installs of an an incentivized campaign. If you’ve just started your app business, this could take a big chunk of your marketing budget.
Conclusion
Now, the most important question needs to be asked: Which type of install is suitable for your app promotion strategy?
Can you choose a method where you only deal with the benefits and leave the drawbacks behind?
App Marketing Campaigns
The main goal of app marketing is to acquire new users but there are various ways to advertise an app. These not only differ due according to the ad format, but also according to who is carrying the risk – the publisher or the advertiser?
Install Campaigns
With this app marketing campaign type the advertiser pays the publisher for every generated install (CPI). The install can be rewarded for the user or be of non-incentivized nature. If the advertiser wants the campaign to be incentivized, he/she can expect the download rates to be very high. Users install the app in order to get the reward.
For the publisher, incentivized installs are quite interesting, because they only want to deliver installs and do not care about what happens after the installation. For marketers, non-incentivized installs are more promising because a targeted group of users downloaded the app of their own interest. This results in higher retention rates and consequently a higher revenue for the developer of the app.
So, the difference between rewarded and non-rewarded installs also underlines the shifting of the carried risk between marketer and publisher. Rewarded installs pose a low risk for publishers but a high risk for the advertiser. Non-incent installs imply 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
Action campaigns offer a reward to the user, as there is always an objective the user has to fulfill. This mobile campaign type allows the advertisers to spend budget only if the user has fulfilled a specific action in their app. Like that, he/she gets to know the product a bit better and might continue to use it. Although the risk for the advertiser is the same as with incentivized install campaigns, the audience of the publisher might only take the action to get the reward.
Mobile Video Campaigns
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).
Here, the model 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 advertiser pays the publisher for delivered installs. The CPC bid-type only pays the user when he/she interacts with the ad and gets directed to a landing of a mobile browser or the page of an app store. As the action of clicking implies less work for the user than installing an app, the reward is a bit smaller. This can also mean that the user interacting with the video is generally interested in the product. The same applies to non-rewarded video ads. With this mobile campaign type, the publisher carries the risk and the advertiser only pays when a user interacts with the ad.
Non-Incent Video Ads
In terms of incent video ads, you have various options of implementing them in your app marketing strategy. You can either:
With all these methods, you are able to give more detailed insight into the functions and benefits of your app. If you create a professional and compelling video, it might just convince users of downloading your app!
Rewarded Video Ads
A rewarded video is short video clip, on average 15 to 30 seconds long, that is non-skippable and designed for in-app environments. It offers users a reward in return for watching the video, though the download itself is the user’s choice. Thereby, it represents a mixture of incent and non-incent advertising.
That is not the only feature of rewarded videos: they also provide huge advantages for both the user and the advertiser and benefit them alike! On the user’s side, they interact with this ad format by choice since rewarded videos are fully opt-in. Users only have to watch the video if they want to receive the reward. Hence, this format doesn’t disrupt the user experience but increases user engagement with the advertisement. On the developer’s side, this last point is very important: higher engagement rates also mean increasing revenue and higher viewability rates for advertisers. This interplay of both sides allows advertisers to monetize their app through advertisements without disturbing the experience for the user.
There are many more campaign types you can use to market your app, click here for more information.
App Marketing Costs and Budget
Knowing how to calculate your budget is crucial when wanting to conduct successful app marketing. First, you should select your key performance indicators (KPI) upon what you would like to achieve with your app. Following, we are going to present to you some of the most common calculations that you can use to calculate your budget for your user acquisition strategy.
Cost Per Install
The cost per install (CPI) measures the app marketing costs for ads that trigger an installation of your app. CPI varies a lot according to the ad formats you use. If you are using non-incent banner ads, you will most likely pay more for each install than when buying downloads via an incentivized offerwall. If you use an incentivized offerwall you can calculate very precisely how many installs you will get for a certain amount of money.
Cost Per Acquisition
This simple yet interesting formula helps you calculate app marketing costs because you can measure very clearly how effective your marketing efforts are. It is not limited to a specific model like CPI or CPAU.
For the mobile advertising industry, this pricing type is more commonly used for setting actions like completing a tutorial, reaching a certain level, registering an account or subscribing a newsletter.
Cost Per Active User
The cost per active user measures the app marketing costs for reaching users that will use your app actively. Every company needs to define for themselves what ‘active’ means. In this case, you might also hear the term ‘retention rate’.
Average Revenue Per User
The average revenue per user is the amount of revenue each of your active customers (on average) contributes in a specific period of time.
There are many more KPIs to optimize your app marketing strategy. Click here to get the full overview.
App Marketing Solutions
In this section of the article, we want to introduce and explain app marketing solutions that we developed for our customers.
Programmatic Buying
With Real Time Bidding (RTB), you can buy ad spaces like mobile banners, interstitials, and mobile video in real time via OpenRTB protocol.
The OpenRTB compliant ayeT-Studios DSP is the most versatile programmatic and managed supply source for precise and targeted buying of inventory. Our demand side platform comes with integrated programmatic and managed supply sources from thousands of publishers.
IAB Ad Unit Standards
Since our services fully support the IAB standards, ayeT-Studios can guarantee access to premium, brand-safe inventory across all supply sources. Since we are compatible with HTML5, Vast and VPAID 2.0, you can take full control of your media buying and maximize flexibility of where your ads can be served.
Data Driven Optimization
Rely on our data-driven approach and proprietary optimization algorithms to improve your advertising outcomes. Our algorithms will optimize your campaigns based on massive amounts of historic data, new data processed on a daily basis and a combination of multiple data points in order to make informed predictions, on which users will most likely show the highest interest for your ad and consequently result in a conversion.
In particular, all technical data points, such as the device model, operating system, location, and time, will be intelligently weighted, thereby enabling precise addressing of target audiences and informed decisions to buy inventory on a real time basis.
Fraud Prevention
We prevent your ad spend from possible fraud with the help of proprietary technology, strong partners, and a dedicated team.
We combine automated real-time data analysis and hands-on examination of accumulated historical data by our experts to identify abnormalities and fight publisher fraud. That way, we provide the highest level of security for your media buying. Additionally, you can monitor your performance and data in real-time with our dashboard.
In detail, we fight fraud by:
ayeT-Studios Dashboard
With our self-serving dashboard, we can provide our customers with full control over their media buying and marketing outcomes. You just have to setup a campaign by choosing a campaign type like install campaigns, engagement campaigns, banner ads or mobile video. If you want to target a specific audience, you can set granular data like targeting location, language, device, OS type and more. To guarantee a fully transparent campaign performance, we cooperate with third party tracking providers Appsflyer, Tune, Adjust or Kochava. Furthermore, with our dashboard, you can react to real-time reports fast and optimize across all supply channels.
To sum up all the advantages of our dashboard:
How to Market Your App Effectively
/in App Marketing/by Pascal LudyniaIf 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:
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
/in Mobile Advertising/by Pascal LudyniaWherever 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!
/in Mobile Campaign Types/by Alina DettmerRewarded 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.
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
/in Mobile Campaign Types/by Alina DettmerThere 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:
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.