If you’re in another line of work, however, you may only be thinking of mobile as a marketing channel or as a utilitarian tool for things like wayfinding, property management, or simply sharing helpful information. If that’s the case, you’re leaving money on the table.

What Is an App Monetization Strategy?

Simply put, it’s a plan for driving revenue via your mobile app, using one or a combination of different app monetization models. It’s best to consider and plan for monetization during the Strategy phase, so you don’t have to force-fit something later.

Outside of direct mCommerce, there are five basic options:

• Pay-to-download (or “Paid”): Pretty straightforward. These are apps that you pay $X to download.
• Subscription: Users pay a monthly fee via the app stores.
• Free (“Freemium”) with in-app purchases: The app is free to download but the publisher makes money on in-app purchases that provide an enhanced, “premium” experience. In games, these are usually micro-transactions such as special gear, extra lives, weapons, gaming levels, etc. In other types of apps, these could be access to exclusive content behind a paywall.
• Limited Freemium: The app is free to download but is limited in one of two ways—either the user can access full functionality for a short time only OR the free version only offers basic functionality, such as a few game levels. The idea is to entice users to try before they buy, hoping the app experience is compelling enough to convert them to a fully paid or subscription version.
• Free to download, with advertising: In-app advertising is an increasingly common way to monetize all types of apps. Users will welcome ads if they are well-targeted, relevant, interesting and non-disruptive to the user experience. It’s even better if the advertising adds value by connecting users with rewards or exclusive content (as in sponsored gameplay integrations).

According to App Annie’s recent worldwide survey of app professionals, in-app purchases and in-app advertising were the most popular monetization strategies, however many of those surveyed expected subscription and mCommerce to become more popular over time.

Developing a Sound Monetization Strategy

There is no cut-and-dried monetization strategy that works for every industry or every type of app. Ultimately, your team will determine the type(s) of monetization you want to include in your app by carefully evaluating a number of considerations, including:

• Your app experience: User experience (UX) should be your most important consideration. Any monetization strategy you choose should align with the overall experience and preferably enhance it.
• Your audience: Across various demographic categories, people feel differently about paying for an app or making in-app purchases, and their behavior varies accordingly. According to Gartner, people in the 25-34 age bracket spend the most on both paid apps and in-app transactions (thanks, older Millennials!). Those on the younger side of Gen X (35-44) come in second, but they spend more on in-app transactions than paid downloads. In addition, women spend less overall on paid downloads and in-app transactions—but they’re more likely to try a freemium approach.
• Your business goals: Monetization should always complement your overarching business goals, not take away from them.
• What the competition’s doing: Check out other apps in the same category. How are they monetizing? Does their approach complement or detract from their UX?

Though game developers pioneered it, mobile app monetization is still a developing field. If your team lacks expertise in monetization, consider working with an expert partner. And if in-app advertising may be part of your mix, seek out a monetization partner with not only the requisite experience but also trong brand relationships and robust data sharing. Want to learn more? Download our checklist, 6 Smarter Questions To Ask Your Monetization Partners.

DOWNLOAD THE EBOOK

The post Understanding Monetization Strategies and Why Your App Needs One appeared first on Phunware.

That should sound pretty familiar to brands engaged in mobile marketing. Many brands try to segment and target their audiences using third-party data—with no insight into how often that data is refreshed or how the audiences are built.

Others work with an advertising partner that targets solely based on data it gets back from its advertising SDK. Both approaches use only impressions, clicks and general location to segment and target mobile audiences—which leaves them with a very limited view and limited effectiveness.

Like the incomplete orange story, if you only have access to a tiny slice of information about your target consumers, your understanding of the big picture can be thrown off significantly. Fortunately, mobile applications yield much more information about consumers and can help you piece together the whole picture.

Gathering insights all along the daily digital trail

Consider this: In Phunware’s 2017 Future of Mobile survey, we found that daily mobile users spend six hours per day on their devices, primarily on smartphones. And according to comScore’s 2017 U.S. Cross-Platform Future in Focus, mobile now accounts for almost 70% of all time spent on digital. In fact, mobile apps alone account for 60% of all time on digital.

All of that activity creates a daily mobile data trail that tells brands who these users are, where they have been, their preferences, and even where they’re likely to go next. Best of all, this trail of mobile data envelops consumers in a cloud of context which brands can leverage to discover:

• What people do when they’re in an app you own
• What other apps they use on the same device
• Which types of content they read, listen to and engage with
• Where they are, in specific latitude / longitude coordinates, thanks to their Wi-Fi connections, check-ins, GPS and app location services
• Precisely where they are within certain physical environments, thanks to sensor technologies (like beacons)

Download Mobile Data: The Missing Link in Your User Acquisition and Engagement Strategies.

DOWNLOAD THE eBOOK

Finding a larger lens for consumer context

Millions of devices interact with Phunware apps and ads every day, and our platform continually ingests data from these interactions. In terms of scale, our platform:

• Touches about one in every ten mobile consumers globally and over 700 million devices and every month
• Registers more than 70 types of mobile event, totaling 40 billion mobile user events every month. Events include opening one of our apps, tapping on an ad, appearing around certain locations, etc.

What’s meaningful about this scale is that it allows deeper insight than app publishers would normally be able to get through their ad campaign and app analytics. Many publishers rely primarily on those two data sources, leaving them with an incomplete picture—they can’t see the whole orange. Phunware’s targeting and insight is extended with data from the apps we’ve built and those within our ad network, as well as first-party data we collect with help from our platform partners.

Every opted-in device that encounters Phunware’s mobile app ecosystem or monetization platform is assigned an anonymized Phunware ID, which acts as a way to associate and begin to understand all of the contextual data associated with that device and its user. Because Phunware IDs have reach beyond an individual app or campaign, they allow brands and publishers to segment audiences and target users in many powerful ways.

We’re here to help you design, build and target highly specific audiences more precisely and effectively than ever before. Want to learn more about Phunware IDs and the power of data-driven mobile marketing? Visit www.phunware.com/platform/data, or feel free to drop me a line.

CONTACT ME

The post How Mobile Marketers Can Unlock Deeper Consumer Insights appeared first on Phunware.

Audience building. User acquisition. Performance marketing. App-install advertising. Whatever you call it, all these terms amount to the same thing: running mobile campaigns that focus on delivering installs for your game.

App publishers often focus their audience-building strategies on quantity and quickness, trying to hit a certain number of downloads as fast as possible. The savviest developers, however, focus on another Q: quality. Let’s explore what quality means for performance advertising and why it matters.

Not All Installs Are the Same: Quality Counts

There will always be people who download your game and then hardly (or never) play at all. Those installs might happen quickly or in great quantity, but they’re not really helping your bottom line. Your real goal is to find and convert users who will deliver genuine value to your business over time.

A quality install is one that delivers a high “lifetime value” (LTV) user. For each game, this value will be different, depending on your monetization strategy. Generally, it comes down to a mix of the following criteria:

• Retention (continuing to play at a certain frequency or beyond a certain threshold of in-app time)
• In-app purchases (reaching a threshold of gross dollars spent or a specific number of transactions)
• Subscription or utilization (performing some kind of action that indicates ongoing engagement, like completing a set number of game levels)

Bottom line? Better is better, no matter how many users you acquire or how long it takes.

How to Drive Quality Installs with High-LTV Users

Assuming you have no trouble developing creative assets that showcase your game, here’s how to build a smart app-install campaign focused on quality.

Step 1: Define what quality means to you.

If you run ads without setting clear objectives, there’s a good chance you’re wasting money. Dial in on what defines a high-LTV user for your app using specific metrics for frequency, spending or whichever criteria matter most to you. If time is a factor (in terms of how long it takes to determine the quality of an install), be specific about that as well.

Step 2: Start out broad and gather campaign performance data.

In the beginning, run your ad on different kinds of apps across multiple categories—games, retail, entertainment, utility apps, etc. Letting the campaign run for at least two weeks will allow for different usage and spending patterns across various apps and will give you enough data to assess the performance of each source. Look for an advertising partner that will be as transparent as possible with campaign data and provide a wide spectrum of data points. For example, will they share site and app names where your ads are shown, or only disclose anonymized site and app IDs? Do they pass back information about which ad creative performed best? For the most detailed picture of performance and attribution, you will likely also want to bring in a third-party tracking partner like TUNE, Kochava or Appsflyer. These tools can help you make sure you attribute each install to the right source and campaign creative.

Step 3: Evaluate sites or apps to find the best-performing apps.

Identifying top-performing sites and apps is as simple as looking at the users each one delivers against your established KPIs and goals. For example, let’s say your goal is to drive app installs so you can increase the number of subscribers to a premium subscription your app offers. Let’s say your goal is a $40 cost per subscription and your known cost per install (CPI) is $5. For you to meet your goal of $40 per subscription, at least one in every eight installs would need to become a subscriber.

With KPIs in place, measuring site or app performance against that goal becomes simple:

• If Site A has only driven five subscriptions out of 100 installs, that equates to $100 per subscription—more than double your $40 per subscription goal. Site A should be blacklisted or at least reduced in volume.
• If Site B has driven 20 subscriptions out of 100 installs, that equates to $25 per subscription—well below your $40 goal. Site B is where you should focus investment and attention.

Step 4: Experiment and optimize.

Once you have identified top-performing sources, it’s time to look for ways to optimize the performance of each one. For example, try boosting campaign frequency. It may increase your cost per install, but it might also yield a greater volume of high-LTV users. Other tips to keep in mind:

• Watch your ROI—the balance between users’ LTV and how much you spend on acquisition. Once you see diminishing returns from any given source, it may be time to pause your campaign on that source and try something new.
• While you’re whitelisting top-performing sources, keep up your presence on the rest of the traffic (the “run of network” group), looking for sources that suddenly start to deliver for you. Things can and do change, and platforms are always adding new inventory. This practice helps you avoid over-saturating the whitelist sources, spreads your risk and keeps you open to fresh opportunities.

As you go down the optimization road, you may choose to be hands-off or hands-on.

• Hands-on advertisers tend to be protective of their post-install data and quality metrics. Instead of sharing that information with their platform partners directly, they usually pull reports and analyze sources internally to determine which ones drive the highest-quality installs, then send the partner a report with directions for optimization.
• Hands-off advertisers, on the other hand, monitor their campaign spend, engagement and ROI at a high level and depend on their partners to determine which optimization levers to pull at the app or site level.

Regardless of the approach you prefer, make sure to select a partner who will freely provide information on where your campaign is running and how it’s performing so you can make the best choices for driving installs.

Step 5: Repeat.

Audience building is never “set it and forget it.” Continue monitoring campaign data and tweaking things weekly, and refresh your ad creative at least once a month to help avoid saturation.

Assume nothing, and keep watching the data. Don’t expect things to happen quickly (though they might). Optimizing your campaigns for maximum quality could take some time—perhaps more time than another app you’ve launched in the past. User bases are different. Things change. It’s always better to take your time if that means you get the results you’re after.

Curious about how data can help you in your user acquisition and engagement efforts? Download our eBook to learn more about how you to harness the power of mobile data and turn it into smart strategy.

Questions to Ask a Potential Audience Building Partner

There are lots of ad platforms out there. Even if you’ve worked with a partner in the past, it’s a good idea to ask questions to make sure they are giving you their very best. Here are a few ideas to get you started:

• Does the partner focus on quality over quantity? Can they help me define these metrics, if needed? You’re looking for a platform that can track post-install metrics to help you understand what happens after a user downloads your app. Did they make a purchase? Book a trip? Otherwise convert? The best platforms can ingest and analyze this data, then help you optimize based on the results.
• What makes the partner’s inventory valuable? Do they have any exclusive opportunities that fit your business objectives? Most ad platforms have a lot of the same inventory. The effective ones have the data and the expertise to target more precisely and optimize more efficiently. They also have the know-how to anticipate trends and develop unique formats, such as playable ads and sponsored integrations, that serve the needs of developers and advertisers in unexpected ways.
• Has the partner ever built and successfully launched a highly engaging app? You want a partner who understands where you’re coming from because they’ve spent time in the same trenches.
• Does the partner also offer brand advertising? If a platform has first-hand experience with what brands are doing across the mobile landscape, that’s creative insight you can leverage to optimize your campaign.
• Does the partner have engagement experience? Nurturing high-LTV users goes far beyond the initial install. You’ll need a strategy for ongoing engagement and conversion within your app, and a partner with expertise in this area can be invaluable.
• Will the partner share all campaign data as well as rich contextual user data with you? Many ad networks only have access to data from campaigns (and you want them to be as transparent as possible with this data). A more well-rounded partner can offer more unique data points that can help you find and understand higher-LTV users in more ways. For instance, if the partner also offers mobile marketing automation, it might be able to share location-specific information about your users that can reveal deeper insights about where they go, what they do and why they do it.

At Phunware, we offer solutions across the entire mobile application lifecycle—from strategy and development through audience building, monetization, and more. To keep learning about app audience engagement, download Mobile Marketing Automation; Why It Matters and How to Get Started.

The post 5 Steps to Driving Quality Installs for Your App appeared first on Phunware.

As its name suggests, performance marketing is a model under which you pay only when your mobile ads, well, perform.

Performance is defined as delivering a specific action—such as a form completion, a download or a conversion. On mobile, performance marketing usually refers to campaigns that focus on delivering installs for an app (some call it app-install advertising or simply user acquisition).

Top game developers led the performance marketing charge and have refined their strategies for quite some time. Now that traditional brands are building more apps to connect with consumers, those brands are also turning their attention to performance marketing—and for good reason.

Why mobile performance marketing is ideal for driving app downloads

1. Quicker path to conversion

   Because mobile performance ads run solely on apps and mobile websites, your message reaches prospects who are already using a smartphone or tablet. In a mobile environment, they’re much closer to downloading your app than they would be on a desktop experience.

2. Cost-effectiveness

   There are several different performance marketing models available through a variety of partners. Each can result in new installs, but a CPI (cost per install) model is perfect if mobile user acquisition is your goal. Under a CPI agreement, you are charged a fixed or bid rate for your ad only when someone installs your app after clicking from the ad. It’s a very cost-effective way to increase your install base.

3. Deeper campaign metrics

   Because you’re running your performance campaign on mobile, you can track deeper metrics—such as engagements and purchases—and use that information to optimize your campaigns. For example, if you’re running an app-install campaign, you can work with multiple ad partners, and then evaluate your success on those partners not only by install volume but also by the quality of users. You can see that ads on Platform A delivers users who only open the app once or twice, while Platform B delivers users who not only use the app every day but spend money on in-app purchases. You might then decide to focus your advertising dollars on Platform B to improve your campaign results and ROI.

A word about campaign targeting: it is not the same as brand marketing.

For a brand awareness campaign, it’s common to use granular targeting to minimize waste and reach the right audience: “How do we target A18-34 entertainment lovers who have been to a movie theater in the past six months?”

In performance campaigns, it’s often best to start as broad as possible, discover what pockets of users are converting, and then optimize from there. Starting off with a very small subset of users will usually not give the campaign enough scale to be effective.

Finally, here are a few more tips for running an effective mobile performance campaign

• Keep your messaging short, clear and simple. Focus on the benefits.
• Test new partners and creative ad formats to see how you can optimize performance.
• Track as much as you can. Leveraging third-party solution providers will help you evaluate partners and optimize your campaigns.
• Video is the fastest-growing mobile ad format. If you do not have the creative resources to make your own video, lean on your ad partners. Most will help you create a video ad inexpensively or for free if you hit a certain spend threshold.
• When creating your ads (especially video ads), look for opportunities to showcase someone actually using your app. Not only does this highlight the app’s value to the consumer, it can also help reduce friction when he or she uses the app for the first time—ultimately increasing retention.

Interested in finding a third party partner? Download our cheat sheet for 6 smarter questions to ask to ensure you are getting the most out of your partnership.

DOWNLOAD THE CHEAT SHEET

Phunware’s here to help.

Phunware’s platform delivers effective mobile campaigns with a personal touch. Through our deep roots in app development, the Phunware team has extensive mobile user acquisition knowledge. We also have access to exclusive inventory and proprietary audience data that helps power and optimize the mobile ads we deliver.

Want to learn more about effective mobile campaigns? Download our case study to see how unique campaign formats and targeted engagement can drive real results.

GET THE ON-DEMAND WEBINAR

Want to learn more about performance marketing with Phunware? Contact us at audiencebuilding@127.0.0.1.

The post Mobile User Acquisition: Performance Marketing Fundamentals appeared first on Phunware.

For many businesses, 2017 will be the first time any serious investment is made in mobile. Trends have been skewing toward mobile for long enough now that even the most stubborn holdouts are realizing they must invest in it to engage and understand their audience, among many other benefits.

(Source)

(Source)

By the time Q2 rolls around—and, newsflash: it’s about to—those businesses should be executing and starting to chip away at those goals. If a new or improved mobile application is on your proverbial resolution list for this year, here are five tips to help you make sure you are on track to deliver what is sure to be a transformative business change.

1. Approach Mobile as a Lifecycle

For a business, mobile is so pervasive now that it’s impossible to ignore. Mobile is also increasingly sophisticated—and so are mobile users. They won’t be satisfied with a mobile app that offers nothing more than a tiny version of the company website. The app must provide unique value that can only be enjoyed on a mobile device (by leveraging the device’s location tech to power indoor wayfinding, for example).

Creating mobile experiences that provide unique value requires a new, full-cycle approach to the technology. As a tool that has the power to impact many areas of the business, a mobile application is a long-term investment that requires careful planning of how you will build, engage and monetize your audience, not just get an app in the App Store.

If mobile is part of your plan this year, make sure you view (and invest in) it for what it is—a transformative business tool, not a quick-fix. You may even have to do some reshuffling in your org structure to support today’s customer journey, but it will be worth it.

LEARN MORE

2. Focus on Delivering Real, Measurable Value

Most users today are too savvy to be duped by clickbait and other advertising shenanigans. It’s harder than ever to earn, nurture and maintain their attention and trust. After all, only 23% of app users remain engaged for more than three days after downloading an app. If your content or mobile experience is missing the mark, you need to know about it so you can optimize and improve. Make sure you’re digging into specifics like:

• Whether your mobile app user base / audience is steadily growing
• The quantity and quality (type) of conversions happening through your app, such as app downloads and installs, in-app content consumed, in-app or in-store purchases and so on

The best mobile solutions deliver value to end users and the business. They can streamline business operations, reduce spending, improve communication and more. Look for cost efficiencies like going paperless, reducing customer wait time, improving appointment compliance, etc. as metrics to help tell that story.

Proving the value of your investment in mobile is easier than ever, thanks to new technology and resources like big data, mobile engagement (proximity messaging), indoor navigation, asset tracking and mobile audience engagement / monetization. It may be time to expand your solution to integrate more of these technologies.

3. Leave “Spray and Pray” in the Dust

There is no better way to personalize engagement and make it relevant than with mobile. The days of “spray and pray” marketing are over—users expect content and campaigns aligned with their tastes and interests. Every mobile moment and interaction counts, especially the first one. In 2017, brands must optimize that crucial first moment into a long-term partnership relationship with their customers if they have any hope to retain those users.

4. Give Mobile-First Paid Media a Chance

Today, 70% of internet users say they dislike ads on their mobile phones, and a significant source of that dissatisfaction is ads designed for desktop and awkwardly adapted for mobile devices. Because mobile is so pervasive today, however, there is now a wide array of paid media formats designed specifically and exclusively for mobile. These range from mobile-optimized banners to campaigns that leverage the user’s smartphone accelerometer to playable ad formats that boost engagement in a way that feels natural, not intrusive.

Like mobile applications, mobile marketing done right also provides serious business benefits. According to a recent survey of mobile publishers, mobile monetization delivers unique advantages including better analytics, more engaging and flexible campaigns, and more:

(Source)

5. Make Decisions Based on Your Own Data

There are two types of brand marketers: the “monkey-see, monkey-do” type who adopt tactics based on what others are doing, and the “brand warrior” type who make trends their own by translating them into initiatives that make sense for their brand. If you want to be among the latter, you must have a deep understanding of your organization’s goals, what’s moving the needle and how to turn your 2017 budget into more leads, pipeline, revenue and market share. If you aren’t already fluent in what mobile brings to the table and how to capitalize the wealth of data that your users share with you, it’s time to get with the program. There’s still time to make good on your resolutions!

For help getting started, contact a Phunware mobile expert today.

CONTACT US

The post On Track for Mobile in 2017? Here are 5 Ways to Check appeared first on Phunware.

TUNE is a mobile marketing platform that combines measurement across user acquisition, discovery, retention and engagement. Phunware partners with TUNE to track and optimize many of the user acquisition campaigns we run for developers.

TUNE started its Certified Partner Program to give marketers more visibility into which advertising partners adhere to certification standards, provide industry-leading customer service, deliver quality results and use best practices in the marketplace. In fact, TUNE has seen a 30% improvement of best practice adoption since launching its Certified Partner Program.

Out of over 75 applications received by TUNE, Phunware was one of only eight selected to become Certified Partners. We look forward to continuing our work with top-grossing publishers, helping them build their audiences and find the users most likely to engage and monetize over the long term.

Stay tuned for more exciting news next week about how Phunware is partnering with TUNE during its second annual School of Mobile Tour, which brings marketers and partners together for deep discussions of user acquisition and retention, best practices and new marketing tactics.

Learn more about gaining high-LTV users in our blog, “5 Steps to Driving Quality Installs for Your App.”

READ THE BLOG

The post Phunware is Now a TUNE Certified Partner! appeared first on Phunware.

Mobile performance advertising is both:

• A type of campaign: ads that run on mobile apps and websites and are designed to drive installs for an app, and
• A type of media placement: ads for which the advertiser pays only when a user installs the advertised app (in mobile lingo, this is called CPI or “cost-per-install” advertising)

On the branding side of mobile marketing, advertisers generally know their target audiences very well. Ad platforms and publishers then simply build campaigns around that knowledge.

It’s smart to keep an open mind about where your apps run. You might find quality traffic where you least expect it. Within that traffic, your goal should be to convert the highest lifetime-value (LTV) targets—prospects who will not only install your app but continue to use it and spend money through it over time. These high-value users are the white whales of performance advertising. (Note: This is just a metaphor. We love whales. We don’t hunt them for real.)

Whale-spotting: Who qualifies as a high-value user?

Every app developer or publisher has a different way of recognizing the white whales among their install base, but these are the most common criteria:

• Retention: Are they still using the app on Day 1, 7, 30? You can set the timeline to whatever measurement makes sense for your app.
• In-app purchases: Did they buy something? This is sometimes measured as a gross dollar amount or a specific number of transactions.
• Subscription or utilization: Did the user perform an action indicating engagement? For example, did they stream a show? Have they completed several levels of your game? Did they use your wayfinding?

Finding these white whales requires testing and optimization, plus a whole lot of collaboration with your performance advertising partner.

Step 1: Cast a wide net and test every source.

In this case, a “source” can be any mobile site or app. The idea is to test your ad on different kinds of sources across multiple categories—games, retail, entertainment, utility apps, etc. Then look at the data and see which sources deliver the the most installs, and which sources deliver the highest lifetime-value installs (those white whales again).

We recommend letting the campaign run for at least two weeks, collecting data all the while. Giving it a couple of weeks allows for different usage and spending patterns on various apps, so you have enough data to provide an accurate picture of performance—and can make sound decisions moving forward.

Step 2: Fish where the fishing’s good.

By analyzing the data, you can identify the best-performing apps in terms of installs and high-value users. Focus your campaign spending there. Work with your platform partner—the more you collaborate and share information, the more they can help you.

For example, let’s say we are running an install ad in an entertainment app and 100 people download the app we’re advertising. Eighty of those people go on to spend money in our app—victory! This tells us that we want to focus more spend on this newly identified white whale entertainment app. At the same time, we might find that a utility app delivers 100 installs as well, but only three of them make in-app purchases. So we may avoid running ads on this particular utility app in the future. (But maybe not—more on that in a moment.)

Step 3: Repeat

Keep monitoring the data to see how performance shifts across the traffic. Things can change seasonally. For example, a sports app might see a lot more traffic and spending during the playoffs. Keep your eye on the sources delivering your best users, as well as your overall ROI. (In this case, ROI refers to how much you’re spending on acquisition vs. the user’s spend on and within your app.)

It’s really that simple. It takes patience and collaboration, but steady stewardship can maximize the results of your mobile performance campaign(s).

Here are few additional tips and best practices we’ve learned from our experience with performance campaigns:

• Develop an ongoing schedule for monitoring and optimization. (We recommend weekly.)
• As you optimize, split up your campaign and try some whitelisting. A “whitelist” is a list of your very best source apps and mobile websites. Explore opportunities to maximize the value of each source on this list. For example, you might increase the frequency of your ads on these sources. This may increase your cost per install, but if that spend is delivering the highest value users at a higher volume, it’s surely worth it!
• While you’re whitelisting, keep up your presence on the rest of the traffic. Monitor this “run of network” group for any changes or performance improvements, looking for sources that suddenly start to deliver for you. Things can and do change, and platforms are always adding new sources. This practice helps you avoid over-saturating the whitelist apps, spreads your risk, and keeps you open to fresh opportunities.
• Refresh your ad creative monthly to help avoid saturation.
• Don’t be afraid to pause your campaign on certain sources if the data shows that performance is falling off.
• Don’t assume anything. Just because a streaming app campaign worked really well on one source, don’t assume that another streaming app campaign will have the same results, or that you can “set it and forget it.” You must continually look at the data. (Let’s say that again: Look. At. The. Data.) This is the “maybe not” we mentioned in Step 2—you have to keep testing sources to find where the most value is.
• Look at your performance campaign like a well-run investment portfolio. You want a mix of different sources, and you should be constantly tweaking the mix to maximize your returns.

The post Performance Advertising 201: Optimizing your Search for the White Whale appeared first on Phunware.

Apps work the same way. Your team and others across your organization can put in untold hours of work strategizing, designing and developing your app. You can take ultimate care in the way your app is built, crafting each detail deliberately to convey your brand and engage your users. You can take pride in knowing you planned and executed something wonderful…but no one is going to experience it unless you do something about it.

That’s why we put together this quick checklist to help kick off your app marketing efforts. It gives easy suggestions for ways to get the word out about your app, often piggybacking on your existing marketing channels and initiatives for maximum speed and efficiency. You’re planning a party, after all—just make sure your users know they’re invited.

DOWNLOAD THE CHECKLIST

The post Quick-Start App Marketing Checklist: Driving Awareness and Downloads appeared first on Phunware.

The good news is that mobile offers ample opportunities for brands to make money. In 2014, we passed the tipping point: mobile users outnumbered desktop internet access points for the first time. In other words, there’s no shortage of potential users for your app.

The bad news is that there’s no shortage of potential users for anyone’s app. Competition is fierce, and it’s incredibly hard to stand out. As of March 2017, there are more than 5 million apps in the two leading app marketplaces (Apple and Android).

It’s hard to get attention, it’s hard to get interest, and it’s especially hard to get installs.

What’s a brand to do?

If you’re looking for a quick way to increase your install rates (and hopefully drive monetization from an expanded user base), one tactic can be your best friend: app-install advertising, AKA performance campaigns or cost-per-install (CPI) advertising.

What is it? It’s simple: an app-install ad runs inside other apps (or on the mobile web) and encourages users to install your app. According to eMarketer, it’s seeing an increase in popularity—there’s been a 20% increase in in-app ad spending between 2016 and 2018.

Why is it so popular? Because it has three traits brands and marketers LOVE to see.

Trait #1: You only pay for success.

With many other forms of mobile advertising, you’re paying for something that’s not exactly the result you may want. Advertisers often pay impressions—i.e. they pay to get the ad is in front of users, but there’s not always a result beyond that.

App-install advertising is different. You’re signing up for a cost-per-action model (usually cost per install). That means you only pay when a user installs your app. You get exactly the result you want—more users—and the ad network has skin in the game, too. They don’t get paid unless they deliver.

(Note: If you’re paying for installs, you’ll need a monetization strategy to make money from your app. Check out our post for useful tactics and strategies—if you’re paying $5 for an install, you need to know how to make more than $5 from that user!)

Trait #2: App-install ads entice action.

App-install advertising drives behavior. You don’t pay for impressions; you pay for action. And action is easy to see and measurable—which marketers love.

Tracking whether a user took the desired action is simple. Just answer this simple question:

Did someone tap on your install ad and install your app?

1. NO: No conversion to attribute.
2. YES: You can attribute that conversion directly to that ad.

Trait #3: ROI is easy to measure.

App marketers often struggle to prove the effectiveness of their efforts. It can be hard to attribute conversions to ad impressions. That’s not to say that impressions aren’t valuable—they create brand awareness and can help you communicate important brand messages. But if someone ends up buying your product or service in part because of brand awareness built through ad impressions, it can be tricky to prove that attribution.

Unlike other forms of advertising, app-install campaign ROI is easy to figure out—because app-install conversions are easy to measure.

With a good mobile advertising partner, you can leverage install data in ways that boost your ROI over the long term. You’ll have the capacity to not only track downloads, but more importantly measure opens and active users. Your partner should absorb and utilize that data to optimize campaigns over the long term, so that your ROI improves as you go.

For more reasons to why mobile performance marketing is ideal for driving app downloads, read “Mobile Use Acquisition: Performance Marketing Fundamentals.”

READ THE BLOG

Summary

The key benefits of CPI advertising are that you:

• Grow your app installed base
• Have more installs, which equals app store ranking improvements
• Boost the number of ad views within your application (if you run ads inside your app)
• Raise the overall potential for in-app purchases

With the right support and expertise, app-install campaigns are an essential tool for developers and brands.

For more user acquisition tips and tricks, download our eBook, App Marketing 101: 12 Ways to Help Users Discover Your Mobile App.

Download eBook Here

Want to learn more about performance marketing with Phunware? Contact us at audiencebuilding@127.0.0.1.

The post Three Reasons Marketers Love Mobile App-Install Advertising appeared first on Phunware.

Mobile advertising is still the “wild west” of digital marketing. Like desktop/laptop advertising, mobile is rapidly evolving, precisely targeted and data-driven. Mobile advertising networks are not quite as evolved as their counterparts in other areas of digital publishing, though, and the entire system is poorly regulated if it’s regulated at all.

That means you need to be particularly diligent about vetting potential mobile advertising partners. There are, unfortunately, plenty of advertising networks willing to take money for returns they know they can’t deliver. There are also some really great networks that offer sophisticated targeting and ad delivery that are well worth the price.

The key to choosing advertising partners wisely is to carefully evaluate potential networks’ capabilities and offerings against your clearly defined business requirements. Asking ad network providers intelligent, probing questions like the ones below will empower you to make the best mobile ad spending decisions for your business.

1. How do you source your inventory?

Ask how much of the mobile ad network’s traffic is direct from a publisher as opposed to being purchased from an exchange or other networks. There’s nothing wrong with any of these sources, but unless you understand where the network’s traffic comes from, you won’t have any idea if the price they’re asking is appropriate for the kind of return you can expect.

Let’s say you talk to three mobile ad networks, and they are priced at $1, $2 and $3, respectively. When you ask each one how they source their inventory (a publisher’s available ad placements), you will likely find that the least expensive network picks up excess unsold inventory from a random collection of publishers of both high and low quality. Ads you place in this network would be less targeted and would probably appear in sub-prime locations (e.g. pages with low traffic, below the fold, and so on).

The most expensive network, on the other hand, probably offers inventory purchased directly from publishers. This type of network can offer far more precisely targeted ad service and perhaps even premium screen real estate on prominent publishers’ sites. The mid-priced network is likely a mix of inventory—some from exchanges or other networks, and some direct from publishers. If you want the best of both worlds, this may be the best compromise.

Again, it’s perfectly fine to go with an inexpensive buy offering “remnant” inventory from exchanges, as long as you know what you’re buying and understand what you should expect in terms of the return on your investment.

2. What are your capabilities to target within a specific proximity?

The answer to this question will reveal if and to what degree a potential advertising partner can digitally “fence” an area for more precise geographic targeting. No one targets the entire world, and for many businesses it makes the most sense to get as granular as possible about who sees their ads. If proximity targeting is important to your advertising strategy, you’ll want a network that can get more precise than a zip code. It’s possible to essentially “gerrymander” the geographic zone, but not all ad networks provide that level of refinement, and not all advertisers need it. Have a good idea of what you need in terms of geo-fencing before you ask this question.

3. How do you prevent click fraud or otherwise ensure my ads will only be served on brand-safe sites?

Click fraud is when a publisher has a bot click on ads to inflate the click-through rate (CTR) so that they can attract advertisers and charge more. Brand-safe sites are publications free of hate, vulgar language and other negative elements many advertisers would hesitate to associate with their brands.

A good mobile advertising network will actively monitor and blacklist fraudulent and offensive sites to protect advertisers proactively. If a network does not maintain a blacklist and does not convey that they understand this is important to you, don’t do business with them.

4. What are your cost models?

Look for a network that offers multiple cost models, such as cost per mille (CPM), cost per click (CPC), or cost per action (CPA). With CPM, you pay for impressions. Under a CPC model, you pay for valid click-throughs. With CPA, you only pay when an actual transaction takes place as a result of the ad. Depending on your business goals, one or more of these models may suit your needs at various times, so it’s good to have choices.

The only red flag to look for in terms of cost models is an ad network that offers only CPM. This shows they’re not willing to take risks and lack the confidence that their inventory will lead to clicks or transactions.

5. How do you target consumers?

Ask them if they use programmatic algorithms (i.e. automated targeting based on business logic input), audience segmentation, device type, proximity or combination of targeting methods. You’ll want a network that has a sophisticated algorithm that will let you target your ads precisely based on criteria you define.

So if you want programmatic advertising that targets a specific audience segment in a tight geographic area, put that scenario in front of the ad network and see if they can accommodate it.

Want to see the remaining five questions and answers?
Click Here for Part 2

The post How to Choose a Mobile Advertising Partner: 10 Questions to Ask (Part 1) appeared first on Phunware.

With millions of apps vying for attention, it’s crucial to consider how to market an app against its competition. The challenge is clear: How can developers help users find their apps? Here are five app marketing strategies to consider.

1. Take Advantage of App-Store Optimization (ASO)

The title of your app is the single most important meta-data factor influencing how your app will rank in Apple’s App Store, Google Play, and Amazon’s App Store. Keywords in an app’s title help increase its ranking and 65% of downloads come directly from a search on the App Store. This is why you often see long app titles with descriptive keywords, such as Clear – Tasks, Reminders & To-Do Lists.

Apple’s App Store also ranks apps based on their keyword field, which provides about 100 characters. Instead of a keyword field, Google Play uses an app’s description for ranking purposes.

The number of downloads and reviews, as well as user star ratings, also play a role in ranking.

2. Use Advertising to Acquire Users

Effective, targeted ads can help you get new users quickly. For instance, Facebook enables businesses to affordably amplify their profile, status updates and ads, and to target users by age, geographic location, interests and other demographics. You can create different ads to appeal to different target audiences.

Google AdWords Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ads are another option, and Google offers mobile ads to target users while they’re on their mobile device.

Also, performance-based advertising campaigns can help you increase installs. For example, in a Cost-Per-Install (CPI) campaign, you place digital ads throughout a variety of media. You’re only charged when your application is installed.

For more about CPI and other forms of advertising to drive app installations, see What is Cost-Per-Install Advertising?

READ THE BLOG

3. Put Out a Press Release

Alerting the press can help raise awareness of your app during its crucial launch period. Create a compelling press release that clearly and succinctly explains the benefits of your app and how it differs from others.

Tell a story. What will your app enable users to do that they couldn’t do before? Provide an informative executive quote journalists and bloggers will want to use. Avoid overused jargon such as “game-changing.” Post your release using paid services such as PRWeb and Business Wire, which provide wide distribution and analytics.

4. Drive Word of Mouth

Word of mouth is key to app marketing, so you might consider offering users an incentive to spread the word about you. For example, the cloud syncing and storage service Dropbox ran a campaign that rewarded existing users with additional free storage space when they shared the service on Facebook and Twitter. New users who accepted the referrals were also rewarded with extra space. The campaign increased Dropbox signups by 60 percent, according to the company’s CEO, Drew Houston.

5. Add Social Media Hooks to Your App

Many users like to share what they’re doing on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other social networks. Fitness apps make it easy to show friends the stats from your recent run, for instance. When users share what they’ve done with your app on social media, they’re spreading the word about your app to more people.

For more user acquisition tips and tricks, download our eBook, App Marketing 101: 12 Ways to Help Users Discover Your Mobile App.

DOWNLOAD THE eBOOK

The post App Marketing 101: Five Ways to Help Users Discover Your Mobile App appeared first on Phunware.

But Where Are Your Users?

The unfortunate truth is that your work is not done after your app launches. The next challenge is to make people who fit your target profile aware of your app—and then to convince them to download it. App publishers like you have access to a range of methods to promote their apps and drive users to install them.

Learn more about Phase 3 of the Mobile App Lifecycle and how to target and acquire high-value users; grow your app user base in our eBook, “Harnessing the App Lifecycle for Transformative Business Success.“

DOWNLOAD THE eBOOK

One of the most effective is advertising your app inside of other apps and on mobile websites that are used by people similar to your target audience. There are several different performance-based shapes this arrangement can take:

• Cost-per-mille (CPM)
• Cost-per-click (CPC)
• Cost-per-install (CPI)

Each method can result in new installs; the difference is in how the publisher is billed for the advertisement. When considering mobile advertising to drive installs, you need a clear understanding of how to measure the success and cost of each campaign.

Digital Advertising Primer

Digital advertising began with CPM, which is a traditional advertising term with roots in print. It is a cost model based on the number of impressions served, and it’s great for building awareness of a brand or an application. Brands pay the ad network for every mille—1000 times—the advertisement is displayed to a user on a mobile platform.

CPC is a more performance-based method of advertising than CPM because brands only pay the network if users click (or tap) on their advertisements. This method of advertising is effective because the ad network has skin in the game. It’s in the network’s own best interest to run the ads where they’re most likely to see engagement—that’s how the network gets paid.

And finally, CPI campaigns are specific to mobile applications. In a cost-per-install campaign, publishers place digital ads across a range of media in an effort to drive installation of the advertised application. The brand is charged a fixed or bid rate only when the application is installed.

Go Out and Find Your Users!

In addition to mobile advertising, brands have the ability to drive awareness and installations through the more traditional methods of print, radio and outdoor advertising. Mobile users are sophisticated and driven to have “the next great app.” Effectively generating awareness of your app can lead to users search for, find and install it.

How you drive that awareness is up to you—but performance-based advertising ensures that you’re not in it alone.

For more user acquisition tips and tricks, download our eBook, App Marketing 101: 12 Ways to Help Users Discover Your Mobile App.

Download eBook Here

The post What Is Cost-Per-Install Advertising? appeared first on Phunware.