Cost Per Install (CPI) Campaigns, Affiliates, Organic and the Interval Strategy
What are Mobile App Promotion (MAP) campaigns?
MAP campaigns have to goal to achieve downloads and installs of any given app. As the digital app environment continues to grow and currently outmatches mobile web in terms of overall online activity, more advertisers and agencies are looking for trustworthy solutions for the downloads and installs. The existence of MAP campaigns are the answer to these needs.
The crashing of the affiliate market
Although opinions vary. Many of our peers and our own research suggest(s) running MAP campaigns by using affiliates is on it’s way out. Why? Because the downloads are of low quality and in many cases not real. Although the actual number of ‘fake’ downloads can benefit rankings and more, many realize that the final outcome is not beneficial for your brand/app/client (some even go as far as using the term ‘cannibalism’). Organic downloads (done by real users) are much harder to achieve. Hence many specialists combine the two (organic & affiliate) to achieve acceptable campaign results. This method has also appeared on the surface of knowledge of normal marketeers. As such, also this combining strategy is on it’s way out.
Organic
Then we come to organic. A word most of us like. How to get organic downloads, installs and actual users of your app? By going programmatic!
When running a MAP campaign in a DSP, assuming rigid brand safety measures are in place, your (video) ad will be organically shown to millions of different consumers . Likewise, the clicks you will generate will be 100% organic/real. In other words, the people who click on your ad (that promotes your app) will be genuinely interested.
Interval Strategy (organic)
As any specialist will tell you; even if all the tracking parameters are set-up correctly and all the needed assets (see below) are correctly delivered by the advertiser/client, many conversions will not be detected by our, the clients’ or MMPs’ tracking in question. Hence, many conversions will not be attributed to our campaign. Luckily we have found a savvy way to work around this phenomenon (conversions outside of tracking).
When we deploy/launch MAP campaigns, we apply certain interval time-frames. The most common strategy is; 2 weeks on, 2 weeks off, 2 weeks on, 2 weeks off. By applying this method, in the majority of cases, there is a clear correlation between the organic, unattributed downloads the advertiser/client tracks and the moment the campaign is active or not.
Hence, although initially the results attributed to our campaign might not be sufficient to please the advertiser/client, the combining amount of conversions attributed to our campaign and the approximate amount of unattributed conversions (determined by combining client/advertiser report with the time-frames the campaigns was live), is (pleasing).
Needed assets
Non-Attributed data - MUST
Suppression List - MUST
VTA + Fingerprint - Preferable (for Open Strategy)
Video creatives - MUST
Up to date event creatives can help
Don’t have clue what we are talking about? Want to discuss? Reach out!