Date post: | 18-Jan-2015 |
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MOBILE ADVERTISING BEST PRACTICES
FOR GAMES AND APPS
WHITEPAPER
When you’re developing a promotion
strategy for a mobile game, mobile
advertising should be your number one
consideration. There is no way to get closer
to your audience than targeting them while
on a mobile device.
While it’s important to use PR, have a viral
component and a game review strategy,
those channels can’t provide consistent
and measurable results, like mobile
advertising can.
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Start With the Creative
The first step is to develop a creative messaging
strategy. It’s no secret that consumers are more
likely to click on ads from brands they recognize.
If you have a well-known brand, you should lead
with that. If you’re launching a new game, try to
associate it with a brand consumers will recognize.
EA does this well; they always brand their TV
commercials with EA at the end, so consumers
know it’s an EA quality game.
If you don’t have a well-recognized brand, then
you’ll need to do a great job presenting users with
a superior value proposition. The best way to do
this is to offer the game for free, during the launch
and use advertising to help push the app. While
you want the ad to look good, you don’t want to
do this at the expense of the messaging. It’s easy
to become overly concerned with the imagery and
visual aesthetics.
Targeting
Mobile ad networks offer a number of different
targeting methods—so many in fact that they
provide auto-optimization systems that track app
downloads and optimize your campaign for you.
As the buyer of advertising, it is important to
clearly define your target user by operating system
and region. If you’re promoting an Android game
in English, then you only want to target Android
inventory in English speaking markets. You don’t
want to spend money on inventory where those
users can’t use your game.
Depending on the type of game, some non-English
markets may still perform. The only way to know
is through testing. Consider localizing your game
or app only after exhausting all of the English
language markets globally.
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English is used widely in Asia in Singapore, Hong Kong, and India. It’s also spoken in all Scandinavian
countries, and across much of Africa. Targeting high-end devices such as the iPhone4s, Galaxy Nexus,
Galaxy SII will increase your chances of reaching an English speaking user.
There are many English speaking markets outside the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
English Speaking Markets
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Your App Store Landing Page
The goal of your landing page is to convert
potential views into downloads. Once a user lands
on your app store page, you have less than
3 seconds to captivate them, before they leave.
It’s important to have a detailed, well-written app
store description. It should articulate the value
proposition in the first sentence, so people can
decide right away if they want to download it.
High-resolution screen captures that demonstrate
your app visually are also important. Be sure to
carefully monitor customer feedback, and promptly
address their comments, both positive and negative.
Most users scan through the comments to get an
idea of what others thought of your game.
For example, the Words With Friends landing page
(see pg. 6) is clear, concise and easy to read. The top
area is used for special messaging and promotions,
a bulleted list explains key features, and links to
their social media pages are provided along with
high-quality screen captures. The app has a high
rating and over 55,000 reviews.
Your icon and name are also extremely important.
The icon needs to be eye-catching to stand out.
Your name should be short and clever. One of the
most important criteria for “featured app” selection
in iTunes App Store is the overall look and feel
of your app. An Apple employee once said, “Why
in the world would Apple ever feature an app in
the store that didn’t look brilliant? Good design is
core to the Apple brand and is something that we
evaluate carefully when selecting featured apps.”
Apple will also look for apps that take advantage
of the latest OS version or device hardware. Google,
HTC, Samsung and others want to feature new
apps that showcase their device or OS capabilities.
Infinity Blade 2 and Real Racing HD are a
few examples.
How Much Do I Spend On My Campaign?
Once you have the creative, landing page, and your
advertising strategy in place, you are ready to
launch the campaign. First, you need to determine
exactly how much to spend. There is no simple
answer and it varies from app to app and developer
to developer.
One method is to optimize your spend to the Life
Time Value (LTV) of your users. This method is
popular for games that have virtual economies
with in-app purchase systems, because the LTV
can be very high. You start by determining what
is the RPDAU (Revenue Per Daily Active User).
To do this, divide the total revenue generated in
one week (include all revenue sources such as in-
app purchases, advertising, offers and any other
monetization sources) by the number of active
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Frequent Updates:
This helps demon-
strate that the app is
actively maintained.
Buyers are wary of
apps that are not
well supported.
Links to Social Media:
Specific accounts
for each product is
important. Users want
to use this channel
to get support, make
suggestions and help
promote the app.
Cross Promotion:
Promote the free
version in case a
user is not interested
in buying the
paid version.
Bulleted Description:
Simple bullet points
that call out key
features are an
effective and easy
to way to explain
the game.
Screen Captures:
High quality screen
captures are essential.
Words With Friends
created a custom title
page to use here.
The Words With Friends App Store landing page is a great example for developers to follow.
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Since this ad lacks a well-known brand, it leads with the
free message and gives the user the option to access
multiple games.
This Uno ad leverages a well-known brand and has a clear
call to action, plus an offer.
The Sega and Sonic brands are well known and the “Tap to
Play Video” call to action is compelling.
Infinity Blade II is one of the most popular iPad games. The
creative is simple and concise.
This Evolve Your Dragon ad has a great value proposition
and is extremely easy to understand.
Here are some creative examples of campaigns that have performed well on the InMobi network.
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users in the same week. Now divide this number by
seven. This method takes into account weekly
usage patterns.
To determine LTV, multiply the RPDAU by the
average number of days in one month a user is
active in your app. Most apps have a one or two
month lifespan. The number of days active can
vary from app to app. Use a method of unique
tracking to find this average. This number could be
anywhere from 2 to 10 days, but it can be higher
for some apps.
Now that you have a good idea of what your LTV
is, you know how much the maximum amount of
money you should spend to acquire one new user.
Most marketers recommend you optimize your
spend to this number only. Advertising is a market
driven economy and you can’t always acquire users
for the price you want. In fact, many times it will
cost more to acquire new users.
Objective: For their new app, Monster Galaxy, Gaia
wanted to drive app downloads and increase their app
ranking in the iOS App Store.
Results: 72 hours after the start of the campaign, Monster
Galaxy ranked in the Top 25 in all targeted categories
and subcategories for both Free Apps and Grossing. Two
weeks later Monster Galaxy peaked at #3 in Free Apps,
#3 in Games, and #3 in Top Grossing.
“The focus of driving valuable, non-incentivized users via
detailed optimization planning is the key to success of
Monster Galaxy campaign.”
Gene Juang,
Account Manager, North America
Mobile Gaming Advertiser
Case StudyMONSTER GALAXY
InMobi is a thought leader in mobile user
acquisition. You can count on InMobi to help
you convert an app into a hit game and build a
profitable mobile gaming business. John Dionisio, Gaia Interactive“
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How to Calculate LTV
(Advertising + Virtual Item Purchases + Offerwall) Total Weekly Revenue / Average Number of Weekly Active Users
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= RPDA (Revenue Per Daily Active User)
RPDAU * (Average Days Active Per User a Month) = LTV
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App developers should consider acquiring users at
prices above their LTV in the following scenarios:
1 A New Game Launch: During the launch of
a new game, it’s important to get new users
to try it and build buzz. You will most likely have
to do this at a loss, as consumers are not yet
familiar with your game. They will need a lot of
encouragement to try it. If the game catches on, you
should carefully optimize your spending to acquire
users for less.
2 Peak Season: During the holiday season,
activity is high on mobile and lots of new
devices are being activated. This is a great time
to drive download. Users are interested in trying
new apps on new devices they might have received
as gifts.
3 Highly Competitive Environment:
If competitors are actively targeting your user
base, you should increase your marketing spend to
acquire new users. This helps block a competitor
from acquiring them because you lock in the
advertising inventory.
4 Ability to Leverage Existing User Base: If you
can leverage your existing user base to cross
promote multiple games, then you should consider
acquiring users at a price higher than the LTV of
that individual game. This requires the ability to
measure the impact of cross promotion from game
to game in your portfolio. You also should consider
developing “gateway” games that are intended to
funnel users into your app game eco-system.
While there are lots of metrics that help game
developers optimize their marketing spend, it’s
still ultimately an art, not a science. Strategically
monitoring and optimizing on a daily and weekly
basis is the best way to ensure success.
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MOBILE ADVERTISING BEST PRACTICESWHITE PAPER
Tips for Success
Keep your app under 20 MB
The iTunes store imposes a 20 MB limit on app installs across a wireless network. In the Android Marketplace the limit is 50 MB.
Keeping your app under the 20 MB limit dramatically increases the number of installs from advertising.
Advertise on multiple ad networks
Spread out your ad buy on multiple ad networks in order to get the most reach. Ad networks have different sites and apps on
their systems and you will not reach the total market if you stick to just one ad network.
Rotate your creative often
You want to update your creative as often as twice a month, as your creative will lose appeal overtime. Also, matching the
creative to seasonality and other external events should help increase the relevancy to your customers and improve performance.
Prioritize the English language
Most smartphone users are in English markets or understand English well enough to be able to use most apps. Culturally neutral
apps, such as Angry Birds, are popular around the world since they require limited English skills.
Build a portfolio of apps
The most successful app developers have a portfolio strategy and develop lots of apps. Having more apps allows you to cross
promote games and build upon what you have learned from one app to another. This tends to be a hit driven business.
Focus on acquiring users not clicks
This is a common trap many marketers fall into. They measure and optimize to clicks when they really need to measure acquiring
users. Don’t evaluate campaign performance on your click through rate; evaluate it on how cheaply you can acquire new users.
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Gregory Kennedy
Director, Global Marketing
Gregory Kennedy has over 10 years
of experience in digital media, in both
advertising and publishing. Prior to InMobi
Gregory was Global Creative Director for
LiveJournal, a highly regarded blogging
platform and open source pioneer. Born in
New York City, Gregory started his career
with bleeding edge Silicon Alley firm Oven
Digital, where he pioneered the use of Flash
rich media and was the recipient of two
Gold Pencils.
Harish Thimmappa
Director, App Advertising Sales, North America
Harish has been leading InMobi app market
strategy and sales since 2009. Previously,
he was a strategy consultant at IBM, where
he helped several multi-national companies
with emerging market entry strategy. He is
extremely passionate about high-tech gadgets
and all things mobile.
About the Authors.
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