Publishers are all looking to level up their revenue and audience engagement, and in-game advertising is the power-up many have been looking for. 

The gaming industry has entertained all demographic types for quite some time and is now filled with opportunities for advertisers, marketers, and publishers. Comscore’s State of Gaming 2024 report reveals that 62% of adults are now actively engaged in video gaming, with a significant portion playing across multiple platforms. 

In-game advertising is gaining traction, with 45% of gamers showing openness to rewarded ads. This shift and the notable success of video game-themed movies at the box office reflect gaming’s deepening cultural impact. Brands that recognize the potential within this space can unlock new avenues for reaching a diverse and highly engaged audience.

Furthermore, the report emphasizes the unique advertising formats available within gaming, such as in-game product placements and livestream sponsorships. Amplified by the strong social connections nurtured through gaming, these options empower brands to forge meaningful connections with consumers.

What are the Demographics? 

The online gaming community continues to expand, encompassing millions of homes and devices across the United States. 40% of U.S. households are active on a gaming console within a month. 

Among adults aged 18 and older, 62% play video games, illustrating the widespread appeal of gaming today. Moreover, a significant portion of gamers — 77% to be exact — are engaging with more than one platform, whether PC, console, or mobile. 

This is a significant audience ripe for the picking. 

Millennials dominate online gaming, representing 49% of gamers, while Gen Z accounts for 13%, Gen X for 28%, and Baby Boomers for 11%. This diverse gaming population spans a wide variety of annual household income ranges, with 16% of gamers earning less than $24,999, 25% earning between $25,000 and $49,999, 20% earning between $50,000 and $74,999, 18% earning between $75,000 and $99,999, and 20% earning $100,000 or more. 

In layman’s terms, this is a significant amount of spending power to direct advertising campaigns.

New Gaming Formats, New Advertising Opportunities

Thanks to its unique formats and diverse ad types, gaming offers numerous opportunities for advertisers and marketers. These include in-game or product placement ads, rewarded advertisements, and livestreams, each providing distinct ways to engage with gamers.

Among gamers who have encountered product placement ads, 34% agree that these placements make the gaming experience feel more authentic. Additionally, 45% of gamers who have seen regular or pop-up ads agree that they don’t mind the ads if they receive rewards for watching them.

Nearly two-thirds of gamers say that advertisements positively or neutrally impact their gaming experience. Specifically, 64% of primarily PC gamers and 75% of both console and mobile gamers agree that ads don’t detract from their gaming experience.

And the reviews from consumers are:

Consumers are paying attention to these ads at a high rate, making attention metrics for a campaign more important than ever as publishers and advertisers work to improve audience engagement.   

For example, Tommy Hilfiger used in-game ads to showcase its latest designs to drive awareness among a new, untapped audience and generate buzz for their Classics Reborn Spring campaign. The results included a 14% lift in ad recall after exposure, a 20% in brand favorability, a 24% in brand recommendation, and a 23% lift in purchase intent.

Unlocking the Potential of In-Game Advertising: Targeting Multiplatform Gamers

If you are thinking, what next steps can I take to make sure you have the right strategy to level up your in-game advertising efforts, here is Comscore’s final advice:

Embrace Multiplatform Targeting: With 77% of gamers engaging across multiple devices and 40% playing on all available platforms, brands must leverage multiplatform strategies to maximize their reach and effectiveness.

Harness In-Game Advertising: The growing importance of in-game advertising offers advertisers a unique opportunity to achieve incremental reach that traditional methods may not deliver.

Optimize Reach and Engagement: By integrating in-game ads, brands can tap into the vast and diverse gaming audience, ensuring their messages are seen by users across various platforms and enhancing overall campaign performance.

The post Level Up Your Revenue With the Exploding Potential of In-Game Advertising for Publishers appeared first on AdMonsters.

Like many of us in the industry, Eddie Lee, VP of revenue operations at Blitz.gg, didn’t study digital publishing in college. An Asian American friend working at an ad agency introduced him to the industry, and they told him the sector offered tremendous potential for growth and learning. Acting on his friend’s advice, Lee landed a job at one of the largest ad agencies in the world, officially launching his career in the digital ad-tech space. 

In February 2023, he joined Blitz, an Asian American-owned company that provides insights and learning tools to online gamers of all skill levels to hone their skills and enjoy their game time more. Like the gaming community, the Blitz audience is highly diverse, and success means breaking free of stereotypes. As part of our celebration of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, AdMonsters spoke with Eddie Lee about the stereotypes he faced and why he loves digital advertising.

Susie Stulz: As a company in the gaming industry, do you encounter many stereotypes about gamers?

Eddie Lee: Generally, there are many stereotypes about gamers. People think gamers are young and male, but they cross every age range, gender, and ethnicity. Everybody games and gamers are highly diverse, which is why Blitz has spent a lot of time and energy developing and speaking directly to the diversity within our audience.

Even within the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities, we see a tremendous amount of diversity. AAPI includes people from East Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Indian subcontinent. 

That diversity furthers based on how long people have been here. For instance, I’m a second-generation Korean American, which means I have different perspectives from someone who has immigrated here as an adult. I grew up attending American schools and went to an American college, which exposed me to many different topics and career options. AAPI people want to enter all sorts of careers, from advertising and teaching to arts and engineering.

One of the biggest stereotypes AAPI people contend with is the assumption that we all want to be doctors or engineers. I remember starting a business development role at a company and someone telling me that the engineering department was on the other side of the floor.

SS: How did that make you feel?

EL: It made me more determined to chart my own course. Also, it’s important to remember that Asian Americans aren’t the only ones who are being pigeonholed like that. Many communities face assumptions about their work and employment.

That said, I think all hiring managers need to realize that Asian Americans are applying for all kinds of jobs now, including the revenue development side of digital advertising. If you assume that all Asians are engineers, you’ll miss the opportunity to hire great people for other roles.

SS: What makes you feel at home in the digital advertising space? 

EL: First, digital ad tech is one of the more diverse industries today, and that diversity is growing, so there is room and opportunities for people of different backgrounds. My current company is Asian-American owned, and many of the people I work with both inside and outside my company are AAPI.

The other thing is that, again, our industry and our audience are very diverse. So, it’s equally rewarding to work with and connect with people who don’t look like me. If you value diversity as much as I do, it’s a real selling point for the industry.

SS: To put a slightly different spin on it, are you saying that hiring managers who recruit from a diverse candidate pool will tap into a bigger talent pool?

EL: Yes, and many people will say that but don’t really act on it. A diverse employee base, with people of different backgrounds, ages, and lengths of time here in America, will create a scenario where everyone can feel comfortable applying for jobs and feeling empowered to succeed.

Part of making people feel comfortable is to allow them to voice their opinions and make recommendations that will fuel the velocity for higher performance within the company.

I receive many queries from AAPI college graduates considering their first jobs. They find me on LinkedIn and want to know how to get started. I always carve out time to talk to them and try my best to provide directional advice or connect them with companies that can be a good fit.

The digital advertising sector fuels the free internet in terms of content, especially gaming. It’s one of the most important ways that brands can connect to consumers, which makes diversity within the sector so important.

SS: What are some opportunities for brands to embrace the diversity of the Asian American and Pacific American communities?

EL: So first, according to the 2020 Census, 6.2% of the US population, or 20.6 million people, identify as Asian, Native Hawaiian, or Other Pacific Islander alone. And according to Nielsen, this community has a combined purchasing power of $1.6 trillion this year. That’s a growth of 314% from 2000 to 2019.

When we talk about diverse communities, I think one of the most important storylines is how we’ve uplifted one another. Everyone wins when all communities are recognized and celebrated.

Over the past few years, we’ve seen a rise in Asian hate and a corresponding Stop AAPI Hate movement, and I think that by supporting the community and AAPI-owned publishers, brands can uplift themselves as well as the AAPI communities.

The post Celebrating AAPI Heritage Month: Blitz.gg’s Eddie Lee on Breaking Stereotypes and Championing DEI appeared first on AdMonsters.

As the holiday season draws near, delving into this market becomes all the more crucial. Josh Qualy, VP of Digital Turbine’s East Coast brand business in the U.S., presents compelling research underscoring the significant disparity in holiday ad frequency between in-mobile gaming (13.6%) and more conventional channels like T.V. (29.6%) and social media (17.1%).

According to their research, mobile gaming captures consumer attention and surpasses the time spent on platforms like Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram. Despite these compelling statistics, U.S. advertisers significantly trail the rest of the world in investments in mobile game ads, ranking eighth out of the top 10 global markets. 

We spoke with Josh Qualy to understand these data points and explored how advertisers and publishers can win the attention game. 

Andrew Byrd: Why is attention so critical in digital media?

Josh Qualy: Attention matters because, simply put, viewability doesn’t mean viewed. Without a better metric, advertisers will continue to invest in costly channels and campaigns with little or no ROI. 

Attention has proven to be 6x better than viewability in predicting brand recall. With screens jammed with content, users are used to scrolling past or skipping things with just a passing glance. Advertisers must measure attention over viewability to get a better indication of campaign success.  

AB: Why do you believe U.S. brand marketers are not fully capitalizing on the abundant attention available in online gaming channels?

J.Q.: First, I see U.S. brand marketers catching up in 2024. Right now, brand advertisers are still navigating new privacy regulations and changes in consumer behavior. These influences have forced advertisers to rethink and re-evaluate their campaign strategies. 

Chief among those has been the understanding of the shift from viewability to attention. With them now armed to take advantage of these insights, 2024 is where they put these learnings into practice – seeking to find formats that maximize attention, which will include in-game advertising. 

AB: Could you elaborate on the ad frequency data for in-mobile gaming compared to T.V. and social media and what implications this might have for publishers and advertisers as the holiday season approaches?

J.Q.: The holiday season is make or break for advertisers. Optimizing ROAS is complex, but one factor is undoubtedly advertising share of voice. Compared to media channels such as TV and social media, the data show that U.S. consumers do not see brand ads nearly as often in mobile games. There’s less competition and more opportunity to achieve a greater share of voices and drive higher ROAS. 

In contrast, in other countries like India, Brazil, Mexico, and China, the data show that advertisers are already taking advantage of the growing in-game opportunity and are likely driving a greater share of voice and ROAS. 

This gives U.S. advertisers an advantage this holiday season since they can place their relevant ads in mobile game environments that will be less cluttered. And let’s face it: Advertisers always blitz consumers with holiday campaigns. Finding an environment where your ad can easily reach eyeballs can make all the difference.

Attention is still a new concept. And it's still something advertisers are learning to measure, understand, and harness in their campaigns

AB: The statistics indicate that mobile gaming surpasses Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram regarding the time consumers spend playing. Why do you think U.S. advertisers are not investing as much in mobile game ads despite this significant attention?

J.Q.: Attention is still a new concept. And it’s still something advertisers are learning to measure, understand, and harness in their campaigns. Taking a step back, the advertisers currently investing in mobile games are performance advertisers. They are taking advantage of the opportunity because they are more in tune with the metrics of success that games offer. Brand advertisers are just later to the party. The same trend happened with social platforms like Facebook. As the market matures, you’ll see a tipping point for brand advertisers. 

AB: Your data highlights the attention-grabbing potential of interactive video advertising in mobile games. Can you share insights into how this format outperforms non-skippable YouTube ads in terms of consumer attention and brand impact?

J.Q.: In-game advertising uses a model similar to network TV, where they weave ad breaks into natural breaks in the content. While TV used the model of crafting ads into scene changes, games put ad breaks after a natural pause in play – after players complete a move or a level. This properly sets the consumer expectation that an ad is coming. 

Compare this to YouTube or other social platforms, where they place ads at awkward times in the consumer experience. Mobile games find that sweet spot of cooperation between the publisher and advertiser. Advertisers get a format that maximizes attention to their video spots, while publishers can offer ad spots that don’t disturb or interrupt the user. 

The key to driving brand impact is harnessing attention into action where a consumer can seamlessly learn more, engage with the brand, configure a product, sign up for an offer, find the closest retailer, or even buy an advertised product. Many Advertisers today attempt to do this by placing QR codes in their TV or YouTube advertising. But engagements with these are low because TV and YouTube are passive activities – your fingers are at rest. In mobile games, consumers use their fingers to tap and engage with stimuli. 

Digital Turbine seamlessly integrates brand engagement interaction for our clients into these highly attentive moments, and the results are phenomenal. Adding post-video interactivity not only doubles the attentive seconds of an ad but also has a massive multiplier effect on brand impact.

AB: The figures indicate that many U.S. gamers remember brand advertising through mobile advertising. What strategies or elements in mobile game ads contribute to this high recall rate, and how can publishers and advertisers leverage this information?

J.Q.: Mobile games are immersive and engaging experiences, while social platforms are more passive. When viewing social feeds or reels, people are actively searching for content. While this may put their eyeballs and fingers to work, the mind is activating them to skip or scroll past things to find interesting content. 

Meanwhile, in games, the mind activates the eyes and fingers to find ways to win a game. With the mindset trained on engagement rather than skipping, putting a video ad with post-ad interactivity is the perfect way for brands to build awareness, engagement and convert users all in one spot.

AB: As we approach the holiday season, what advice would you give to brand marketers looking to make the most of the mobile gaming market?

J.Q.: Don’t neglect this opportunity. With concerns over inflation, consumers will be judicious about their brand choices. Mobile games offer a unique opportunity to build brand awareness, engagement, and conversions in one fell swoop. Using rewarded video ads in games can elevate your brand to the next level. In the U.S., 54% of people agree that an in-game rewarded ad experience creates a “halo” of more favorable brand opinion.

The post In-App Mobile Game Advertising Is the Perfect Gift for Getting Consumers’ Attention This Holiday Season appeared first on AdMonsters.

The gaming industry has seen an unprecedented surge in popularity, reaching a broad spectrum of demographics and geographies. Gamers are not just the stereotypical nerdy kid secluded in their parent’s basement. Gaming’s allure has transcended its niche origins and evolved into a widespread cultural phenomenon, captivating a diverse audience.

As the gaming industry skyrockets, advertisers are rubbing their hands in glee at the advertising potential. Picture this: engaging with consumers right in the heart of immersive gaming environments. It’s like entering a world where ads are part of the adventure. But hold your horses; there are challenges on this wild ride.

During a recent panel discussion, Getting Into Gaming: Building Ads For Immersive, Interactive Experiences, at ProgIO, industry experts from Roblox, Activision Blizzard, and Super Awesome offered valuable guidance to publishers and advertisers seeking success in gaming advertising. Here are five takeaways from the session: 

Level 1: Prioritize Audience Safety and Privacy

In gaming, prioritizing audience safety and privacy is paramount. 

Richard Sim, Senior Director of Product Monetization at Roblox, emphasized, “We built Roblox on the foundation of safety and stability from the beginning. We take it very seriously, recognizing that we wouldn’t be where we are had we not applied those principles at Roblox.”

A sizable portion of Roblox’s user base is under thirteen, but the gaming platform has a policy against serving ads to this demographic. The company is committed to handling younger audiences with utmost care and responsibility, setting the stage for a secure and responsible advertising ecosystem. As the industry crafts impactful ad experiences within gaming, transparency and privacy are fundamental pillars for creating a great user experience.

Level 2: Innovate Ad Strategy

Advertising within the gaming sector demands innovative strategies to integrate with the gaming experience seamlessly. Publishers and advertisers must reimagine ad strategies to align with the gaming environment. If not, level one will trap them. 

Sim said, “When I talk about building the immersive ad system, I do talk about reimagining advertising, trying to avoid a lot of past missteps such as privacy and transparency.”

Advertising strategies must evolve with the gaming industry to incorporate innovative approaches that respect user privacy and seamlessly integrate into the gaming narrative. You can’t press play without going all in! Advertising in gaming isn’t just about flashing billboards; it’s about becoming part of the gaming saga.

Level 3: Address Measurement and Metrics Challenges

Oh, and measuring success? That’s a whole different boss level. Traditional metrics don’t cut it in these immersive gaming realms.

Jonathan Stringfield, VP of Business Research & Marketing at Activision Blizzard, emphasized the challenges in measuring ad viewability in 3D immersive spaces, indicating the need for more nuanced metrics to provide insights into brand impact and ROI.

“While we work with all the standard ad measurement vendors, we recognize that gaming is newer for advertisers. Therefore, the burden of proof is on us to ensure we have the most empirically accurate measurement,” said Stringfield.

Gaming experiences require reevaluating how success is measured. Advertisers must embrace innovative measurement methods that reflect the depth of engagement and the influence these immersive environments exert on the audience, painting a more accurate picture of advertising ROI.

Level 4: Explore the Metaverse Beyond Gaming

The Metaverse, once primarily associated with gaming, has transcended its initial boundaries, encompassing a wide array of experiences. It now includes music, educational exploration, meditation, and more.

For example, Mattel built Barbie’s dream house in Roblox. Artists like Travis Scott, Ariana Grande, and Lil Nas X created virtual concert experiences. The opportunities are limitless, and the digital media industry should take advantage of it. Barbie’s movie campaign alone is a masterclass for creating an advertising campaign. 

As gaming expands beyond its traditional realms, advertisers must recognize the diverse opportunities within this broader space. The Metaverse has evolved into a dynamic medium beyond gaming, opening avenues for engaging consumers in multifaceted experiences.

“Defining the Metaverse as just a gaming opportunity is an oversimplification,” said Sim.

Boss Level: Integrate Brands Seamlessly and Consider Future Prospects

Successfully integrating brands within gaming and immersive experiences was a focal point of the panel discussion. Kate O’Loughlin, CEO of Super Awesome, emphasized that brand partnerships were integral to connecting with consumers.

“We’re working with Athleta, and we measured how the favorability of a brand increased after they did this cool piece of content,” said O’Loughlin. “Then we also tagged on measurement of purchase intent from shoppers.”

Brand integration is a promising avenue, showcasing the potential to effectively engage a broader audience within gaming and the evolving Metaverse. This integration is not limited to gaming but extends into a wider spectrum of experiences within the Metaverse. Advertisers have the exciting opportunity to craft strategies that seamlessly integrate their brands into these diverse experiences, amplifying brand engagement and forging meaningful connections with consumers.

If publishers and advertisers conquer these levels, they will beat the final boss!

The post Press Play and Level Up: The Future of Gaming Advertising Lies in Immersive Brand Experiences appeared first on AdMonsters.

Doing so profitably starts with performance marketing, which allows advertisers to reach their audiences at scale — and pay for results rather than impressions. 

Marketers can use the strategy across apps of all verticals and categories to stimulate specific down-funnel actions. And performance marketing is achievable across channels — including connected TV (CTV)

CTV is now in more than 90% of US households, creating a tremendous opportunity for advertisers to engage with new audiences. This is especially true for non-gaming apps, which can leverage the mobile gaming apps’ technology, strategies, and tactics to acquire high-value users on CTV and beyond. 

Let’s explore the unique challenges that non-gaming apps face in scaling their UA, how mobile apps across the board can efficiently optimize toward specific business goals, and what the dawn of precision performance marketing on CTV means for profitable mobile audience growth. 

Unique Challenges for Non-gaming Apps 

Revenue from non-gaming apps recently surpassed that of gaming apps in the US, signaling a shift in consumer behavior and an opportunity for further growth. The non-gaming category is diverse, from food delivery and finance to health and wellness. But most brands share the challenge of stimulating down-funnel actions, such as purchases, orders, or subscriptions. 

While gaming apps often rely on in-app advertising or in-app purchases as their primary source of monetization, as gamers spend minutes or even hours at a time in the app, non-gaming apps often need users to take a particular action in a limited amount of time in the app to generate value. 

For example, a food delivery app doesn’t just need people to download their app, even though that could technically qualify as UA. Instead, they need people to download the app and place their first order. Acquiring high-value new users, or those likely to make that first-time order and further purchases, requires first identifying those consumers and then reaching those audiences at scale. 

There’s a ton of data to consider, but apps don’t have to go it alone. Performance-driven data partnerships can help brands connect with high-intending audiences, measure success, and continually optimize campaigns to maximize ROI and drive incremental growth. 

Fueling More Targeted, Profitable Growth With Performance Marketing  

In the example of the food delivery app, advertisers can use performance marketing to understand the impact of their advertising beyond installs. With cost per event (CPE) analysis, campaigns can start to optimize toward the specific “event” of the first-time order. 

This performance-based approach enables marketers to understand down-funnel consumer behavior, and anything from completing a level to making a purchase can be optimized as an event. Starting with an app’s business goal, learning periods, and experimentation, marketers can identify an ideal channel mix that yields users most likely to take the specific action.

Machine learning coupled with powerful data analytics can help app advertisers find their ideal audience and continually optimize campaigns in real time to yield more of those specific down-funnel events. This allows apps to scale UA profitably and avoid ad waste on consumers unlikely to generate high lifetime value (LTV).  

Opportunity in CTV for App Marketers  

While CTV is a new and exciting marketing channel, its pricing model has historically been based on impressions, charging brands for eyeballs rather than results. This can seem hard to justify in our current economic reality, especially for apps operating on thinner margins. 

To leverage CTV efficiently, marketers should test its advantages as a performance channel and shift their buying from a CPM to CPI (cost per install) model, making it a natural extension of their UA campaigns. 

Marketers should prioritize collaborating with channel partners that provide a single access point across mobile and CTV for their performance campaigns. This enables transparent omnichannel reporting that delivers deeper insights for more holistic optimization across channels. 

For example, while tapping into performance-based buying on CTV, marketers can still track performance on a CPE basis, optimizing toward channels where users convert on the desired event, such as first-orders for food delivery apps, as mentioned earlier. This ensures sustainable, cost-effective ROI while increasing user LTV.

By only paying for installs, advertisers turn impressions into a powerful value add for additional brand awareness. For example, users who see a CTV ad for a dating app may not be able to install it immediately, but they may do so later, creating a halo effect from the campaign that delivers long-term benefits. 

As viewership reaches new heights and ad spend projected to grow 21% this year, app developers and marketers neve have had a better time to reach incremental new audiences on this channel. 

With CPI pricing, efficient performance marketing for apps — relying on the same measurement infrastructure as mobile — is more than possible on CTV. In fact, CTV may be all but necessary to stand out in the increasingly competitive app marketplace and scale revenue through the acquisition of high-value users.  

The post How Mobile Apps Can Profitably Scale UA with Performance Marketing and CTV appeared first on AdMonsters.

Gaming apps have historically been at the forefront of UA, but non-gaming apps are increasingly generating their own strong results, as evidenced by their increased revenue. In fact, according to Sensor Tower data, over half of App Store spending in the U.S. now comes from non-game apps, and in Q2, iOS users in the U.S. spent more money in non-gaming apps than games for the first time ever. 

Let’s explore how.

The Standard UA Playbook

UA has evolved from a mono-channel, narrowly targeted approach, which enabled app developers to test on a relatively small budget, to a complex operation involving various sources of growth and a meaningful investment to make experiments worthwhile.

Optimizing toward performance goals in the current mobile landscape requires far more capital to spend on a single platform — or a more creative channel allocation strategy and superior automated optimization capabilities. So, mobile apps, especially non-gaming developers, are adopting more diversified platform strategies to acquire high-value users.

Why Gaming Apps Have Led the Way on UA

Gaming apps are known as the bellwethers of mobile marketing. In large part, this is because the economics of UA in gaming are more forgiving due to each user’s high potential lifetime value (LTV). 

For example, gaming apps will more frequently land what those in the industry colloquially refer to as ‘whales’ — users who spend tens of thousands of dollars on in-app purchases to further their enjoyment of a game. Those who spend the same on e-commerce, finance, or food delivery apps are less common.

As a result, gaming apps do not need to be as sensitive as their non-gaming peers to short-term results. They can test longer with the confidence that if their UA strategy generates some success over the course of the longer period of time, the whales will justify their UA spend. This allows gaming developers to test for longer, eventually reach an inflection point in learning and strategy, and then see their acquisition efforts take off.

By contrast, non-gaming apps are more sensitive to performance goals and budgets — specifically in the early stages of a campaign — and keeping the spend strictly within the planned budget. They must follow best practices more closely to build sustainable businesses and hit that inflection point with an increased sense of urgency.

Best Practices for Non-gaming Apps to Acquire High-value Users

Acquiring high-value users begins with an effective channel acquisition strategy. Marketers must understand the channels compatible with their specific app’s audience and goals. Then, they need to determine their budget and how much they need to spend to hit a critical mass of experiments that can drive more efficient performance.

The latter piece of the puzzle is timing and expectation setting. For example, business leaders unfamiliar with the dynamics of UA may want to set acquisition targets for the learning phase of a campaign. But that is often impractical because the business does not yet have a frame of reference for its UA costs and how to make its efforts more efficient. Instead, marketers need to understand industry benchmarks — gaming being the bellwether — for how much they will need to spend to learn before they can start setting and hitting performance KPIs. 

Next up is channel allocation optimization — which is about a combination of performance and volume. Budgets are allocated across channels in a way that will deliver particular payback within the required timeframe. This could be breaking even on a high volume within a year or reaching 115% D90 return on ad spend (ROAS) as it can already start turning a profit after the first 90 days but on a minimal volume. The purpose of the exercise is to factor in individual channel performance at the particular scale and combine it with others to complement each other to reach the general goal. 

It takes technical heft to efficiently find high-value users across an array of platforms. Take Miami-based Picsart, which saw new users and increased its performance with its network partner. In addition to driving installs and increasing conversion rates, Picsart maintained a top-5 position in the highly competitive photo and video category for U.S. iOS. And the app became one of its network’s top-performing in terms of cost per engagement and conversion rates.

In addition to optimizing channels, mobile marketers should also test and improve creatives with the help of analytics. How do different aesthetics and copy work across audiences, verticals, and channels? How can creative be adapted and targeted to eliminate waste and identify the highest-value users? The stand-out networks will approach their clients’ creative strategy in a consultative way to see what works best vertical to vertical. They’ll work with clients directly to get the most out of their UA by guiding the process from concept to final production.

Marketing analytics and measurement should deliver clean, actionable data across all the channels you intend to buy from, specifically cost data, and the ability to map it to revenue and easily create relevant metrics for your UA. These could be D7 retention or D0 ROAS, for example, as long as they are presented in a clear and actionable way. 

Lastly are predictive analytics, which are a great investment because predictive lifetime value (pLTV) models drive the goals and actual buying decisions. So the more accurate the models get, the more efficient UA. 

A pLTV model can be a trivial one based on average values. Average Revenue Per Daily Active User (ARPDAU) is used with retention factored in to determine an average user’s LTV. Or it can be regression analysis based on user-level cohorts that drives a much more accurate result. Still, it will take much more data input to be useful (e.g., purchase verification for subscription apps and user-level ad revenue for ad-supported apps). 

Lastly, all of the above depends on continuous experimentation in creative, UA, and predictive analytics, by a team with a diverse set of skills and an analytics stack you can trust. Gaming or not, successful mobile growth teams are multidisciplinary. They include designers for creative works, data scientists for predictive analytics, and UA professionals to execute on ad channels from an operational and business perspective, as the underlying goal of the organization itself is to deliver customer growth at a certain performance and volume. 

An effective UA strategy combines a winning combination of channel allocation and optimization, creative testing, actionable data, and predictive analytics driven by pLTV. By mastering these best practices, apps from any vertical can acquire high-value users that drive long-term, sustainable growth. 

The post What is the Winning Approach for Non-gaming Apps to Acquire High-value Users? appeared first on AdMonsters.

Videoplaza have launched the findings of their study into the world of connected devices exclusively at AdMonsters’ OPS TV in New York on July 11 2012. The report is titled A Future for TV: IP-delivered video advertising in a connected world

We’ve summarised some of the key points below but you can access the full detailed report here.

Whilst TV advertising will remain one of the most popular mediums – both with consumers and advertisers, it is experiencing flat or minimal growth in many markets. In order to stimulate growth in this market the report details that broadcasters and publishers in general must embrace IP-delivered video and monetize it effectively.

The increasing array of connected devices available and being used by consumers is shaping the IP-delivered video landscape. If personal devices such as smartphones are taken into account, there are already more connected devices than PC or TV households in developed markets.

This requires media owners to develop services which can be accessed via these devices or risk missing out on growth, and losing ground to competitors.

This surge in connected devices is leading to a double fragmentation for media owners – a horizontal fragmentation of their aggregate audience across de- vices, and a vertical fragmentation of individual consumption – split across that individual’s device portfolio.

This ultimately affects delivery cost and ability to monetize an audience reach scattered across devices. In order to ensure that integration costs for developing connected device applications are kept low, media owners are increasingly devolving aspects of service management to third parties.

Audience reach must be complemented by advertising reach, as even in times of technological innovation and new marketing paradigms, audience reach re- mains the most critical asset brand advertisers are looking for in media proper- ties.

Re-uniting the audience fragmented across devices with a comprehensive advertising strategy is essential. Such a strategy must be both device-agnostic – ensuring that each device, in- dependent of its specific properties can be reached by advertisers effortlessly, but device-committed – technical integration of advertising must fit the specific device in terms of user experience and context of use.

Get the full detailed report here.

The post AdMonsters Exclusive: Videoplaza Report Findings on IP-Delivered Video appeared first on AdMonsters.