Blog - Adsbalance

Fighting creative burnout

Posted on 08.05.2022

The main reason for poor advertising performance is an audience or creative burnout.

In this article, we will explain what burnout is, what causes it, whether it is a continuous process, and how to work with it to get the results you want with the help of the team of our performance marketing agency Adsbalance.

Burnout. Myth or reality?

Unfortunately, it is a reality. But not everything that looks like burnout is it. What do aspiring internet marketers think? Creative gets seen for the first time and that’s it. After that, it’s no longer effective. Actually, this is not the case.

The first week of the creative launch is cream-skimming time. Creative is usually at its most effective during this period. After that, performance may take a downturn, but it’s not burnout yet. It’s a legitimate process.

Adsbalance media buyers say: “The pattern of burnout depends on the size of the audience you’re targeting. If your targeting is 100k people, it will burn out even faster than if you target 1k people”.

Clickability at first is usually between 0.5% and 2%. The rest see the ad. We haven’t worked through yet, and haven’t hooked. That’s why it’s important to keep working through. We have to reach every segment of the audience and get it interested. For example, we are promoting an online store mobile app for 1,000 items. And we have to get everyone interested, to show them the products or benefits that this particular customer needs.

Burnout will not occur if we constantly show something new and update the products in the ads.

Cases of burnout and measures to combat it

Burnout can occur if we work with narrow geo. Then we have to change:

product images;
phrases used in connection with the creo;
the manner of presenting the product.

Signs of real burnout

An increase in the price of the lead.
Deterioration of the quality of the audience.
A decrease in clickability.

You can tell if your creative is about to burn out before it does. If the graph on which you track effectiveness begins to show a decline in cumulative frequency, it means, that there are less and less interactions with the creative. Its effectiveness will only get worse. It is at this point that we have to substitute creativity. That way we don’t lose a week to a week and a half.

That is, the creatives have to be ready in advance. We change the message and the communication. And the schedule goes up again before reaching the lowest possible figures. You have to act in advance.

How long before burnout?

For each project, the time will be different. Some creos may burn out in three days, others only after three months. But if you work on a project for more than a day, you will be able to follow the pattern and prepare in advance. For example, you’ve been driving traffic to an online school app for six months, and you see that creatives burn out every month and a half. Accordingly, a month after the start of that project, you can start preparing new creatives.

The good news. If the life span of an offer is short, the creative may simply not have time to burn out. For example, the Adsbalance team’s offer has a lifespan of about 3 months. In 3 months, those creos that show good performance don’t burn out. But on such verticals as subscriptions, burnout will be a problem. Then we need to make a lot of similar conversion creos and restart the advertising campaigns.

Let’s describe it in as much detail as possible.

What should you do when burnout starts?

– Change the creatives completely.

– Change the colour of creatives. If the background was coloured, try it on a white background and vice versa.

– Change what’s on the existing creative. For example, if it was with a speaker, make it without. If it was without, place the product.

– Change the message. For example, the product can be photographed neutrally, or it can be in the hands of a person. A person uses it in some way: for example, a girl is styling her hair before a date or bragging to her friends about a purchase.

You get more touch-points with segments of your target audience by the enumeration method. Of course, to do this, it is important to know it well. What the pains, goals in life, and fears are.

– New approaches. New landing pages, for example. Then do a two-step job with retargeting. If the person doesn’t register on one landing page, lead for another.

– Substitute products if possible (e.g. you are promoting an online shop where there are many products).

– Expand your target audience, if in your case this is possible.

Let’s talk separately about messaging. Which ones to use? We prepared for you a list of triggers, so that you can choose what suits your creos.

Scarcity.
Time pressure.
Missed profit.
Exclusive.
Gratitude.
Greed.
Intrigue.
Novelty.
Guarantee.
Expertise.
Pleasure.

Also, if possible, you can use reviews with a reference to a significant source. Conventionally: “Forbes wrote about me”.

Going through the triggers, you’re sure to find something that will boost your advertising figures.

And a little tip from the Adsbalance team: try hiring a creative producer. This option is suitable for those who work in a team. We also advise you to keep and analyse statistics, including comparative ones, for each creative. This will help you to find out more quickly what converts better and to make the most effective creatives for your advertising campaigns.

A guide to Wap-Click

Posted on 28.04.2022

Mobile subscriptions or Wap-Click is one of the niches in affiliate marketing. Here, billing takes place from the user’s mobile account at specific intervals.

The user gets on the landing page, clicks on the big button that says “View” or wherever, and subscribe. And then the payment is debited. All this happens as unobtrusively as possible, so the conversion rate is high: that’s a plus. Another plus is that there is no hold: the user subscribes instantly, so the money also comes almost immediately.

So it can be withdrawn immediately into your account. Let’s talk about this niche in more detail.

General characteristics

Wap-Clicks appeared in the mid-2000s. Initially, they were operator services. With the spread of smartphones, the market for mobile subscriptions began to expand rapidly. The peak was from 2010 to 2013, when actors “overheated” the market and used aggressive promotion types. Situation has now changed. The market is beginning to operate legally. This situation opens up new opportunities for the development of the sphere. And makes it a more long-term and promising direction.

The advantages of Wap-Click

Are present in practically all geo

A wide coverage: almost all people use mobile phones in their daily lives at the moment

Low cost at the moment

You can get your first results on small budgets, as the entry threshold to mobile subscriptions is lower than in other niches.

Google and Zuckerberg’s brainchild works best with Wap-Clicks. That is where they work out the big cases with big budgets. There is a simple reason for success: huge audience, easy flow, and a wide range of offers. To put it as simply as possible. Getting a user to send an SMS is easier than linking a credit card.

As mentioned above, mobile offers have a wide variety of geos. From Germany and Sweden to Malaysia. User preferences and regulations in these groups can vary significantly. So it’s important to research the market before launching campaigns, and check with your affiliate program manager for nuances.

In terms of operating systems, it is worth highlighting that Android and iOS gadgets are the main ones. It is always worth paying attention to this point when optimising campaigns, as CR will differ from one operating system to another.

Types of Wap-Clicks

All the offers in the Wap-Clicks vertical get divided into several groups based on the targeted action a user needs to perform in order to subscribe.

Clickflow. One or two clicks on the “Subscribe” button on a landing page are required to complete the subscription.

Pin-submit. To subscribe user has to request a PIN code that he will receive in an SMS and then enter it on the page.

Click2sms flow. To subscribe, the user clicks on the webpage and then sends an SMS with the keyword to a short code. In some countries local regulators require entering the phone number on the page.

Mobile subscriptions can also be divided by the content offered, but first let’s describe the targeted actions.

Wap-Clicks’ prelending

Marketers use prelendings to fuel the commission of a targeted action. Affiliate programme managers usually help their publishers to create prelends, translate texts, or give out ready-made versions.

All this allows them to test the funnel in the shortest possible time and avoid wasting time in producing creatives and promo materials themselves.

At the same time, many use ready-made prelendings they find in spy services, and already adapt them for their own needs.

How are mobile subscriptions paid for?

The most common payment model is CPA. Payment by Revshare is usually an exception.

Let’s make it clear. Only a few publishers use the Revshare model. Most of the turnover is due to CPA. Nevertheless, a newcomer choosing mobile subscriptions should understand that there are different types of traffic monetization.

CPA. A model where the publisher gets a fixed commission per conversion.

Example. You subscribe a user to a video content service, and they’ll be charged $10 each month for accessing it. For this subscription, you will receive a one-time, fixed payment. It’s stable and simple, and most importantly, it’s easier to calculate your ad rates and optimise your campaign.

Revshare. Model, in which profit per conversion shares between advertiser and partner. Example. You bring a lead to a service with a monthly fee of $4. But when you work on Revshare model, you, as an affiliate, will receive a percentage of the monthly deductions. Let’s say it would be 30%.

So you would get $1.2 each month until the user unsubscribes. At first glance this might seem more profitable, but the reality is that users often unsubscribe. And billing does not always work correctly.

Setting up targeting for mobile subscriptions

In Wap-Clicks, you should give special attention to targeting by operators. There are regulators in some countries, and not all operators allow you to “sign up” their users.

In European countries the sphere of Wap-Clicks is more strictly regulated. It is forbidden to use particular expressions in advertising campaigns, or try to deceive the user and coerce him to subscribe to the service.

The positive thing to note is that advertisers provide their partners with IP addresses that are best used for targeting in order to obtain the best CR. But there is one nuance with them. It often happens that the address pool is out of date. We strongly recommend checking with your manager before launching a campaign to see if the information is up to date.

To summarise, if you are engaged in Wap-Clicks, you need to understand the requirements of operators in certain geo types of promotion, and before launching campaigns agree the bindings with your managers. They will tell you which points will pass, and the operators will have no questions about the quality of the traffic.

What are NFT games, and how can I make a profit from them?

Posted on 28.04.2022

NFT (non-fungible token) has an ambiguous reputation. Some see non-fungible tokens as a step into the future, others as a dubious scam. Either way, you can have a good income with them.

And one way is to make money from NFT games. Playing online games and getting paid for it sounds great! But what exactly are these games, and how is it possible to monetize them?

What are NFT games?

Blockchain has been around in the gaming industry for seven years now. And when NFT appeared, it became possible to create games where users can own gameplay elements, not just be players. For example, characters, items, and locations.

It all started with the CryptoKitties project. NFT kitties, which could be bred not only for fun but also for sale, showed the prospect of the market development. The price of rare tokens went up to several tens of thousands of dollars. Previously, players in games only spent money, but now they could earn money.

The key mechanism behind most games is simple. You play and “grow”, thereby increasing the value of your asset. In most NFT games you have to buy in-game tokens to start. Most upgrades have to pay for them. In others, you can start without investment. You can subscribe to the game’s social networks and invite a few friends. The mechanics are as easy to understand as possible.

Game tokens can be called an investment. And the gamification adds excitement to the process. So if the game you are playing becomes popular, your investment will also increase in value. For example, one of the characters in Axie Infinity sold for a million dollars. It’s hard not to agree that investing in it was a good idea.

Market perspective for NFT games

The market for NFT games is rapidly growing. Game industry leaders have begun to change the development logic of their products so that tokens can enter them. But players themselves are often against adding NFT to their favourite games.

On the other hand, the Game Finance segment in general and NFT games, in particular, give access to crypto to the masses, which can serve as a mutual catalyst for growth.

For some users, the prospect of quitting their jobs and living off in-game revenue looks intriguing. There are examples of Asian players making $500-$1000 a month. Of course, these aren’t huge sums. But you have to remember that they earn it by playing their favourite online games.

There is a significant risk in making money from this type of game. These games tend to have low engagement. You don’t get to play them for years. Therefore, the value of the assets drops off quite quickly.

Earn on NFT games without investment

If you don’t want to invest (buy an asset and sell it for a higher price after a while), there is a way without financial expenses. But you will have to spend your time. Start getting interested in the game before it even comes out. Keep an eye out for news about new game launches. That way, your chances of making money will increase many times over.

Once you have chosen a game, you register for it. And then perform the tasks that are necessary to monetise, and, in fact, play. For example, sometimes you have to be active in social networks or invite your friends. In addition, almost every game has mechanics that allow you to earn bonuses. Token giveaways, and competitions, which can also generate income.

For example, Axie Infinity is almost the most popular game. There is already a large community of fans around it, mostly from Asian countries. In this game, users breed and collect NFT critters called axis to fight other players. Each axi has its genetic code. Therefore, the characters’ weaknesses and strengths get passed on to their offspring. Each Axie is a unique NFT format token.

These characters are available for trading on the domestic market and the price of each one depends on their rarity and unique characteristics. To start playing, the user needs to purchase three Axies. For each quest, inter-player battle, and adventure mode he will receive platform bonuses. You can raise your Axie, trade them, create teams with them, and fight other players.

During the game, you receive SLP and AXS tokens for each victory. SLP is a cryptocurrency that you can use to converge your Axie and create a baby Axie and then sell. Alternatively, you can sell your SLPs or exchange them for any other cryptocurrency.

SLP and AXS tokens can be sold on an exchange, sent to staking (storing funds in a cryptocurrency wallet), or used in voting on game development.

It’s worth noting that Axie Infinity has more in common with investing than conventional blockchain games. It combines elements of Pay-to-Win and Play-to-Earn mechanics. The result is something like Pay-to-Win-to-Earn.

The game will appeal to all fans of collectible battle games, just battle games, and card games. At the moment, you can earn around $5 an hour in the game. But believe us, this figure can grow significantly with the growth of SLP coins accordingly.

Before you dive into the top NFT games, remember – cryptocurrencies are different, as are their varying volatility. A financial measure of how much the price of an asset changes over a short period. The exchange rate shifts every day, so the opportunities to make money in the same game can vary from day to day.

The field is very new, and it takes time for it to start working in a more stable and long-term way. So do not forget about the risks involved either.

It’s hard to assess the prospects of the NFT gaming market right now. But one thing is clear – it’s currently growing exponentially and changing the entire gaming industry in a short time. Deals in NFT games are worth millions of dollars, and the number of unique users grows from a few tens of thousands to millions. It’s right now that the traditional giants in the industry are completely rebuilding their gameplays in new versions of games to get ahead of the competition, organising internal tokenomics, and so on. It is safe to say that the market will not be the same.

How to analyse mobile app marketing campaign data?

Posted on 15.04.2022

It’s hard enough to analyse mobile app marketing campaign data. An error in a single figure can lead to a significant distortion of the overall result.

These, in turn, can lead to incorrect planning of future campaigns and financial losses.

Learn how to get the data for analysis, make the process as transparent as possible, and ultimately get the data right in this article.

What is marketing analytics?

In a global sense, it’s a tool to determine if the right strategy and audience have chosen to attract traffic. There are several solutions for mobile analytics. The specific one you choose depends on the product you are promoting. You can use tracking platforms such as AppsFlyer and Adjust.

Principles of data analysis

Relevancy. We need to understand what kind of metrics we should analyse. Let’s say whether the countries we are comparing are relevant. For example, Tier 1 and Tier 3 are not equal to each other inherently. And the traffic quality is different. That’s why it’s not appropriate to compare them.
Context. You can’t compare data types that inherently have different properties. For example, the CPI of a campaign that optimises for instals vs. the CPI of a campaign that optimises for ROAS. The choice of data must depend on the end goals of the study. It is not always correct to compare different traffic sources with each other. Users within them have different behaviours.
Seasonality. The researcher must understand the periods for which they are comparing data. The data he uses must correlate across periods to get reliable results.

How do I interpret the metrics?

When a researcher interprets metrics, he must understand what a particular metric indicates and how it relates to the others. Do not analyse all metrics at once. It is useless. It is better to consider each metric based on specific objectives. Here are some groups of metrics.

Marketing metrics

The most important metrics from which you can conclude the work of your app promotion agency are CTR (click-through rate), IR (install rate), and CR (conversion rate). These use to understand how good your traffic is and how effective your advertising campaign was.

Additional metrics (specifically in terms of interpretation) include the following:

CPM – the price for every 1000 ad impressions;
ER – how actively your audience interacts with your app;
CPA – cost per action;
ROAS is a measure of the profitability of advertising expenses.

There are situations when the survey results show that the campaign had no problems. But the changes were due to difficulties with the product, for example. In this case, you need to contact the advertiser and find out what has happened to the app.

If the problems occur at the beginning of the user’s interaction with the app, you can find the answer on the App Store or Google Play. Perhaps there have been some changes to the product description or visuals. And the app has become less appealing to download.

But even if everything is fine, sometimes it is in the conversion from installation to purchase that the figures slip. In this case, you have to admit your mistake. Perhaps, you started attracting an untargeted audience or some other problem occurred. It is necessary to sort it out.

As you can see, it is essential to have open contact with the advertiser’s representatives during the process. These will help to solve problems in time if they arise.

Product metrics

Product metrics include:

DAU, WAU, MAU – day/week/month user activity metrics;
Revenue;
RR – customer retention rate;
CR – churn rate.

These metrics provide insight into the user experience. How many people have left the app, how many have come back, and how active they are.

The following metrics determine the financial success of a product and its value to the user:

LTV – profit that the company receives for the whole time of working with a client;
ARPU – revenue per user in a certain period;
CAC – customer acquisition cost;
ROI – return on Investment.

Organising the analysis

The first thing to do is to define the purpose of the analysis. Understand what you want to find out from it. Then move on to the strategy. There are several strategies for analysing marketing campaigns.

Comparison of different segments of time;
Analysis of changes in a particular metric over time;
Analyse a campaign for variation in metrics – go from the general to the specific, looking for unusual jumps in metrics throughout a campaign.

Each metric is related to the other. One defines the other or at least influences it.

What do you need to check with the advertiser before starting the analysis?

First, ask for benchmarks. These are the metrics that the product had before launch. They help guide you in the early stages before your analytics come in.

Second, gather the most comprehensive information possible: metrics for specific traffic sources, GEOs, types of optimisation, period, and volumes. Try to make sure that the customer does not specify a wide CPI range, but a different price point for different types of campaigns.

If you are clear about your objectives, work through the metrics correctly and interpret the results accurately, you will have valuable information about the product and campaign. It will not only keep you from wasting money but also increase your profit.

Huawei Ads platform review

Posted on 15.04.2022

The Huawei Ads platform is a promo tool that allows advertisers to reach hundreds of millions of users of Huawei gadgets over the world.

Among them are many owners of premium models. In terms of GEO, it has 170+ countries. It makes Huawei Ads a promising platform for many publishers.

Why did this platform appear?

Huawei, a well-known smartphone brand, has stopped releasing products with services from Google as of 2019 due to the US ban on cooperation with a large number of US companies. But the gadget maker has taken a different route and started to develop its own platform.

How useful is the Huawei Ads platform?

It allows placing advertisements in a variety of ways. For media advertising, it is possible to upload creos in the form of pictures or videos.

Promo videos.
Cross-page format.
Native ads.
Banner ads.

Huawei has its search engine, Petal Search. Here you can run ads in 2 formats: text with images and product ads.

App download ads work for apps that are uploaded to AppGallery. Ads are placed there as follows:

in-app search (configured by keywords)
at the first launch of the shop in the recommendations
in recommendations of apps and games

Huawei Ads offers a list of placements.

Huawei Video.
Huawei Music.
Huawei Assistant.
Huawei Browser.
Huawei Themes.
Huawei network apps.
Petal Search.

Search ads are available only for placement in Petal Search, app download ads – are only in AppGallery.

Various targeting options are available in Huawei Ads.

Tagging by attribution. Interaction with users to whom some attributes are assigned: gender, age, GEO, device characteristics, and others.
Interest-based tags. Offer products and services based on user preferences.
Combined targeting. It is a way of combining data from several audience attributes.
Retargeting. It allows you to reach users who have already interacted with your advertising campaign.

Several payment models are now available in Huawei Ads: CPC, CPM, and CPI. PPC is suitable for contextual advertising in Petal Search. Also, it is possible to sign a direct contract in the “branded advertising by keyword” format.

You can fund your accounts in dollars, euros, yuan, yen, and pounds. Dynamic Tag Manager is used to optimise your budget by tracking conversions, which can also be tracked by third-party services.

Client Cabinet

To create an ad cabinet, register via email or phone number. Then enter your company details such as brand, contacts, and business area. You can get more details in the Manage Advertising tab.

The Cabinet has three levels:

– you set the budget, strategy, and product type;

– you set up the targeting and auction;

– ad creatives generation.

Keyword and stopword lists must be separate.

In the Analytics tab, you’ll see reports, and in Tools, you’ll see a set of things you need to work with your account, upload files, and more. Separately worth mentioning is the tool for creating landing pages. It is a set of website templates for various topics.

One of the main features of promoting mobile apps with Huawei Ads is that they are installed directly from the ad screen if a full-screen format is used. Users don’t return to the shop. The installation starts right from the click. Compared to different in-app advertising platforms, this provides an advantage.

Huawei Ads is suitable for promoting a wide variety of apps. Especially mobile games, carsharing, food delivery. Almost all popular GEOs are available.

Work practices with Huawei Ads

Professionals are actively migrating to Huawei Ads for various reasons. They are those who are not satisfied with the strict moderation on other platforms. They highlight both the advantages and disadvantages of working with Huawei Ads.

Advantages:

10+ advertising formats;
700+ million monthly active users;
custom builder of landing pages;
targeting by interests and attributes of users with the highest engagement rates;
audience segmentation tool, retargeting;
automatic budget optimisation while tracking conversions;
you can integrate a third-party tracker.

Disadvantages:

creo takes up to several days to validate;
the advertising requirements are not clearly defined.

However, the pluses far outnumber the minuses. Professionals are actively testing the platform and are happy to share their first successes. For example, “others gave a conversion rate of 15% at best, but Huawei Ads showed 45-50%”. Therefore, the platform is quite promising. You can start testing it.

Important aspects of working with TikTok game creatives

Posted on 29.03.2022

The marketing services market is going through challenging times. Mobile platforms are tightening their data collection policies. The most powerful example here is the IDFA restriction on iOS. And, of course, certain tools are becoming less effective.

The smartest way out here is to diversify marketing spend. This includes working with venues that until recently were considered new and less well-developed than, for example, Facebook.

TikTok is just one of those platforms. It can still be considered new and not fully understood. However, it is fundamentally important for successful scaling. What you need to know when working with this platform today, we will tell you in this article.

Length

We all know that TikTok’s audience is clip-minded. They are used to quick information and don’t like having to concentrate on one thing for a long time. Therefore, a commercial should catch the user’s attention from the first seconds. You need up to 15 seconds for the consumer to get the information they want.

In fact, most mobile app creatives in TikTok are precisely 10-15 seconds long. But recently, the number of promotional videos longer than 30 seconds has started to grow.

As a rule, the longest videos are mobile game creatives. It takes longer to show both the game mechanics and the storyline of a game.

But here, too, we don’t recommend making your creatives too long. The minimum length of a creative is 5 seconds, and the maximum is 50-60 seconds.

Themes

The genre of the game being advertised also determines the performance of the ad. For example, in October-December of last year, casual game creatives performed best. For non-game apps, the best performing apps were those in the Entertainment and Lifestyle categories.

Active advertising audience

Advertising in TikTok shows the best results for users 13 – 25 years old. When selecting an audience for targeting, it is advisable to focus on this age segment.

Here’s what’s interesting. TikTok gamer users have less banner blindness – so advertising works better for them than for those who don’t play games.

As for the geography of TikTok advertising consumers, the best performing creatives are in the US, UK, Germany and France. In second place for engagement are Singapore, Brazil, Mexico, Spain, Italy and Russia. More recently, the geography has also shifted partly to the East. Creatives in TikTok are better received in Indonesia, Thailand, South Korea and Malaysia.

Burn out

Creative tends to become irrelevant over time. To ensure that the effectiveness of advertising campaigns does not decline, you need to update them at least once every 2-3 weeks. But often the commercials in TikTok use trends which are current, but are losing popularity very quickly. For this reason, we recommend running a commercial once a week.

It also happens that a creative burns out in just a few days. We attribute the short-term nature of a number of creatives to the niche nature of the content they advertise. In other words, the lightning-fast burnout is due to the small number of relevant users.

So, we have described the main aspects of working with game creatives in TikTok. Hopefully, they will be of use to you and will contribute to successful work and high profits.

Benchmarking Paid Users and Retention Rates across different game genres. What does this fresh research tell us?

Posted on 23.03.2022

The results and effectiveness of mobile campaigns are difficult to assess on their own, but it’s also difficult to know exactly where an app stands compared to competitors. In general, some user churn is normal. But knowing when churn rates are particularly high compared to standard user behaviour helps to determine if any changes need to be made to avoid losing interested users and revival.

Knowing the benchmarks for each specific game genre is important in order to ensure that the app is reaching its full potential. How and where can we see these benchmarks?

The MyTracker study, from where we took data from early summer to the end of last year, provides a comprehensive answer to this question. The purpose of the study was to evaluate the leading genres of gaming apps in terms of retention rates and Paying User Rates in the immediate post-installation period, and to evaluate the standard metrics for each.

The goal was also to find out whether Paying User Rates and Retention Rates increased or decreased in the week following installation for each genre of app. These metrics are important because they help developers get an idea of how many users stay after installation, and how many of them are converted.

The paying users indicator (PU) was calculated by dividing the number of unique paying users per day N by the total number of users who installed the app N days ago, multiplied by 100.

The Retention Rate (RR) was calculated by dividing the number of users who were with the app on day N (or later) by the number of users who installed the app N days ago, multiplied by 100.

Results

The lowest rate of paying users on day N among puzzle games like Word Games (PU on day N was 0.08%). The highest PU rates were observed in the following categories:

Casual – 1.23%;

RPGs – 1.24%;

books – 1.28%.

The data on PU for day 7 showed that the genres with the highest and lowest rates were the same, with one exception: strategy games (1.83%) outperformed casual games (1.64%).

Card games had the highest retention rate on day 7 at 50%, while social networking games showed the lowest at 6.51%. Arcade (which is a genre of computer games, intense and short in time) showed the sharpest drop in RR, it was 43% on day 7 in relation to day 1.

As you can see above, there are significant differences in both user retention rates and paying users across game categories. Let’s look into why this is the case.

Why are the data different?

Among social games, lower retention rates and fewer payments after the first day can be explained by the fact that the games are group-based, with PU changing little. Interactive stories have low marginal retention rates for a simple reason: they will either interest the user (more often, the user) immediately, or not.

The opposite is true of casual games. They have PU and RR uniformly high, as these are the types of games that are enjoyable to play in order to relax. No extra skill is required for the user, they have a great time, and therefore almost always get involved in the game and continue to use it for quite a long time.

The card games came out on top in terms of RR on day 1 and day 7. They always have the highest retention rates and the longest session duration from a smartphone.

These games (as well as sports games, for that matter) are set by players. Those who are used to earning and, importantly, spending money in the game. Accordingly, it is not a problem for them to donate to the game.

Strategies are good in the sense that the user rarely deletes them immediately. It is important for fans of this genre of mobile games to immerse themselves in the process, to try it out. They spend time (from an average of half an hour per session) and money willingly, but you have to wait quite a long time to reach conversion.

Adventures shows excellent RR on the first day, but then there is a steep decline, with PU increasing significantly. This is because users can go through more than one level before they come across a paywall. And whether they pay or not already depends on the quality of the game and the ability to interest the player.

The puzzle genre has the most average of all. They are developed quickly and are inexpensive. Users love them, and can pay for the extra features if the game interests them.

Racing is a fairly popular genre of game. But the conversion to paying users here is quite low. We can assume this is due to the fact that people like to play racing games on consoles rather than smartphones.

RPGs are the most profitable games in WW. They account for the highest number of paying players who make almost all the revenue for the producing companies. But there’s a catch: it takes quite a long time for this category of users to move on to purchases. Research data confirms this: PU RPGs on day 7 are the highest of all genres.

Final results

Application performance can vary considerably depending on the game genre, and it’s always a good idea to know what the standard performance should be for the niche you’re planning to work in.

Casual games, RPGs, books and strategies had the highest rates of paying users, although the latter had to wait until the last day for conversion. Card games gave the highest retention rate on the seventh day, and book games gave the lowest.

Once again, this proves to us that both metrics play an important role in evaluating performance. It’s important to know where you can “slip up” in order to determine the best strategy for promoting a game or choosing which genres to start working with. For example, if you have high retention rates but low conversion rates, monetising through ad networks may be a better option than relying solely on in-app purchases.

Ultimately, it comes down to knowing what offers to give to individual users and when, and tools are best for that. It is up to you to choose the most suitable ones for you from the large number on the market. In our article, we referred to a study based on just one tool. You are free to choose the one that suits you best.

How to make a successful mobile app landing page

Posted on 21.03.2022

In the highly competitive mobile app market, you need to test as many tools as possible to attract your target audience. That said, among such tools, creating an app landing page is considered effective. It can help increase the number of leads significantly.

But in order for a landing page to do its job well, you need to know how to create a landing page that sells. That’s why we’ll take a look at the specifics of creating a mobile app landing page.

Why does a mobile app need a landing page?

Before launching, a page will help analyze audience engagement before the product itself is released, allowing you to correct bugs.

A landing page is needed during the launch of the app. It’s where the ads are converted to, so that converts download the app directly there. Thirdly, you don’t have to give up on a landing page later on because it is important to keep users interested in the app. In addition, more detailed and exclusive information can be added to the frontend, which is not available on Google Play or the AppStore.

Nevertheless, many people are hesitant to create a branding if the information about the app can be added to Google Play or AppStore. But it is important to understand that a landing page is a selling page. You can specify all the benefits and let the installation down with marketing techniques, which cannot be done on Google Play and AppStore.

Additionally, different targeting options are available on the landing page: e.g. newsletter subscription, installation of the app, receiving a bonus. Mailing subscriptions are used before the launch of the app, when you need to gather a base of interested users. They can be made aware of the app’s release by email, or you can set up targeting.

What does a selling landing page look like?

Minimalism. It means there should be as few unnecessary elements on the page as possible.

Not much text. Use more information in graphic form. A large canvas of text is unlikely anyone will read. It’s better to show clearly how the app works, and why it should be downloaded right now.

Brilliance. A mobile app is also a pretty picture. Your branding should be striking and catchy, following the style of the app itself.

Support of any devices. On the landing page users should be able to enter from any device. Make sure that the page loads quickly and that all elements are displayed correctly, regardless of device.

Informative. When the user goes to the website, they need to see what the page is about, and what it offers in particular. Also, the visitor must understand what target action is expected of him.

When these conditions are met, the landing page is more likely to bring the required number of targeted actions. So before creating a landing page for a mobile app, make sure that its layout is in line with these points.

After the goal, you need to decide on the content. For a regular website, it needs to be collected and structured: this to the home page, this to “About Us”, this to the FAQ. The main task for a landing page, especially for a mobile site, is not to structure it, but to prioritize the order in which you want to put the information.

To determine the order, you need the results of target audience analysis. You’ve identified who your target customers are, and it’s now much easier to figure out how to persuade them. It’s great if you don’t just analyse the internet, but gather the right people and talk to them in person. Find out what they care about, what problems need to be solved and how they have already tried to do it.

Don’t immediately write the content as a ready-made text. Better write out the screens based on how best to persuade the CA. For example:

start screen – the offeror and its benefit + CTA,

description of function 1,

description of function 2 + CTA,

gallery of reviews,

price justification + CTA.

Desktop or mobile first

The big question in designing a mobile landing page is whether to do it first or design the full version first? Once upon a time, phones weren’t as functional, so websites were made primarily for computers. Phones have become more powerful, but the principle remains: make the website first, and then adapt it for mobile.

In recent years, the Mobile First approach has evolved whereby the mobile layout, which is more problematic, has to be done in the first place. And the desktop version is created on its basis, that is, the work is based on the principle of development. You don’t have to cut anything, you just have to add and enrich it.

Mobile design

Next, the prepared content must be made into a ready mobile frontend. I will tell you about a few principles and peculiarities that should be taken into account when making the layout.

Make-up in one column. It’s better to make everything in one column. If you divide the content in two, the columns will be too narrow. You will get a lot of strange transfers in the text, or you have to make the font very small. Arrange content vertically in blocks.

Air. Elements glued together on a small screen are difficult to read. It’s better to highlight the main thing among them and layout these blocks loosely, with space between them. Do not forget about the rule of proximity: objects located next to each other are perceived as related in meaning.

“Bends”. If possible, one block, complete with a CTA, should fit exactly on the phone screen, without going beyond the “fold”. At a minimum, make sure that the meaning of the block is clear from one screen.

Familiar scripts and elements. Remember that the user is viewing the mobile landing page on the move. To make the process easier, use common elements that you don’t have to think about. For example, the three bars in the corner always open a menu. If the form contains a phone mask like +44 133 000 0000, it’s immediately clear that it’s the phone number you need to enter there.

In 99% of cases, there is no need to deviate from familiar patterns and elements. This may be justified only if you are selling design services and want to immediately show what solutions you are capable of.

Design at your fingertips. A phone is operated with one hand, usually even with one finger. Any unnecessary action is irritating to users. For example, when you have to enter numbers into a field and a text keyboard opens.

Be mindful of hand controls

Position the elements so that you can easily reach them with your thumb.
Select the size of the item so that it is easy to press. No tiny crosses.
Avoid random elements in the bottom half of the screen so the user does not accidentally click on them. Don’t put two clickable elements close together.

If you consider the above tips, your mobile landing page will show a high conversion rate.

Mobile Marketing Trends 2022

Posted on 14.03.2022

It is very difficult to make predictions in the field of digital (and in more detail, mobile) marketing. Last year we saw the privacy revolution and could see how many white spots were still left. That is why predicting today is a daunting task.

That’s why we’ve gone beyond one opinion and brought together the opinions, predictions and insights of a number of experts in the mobile marketing industry at once. We hope it will help you navigate the market and succeed or prove your worth in 2022.

Creatives

Storytelling in mobile advertising. Today’s casual games are like teenage novels: they’re built around clichés, simple characters and predictable plots. More and more games offer pretty much the same user experience and, even worse, look similar. So those who can make storytelling more engaging and complex will explode in this market in the current year.

Engaging storytelling isn’t just a marketing tactic. The best mobile games will become more like a hybrid of a movie and an interactive game. Remember that 15 years ago, the same thing happened in PC and console games. Since then, the time spent playing the game also feels a lot like watching and living a real full-fledged story.

Strong narrative and 3D animation skills have become an integral part of the feature set of creative teams. They must create detailed worlds, intricate characters and spell out the deep relationships between them.

Everything should be tested first, to give teams a direction that will engage their audiences and develop for years to come. On this front, marketers, designers and developers will collaborate much more than ever before.

Is creo the primary means of optimisation? As we move towards a privacy-driven world, the number of optimisation tools will dwindle. Creative will become one of the most important levers in this process. Potentially, this could include the creation of an innovative new format with increased attention to it. Especially with the changes in iOS 15, everything from context and audience-specific creos to full-fledged landing pages will become more relevant than ever.

TikTok will be an engine for the development of creatives. More and more apps are making ads for TikTok first, and then using them on other platforms. TikTok sets the agenda for all advertising creatives. More and more brands are moving away from traditional, boring ads based on user-generated content (like reviews) to truly sellable ones created by Influencers. Contests and giveaways, dances and music videos are what’s working.

Branding-focused advertising formats will emerge. Testing its types such as: in-game native ads, branded liveops, audio ads or in-play inserts could be another interesting solution for publishers.

Due to privacy changes affecting the effectiveness of advertising in limited tracking segments, even more ads will have to be shown to effectively attract players. This, however, poses a problem for publishers as players can only view a certain amount of content, then engagement declines. This makes new advertising formats that don’t distract from gameplay, such as branded liveops, more attractive to both publishers and advertisers.

The year will be marked by SMM marketing. Developing commerce in the mobile market has made SMS marketing more personalised, dynamic and engaging than ever before. According to Yotpo research, 89% of mobile consumers want to receive messages from brands, and mobile users spend twice as much time on messages as they do on emails.

SMS can now contain not just text, but all the features of a digital advertising message. But advertisers will have to prove that subscribing to their SMS is useful. And if they succeed, the profits are not long in coming.

Technology

In the coming year, we will learn to measure marketing performance in new ways. Data Clean Rooms (DCRs), for example, will help us. This tool gives a user-level view of data without accessing it. This is essential for identifying information that is not otherwise possible. However, it is not yet possible to fully circumvent opacity.

Concentration in advertising technology has been predicted before, but its scale and depth has surpassed all expectations. Advertising networks were changing their activities to game studios and conversely. First Party Data is being actively assembled. These trends will only intensify.

iOS 15 takes a stab at self-attribution networks. They allow advertisers to directly receive postbacks via SKAN. Apple’s framework that allows app instals to be attributed to a specific ad campaign without using IDFA, meaning it preserves user privacy. One of ads leads to an app install or conversion. This way, they can see how accurately Facebook and Google are reporting results. Developers have been eagerly awaiting this feature for some time. And now Apple is giving them what they want.

The issue of data sharing will become even more topical. With the advent of the privacy era, this topic is becoming the most interesting. Ownership and intelligent use of data is becoming a growing competitive advantage.

Predictions for the market as a whole

Apple will cut the commission for all apps to 15%. Last month, Google took the decisive step of reducing the App Store commission from 30% to 15% for all apps. An exception that had previously only been made for smaller players.

The Apple – Epic Games decision could be the one that makes the tech giant realise it has a lot to lose if it doesn’t reduce its appetite. Now that Apple is not allowed to prohibit developers from placing links to alternative payment systems inside apps, apps will redouble their efforts to sell CRM.

Most app companies are working hard to find new solutions to retain users, discussing and developing new features and cross-partnering with other solutions. As a result, banks are turning into marketplaces, trading platforms into fintech, social networks into digital wallets, retailers into one-stop shops, delivery services, etc. The benchmark here is WeChat, which has been around since 2011 and has been able to expand its functionality significantly in recent years. Trend is towards mass consolidation around the world in several markets, especially in fast-growing regions such as Latin America and India. The capability of a super-app certainly solves the retention problem, but not losing its value while maintaining a good user experience and satisfactory performance is a challenge.

In the coming year, those companies that can not only smartly assimilate and apply fresh market trends or adjust to them. But also stay slightly ahead of the curve by creating new trends in the mobile marketing industry, will be on the top of the game.

Adsbalance’s Year In Review On Clutch For 2021

Posted on 20.01.2022

At Adsbalance, we are the fastest growing mobile marketing agency in Europe with clients worldwide. As a strategic performance marketing partner for top app publishers and mobile brands, our:

data measurements
programmatic advertising technology
more than 50 traffic channels

position us as one of the most reliable Mobile Performance Marketing agencies.

Hence, we know how to optimize mobile campaigns to safely ensure conversion growth and your expenditures.

With that said, we are proud to share with you our 2021 Year In Review on Clutch. If you’re not familiar with Clutch, it’s a B2B platform that helps firms across the globe connect with the solution providers they need to improve effectiveness and increase productivity.

In 2021, we recorded a perfect 5-star average rating on all of our reviews on Clutch which means our clients are delighted with the work we provide. We also recorded high ratings on our NPS scores, which refers to clients’ willingness to recommend us to their friends and colleagues. It’s genuinely heartening to receive high NPS scores, as this means a lot to us in getting our brand known in the industry.

We are also excited to share another milestone we achieved in 2021 as Clutch has named Adsbalance one of the top Mobile Marketing Agencies. We attribute this success to our wonderful clients and partners. Without them, we wouldn’t be here where we are today.

May this new year be filled with exciting projects, adventures, and opportunities for all of us! Do you want to work with us? We are a tight-knit team of long-standing friends and passionate colleagues. Please don’t hesitate to contact us.