A month after The AppsFlyer Performance Index covering H1 2016 was released, the report is still capturing headlines and dominating conversations we have both media partners and advertisers across the globe. To continue the conversation, we’re releasing the third post in our Cream of the Crop blog series, which highlights top performers in the index (check out previous articles featuring Twitter and AppLovin).
In the spotlight today is Vungle, a leader and pioneer in mobile video advertising, and a consistent top 10 player in the gaming index across the globe. We spoke with Vungle’s VP Marketing Catherine Mylinh to understand what makes video such a powerful ad unit for app promotion.
To what do you attribute your mobile advertising/app install advertising success, especially in gaming? Was there something that made a big difference this time around?We credit a lot of the success we’re seeing to two things: 1) focusing on in-app video ad technology; 2) aligning our business KPIs with those of our customers. We consider ourselves a growth engine for mobile developers.
Our core target audience is the performance marketer, and performance marketers are hyper-focused on ROI, or in our case, return on ad spend (ROAS). At Vungle, our LTV optimization products have really driven ROAS for our advertisers.
We’re developing LTV optimization products. Our advertisers pass back post-install event data, e.g., how many tutorials are completed based on the user cohort; what events were completed; how many in-app purchases were made; the value of those purchases, etc., that is ingested into our platform and modeled with the billions of data points on our network. We’re constantly refining our predictive algorithms to help our advertisers understand which combinations of campaigns and creatives are bringing their most high-value users—users who are most engaged and/or high-spending for their brand long after the install.
For example, for a game advertiser, high-value might mean a user who spends $15 within 30 days of an install. For a coupon app, it might be a user who redeems three coupons over their lifetime. For a travel app, it could be booking one reservation within the first 90 days after an install. This helps them build a real business in the long run.
Another technology we’ve led is creative optimization—especially for in-app video ads. Our platform renders ads, analyzes hundreds of attributes, e.g., a user’s previous interactions with ads, device OS, orientation, sound settings, etc., to build multiple variants of the ad. This ensures users see only what’s relevant to them as it fits within the context of the host app.
In terms of publishers and monetization, in-app video ads produce some of the highest eCPMs in the industry for those who open inventory to Vungle. Any developer who has an app that is free-to-play or free to download needs to consider supplementing revenue with ads, especially in-app video ads, which are proven to convert at higher rates and bring higher value users in the long term.
For which type of apps are video ads best suited? And which app categories aren’t ideal for video ads?
Video is suited for any app category. The key question is: What is the context in which you’re running a video ad?
The mobile device is personal. Why should any mobile experience be non-intuitive at best, intrusive at worst? That includes any ad experience in which the consumer is exposed. And yet, many “traditional” marketers are simply cramming a video ad that was specifically created for TV onto the mobile device. It doesn’t work.
With consumers now spending an average of three hours a day in mobile apps and the introduction of new ad-blocking technologies coming onto the market, the consumer has increasingly more options to tune out ads. That’s why advertisers need to optimize their marketing mix with in-app video ads designed for the mobile device, for mobile apps—and for the specific user needs within the context of that user’s mobile experience, be it on the mobile web or within a specific app.
There’s a misconception that rewarded video only works for games. We’re seeing in-app and rewarded video work well beyond games. If you’re a premium publisher, rewarded video and in-app video ads and/or interactive end cards could be a way to encourage your users to engage with your content.
Take Pic Stitch, the photo editing app, for example. The Pic Stitch team wanted to increase revenue to its free app without compromising the user experience. To accomplish this, Pic Stitch gave users an opportunity to access a new daily collage layout—worth $0.99 a bundle—at no charge if they opted to watch a Vungle video ad. Users opted in, eager to watch the 15-second video ads for a free photo layout. Thanks to this creative placement, the app was able to run fewer ads while simultaneously increasing revenue by 200%.
For advertisers, interactive video ads are a way to give the consumer a preview of your brand. For publishers and developers, interactive video ads can enhance monetization and provide new, untapped revenue streams.
It’s obvious you have a strong foothold in gaming. How do you think video can best be utilized by brands that aren’t necessarily gaming-focused to deliver performance?
Many of our customers are gaming advertisers, but we also work with a variety of utility apps, travel apps, commerce apps and other verticals. At the core, our customer is a performance marketer—someone who wants transparent ROAS and is disciplined and rigorous in scaling that spend to high-value user acquisition.
Ibotta is a great case study of performance marketing in practice. We’ve worked closely with them to analyze their post-install event data, plugged it into our lifetime value optimization product, which then models and creates lookalikes. This enabled Ibotta to understand how to acquire more engaged users who will come back to the app multiple times to make a purchase/redeem a coupon.
We were able to reduce Ibotta’s cost per purchasing user by 50 percent compared to all other user acquisition channels while also increasing overall install volume by 2x. Not only is Ibotta buying users intelligently, but it’s growing the business organically over time with high-LTV users.
We’re starting to see non-gaming, brand advertisers tap into the big opportunity here. If you have a user spending $50 on virtual items inside a game, chances are, that user also buys food, uses transportation or books hotels. We’re excited about the next generation of performance marketers shifting more spend to mobile apps. And we’re thrilled to help them understand how to enhance both their user acquisition and monetization strategies to ensure users are motivated to either make an in-app purchase or take a defined action that helps them grow their businesses quantifiably.
What can you tell us about your app install ad products and how they evolved? Which tools are your clients finding most successful? What’s on your roadmap in this area?
Video is growing exponentially globally. Video ad tech innovation continues to be a big investment for us. It puts Vungle in a unique position since that’s where we started.
Our mission is to be the growth engine by delivering high-value users through engaging video ads. With our LTV and creative optimization products, we’re adding metadata to video assets for real-time A/B and multivariant testing. Our goal is to help you continually fine-tune your UA and monetization machine. We see a world where in-app video ads are measured, scaled, and automated in a way that makes sense for advertisers and app developers alike.