Breaking User Acquisition Stereotypes
“Where to get users?” - this eternal question worries every developer, from experienced to beginner. Developing the highest quality product and experiencing pride in it, you need to remain objective. Even the coolest product, no one will know if you do not bring into it a sufficient number of users. In the overwhelming majority of cases, when searching for information about a user acquisition (UA), you will find a lot of articles in which you will be offered to create a microsite / landing page for the application, blog, send press releases before the app in the app store, etc. All these are certainly important points in attracting users to your application or game. But, for some reason, many publications are silent about affiliate marketing, partner networks, paid traffic and other workhorses for getting users. And that information about affiliate marketing, which is available to a wide audience of inexperienced but inquisitive readers, is altogether full of omissions, erroneous opinions and myths. We decided to destroy these myths, like Jamie Heinemann destroys myths on Discovery by talking to Yury Yashunin from Zenna Apps and our long-time partner and experienced arbitrator Vladimir, barsag.com.
Dossier :
Yuri, SMO Zenna Apps, zennaapps.com
Vladimir, barsag.com
Vladimir about himself and his work: “I have been working for a long time, I have been involved in performance marketing in one form or another for about 10 years, I have been working with the mobile business for about three years: mobile content, leadgen, CPI. I practically do not work with the Russian market for a number of reasons. There are several remote teams, all organized by a CPA agency.
He began by saying that a friend advised me to read the blog of some of the "homeless". Then it was fashionable to call your blogs “Izhevsk homeless”, another homeless, so everyone earned money on apartments. I read the blog, tried it, it turned out. He started with ringtones, then he turned everything that was spinning, except for the adult. ”
')
Vova : Some time ago, an article about the dark side of mobile traffic was published on Habré, they say everything is bad, it is impossible for adverts to work, there are solid bots and instants in CPI. There are bots in both CPM and CPI. There are automated installations, there is a sending of motivated traffic to where it is not welcome. This is on the one hand. On the other hand, everything is not so terrible. Who does not want to buy the hidden and mixed incent or bots, does not buy. If you remove Insent and bots - nothing will change in principle. There will be a certain balancing of the cost of the install, the cost of traffic. It will become easier to work for both adverts and intermediaries. Stop earning a few players who earned from bots and mixes. Fundamentally for the industry, nothing will change.
Yura : A lot has been said and comments on this topic. I believe that the inspiration in the CPI model is tracked even faster and easier than in the CPC / CPM models. Moreover, all are interested in long-term cooperation. The key principle in Zenna Apps for traffic campaigns is to “grope” for the quality of a paying audience for the advertiser and give it as long as possible. And such “horror stories” are abandoned with the pursuit of specific goals of “distributors”).
Vova : It depends, as usual. You can twist Facebook and Adwords. On the one hand there is a lot of traffic. On the other - not all. On the third, these are complex sources, especially if you are an intermediary, not a developer or publisher. At one time, I went to the mobile just because I saw the opportunity to “jump off” from AdWords and Facebook, to work with dozens of other sources. Now, by the way, despite the fact that I work with a large number of sources, I have returned and work closely with F / G.
Yura : In order to debunk the myth about the main sources of traffic, or confirm it, the advertiser must clarify 2 criteria for himself:
1) Successful marketing campaign in which regions? If it is the United States, Western Europe, Russia - yes, enough. If Japan, Korea, China, Australia, Canada - no, not enough.
2) A successful marketing campaign with which daily cap / maximum CPI rate / total budget? If these 3 KPIs are small, then yes, enough. If high - no, not enough.
Vova : Definitely not, if only because in most industries mobile traffic is converted much better. Somewhere recently I read that the area on the smartphone screen will soon become the most expensive area in the world. I agree with the statement.
Yura : I think that it’s mobile is not just more expensive, but an order of magnitude more expensive! There are several main reasons for this:
Owners of desktop sites for some reason do not risk creating mobile versions, considering these costs to be unjustified. Despite the fact that in the same US statistics, much more money comes from mobile. People much more often order a taxi, things, products, food delivery from mobile sites. During the holidays, the numbers, of course, grow at times. Just do not forget that we live in the so-called “multi-screen world” and switch during the day between 2-3 devices, at least.
Vova : Why stop resale of offers? As for the pen in the framework of transparency, for all the time I was working I was required to give out the source of the traffic once a few years ago, when the regulator began to bankrupt the advertiser. Depends on the advertiser, on the parameters that the advert uses to measure the quality of traffic. If it is only CR, then for any deviations they can ask to stop the traffic, to demand to show the source. If other parameters are used, then no, they do not require. In addition, this trend is noticeable for Ru to a greater extent.
Yura : Large gaming companies really strive for maximum transparency in order to reduce the likelihood of resella (at least reusable) and CPI cheating. At the same time, it is not a problem for them to operate with large traffic sources. Have your own “but”:
CR is not even a traffic quality parameter. It is rather an auxiliary indicator that can answer the following questions:
Vova : The market is complex, constantly changing. There will be adverts who like to work on in-app CPA, there will be those who stay on a clean CPI, someone even pumps their buyers and buys CPM. So far, I don’t see any clear CPI -> CPA trend in the mobile. For marketers, for people who drive traffic in most cases, the reduction in transparency and the complexity of conversion requirements in an area they cannot control is a big minus. This means that for me, as a publisher, the attractiveness of such an advertiser falls. The desire to motivate the publisher to provide paying users is understandable, but (1) I cannot influence the conversion into payments within the application, (2) most often I cannot segment users with such accuracy, or the segmentation is much less obvious than in the analysis by section - traffic / install.
Yura : although they are trying to build a trend or even a new unique product on the CPA theme in mobile (they give it “their names”), in fact, the question lies in the same plane: who will take the conversion risks? This trend has long been relevant in the desktop market. But the crux of the matter is that all advertisers are already working and have always worked on the CPA model! Simply conversion risks always remained on the side of the advert - what a conversion to those who paid, registered, pumped the game hero to level N, ARPU. And those channels that do not meet the quality characteristics - disconnect. Now the market is overheated and I do not think that the transition to CPA for mobile (especially the gaming vertical) will be active and massive. Although, advertisers probably would not mind.
Vova : I will not tell you about the quality, the advert does not show these metrics. The conversion from video traffic is really great.
Yura : the demand for the channel “video advertising” has really grown in the last year, there have been major mergers and acquisitions on the market, new players are appearing, large game titles are shooting commercials for the brand TV advertising, thereby overestimating the “entry barrier” for medium and even small advertisers. I consider video advertising, first of all, a new cool type of user acquisition. In a 15-second video, you can show a lot more than in a static banner, which means you can hook more users. In our practice, there were both amazing results on ARPU / 30 days up to $ 4, and unsatisfactory. Video advertising is not a boy, but this direction will be actively developed in 2015. After a certain time, it will be replaced by “interactive” ads with test gameplay of the game itself - in HTML5 format, for example.
Vova : Still as needed. Utilities without land at all is difficult to get, for games 50/50. Very often there are situations when a good preland increases the CR at times. Using landings for games is often justified when intentionally narrowed targeting is used, and the user's attention is directed to 1-2 of the most valuable features of the game.
Yura : It all depends on the vertical: utilities, antiviruses, partially gambling - there is no landing here, really nothing. He really helps. But in the field of games, the page pages essentially serve as a universal landing page. For example, Google Play is constantly optimizing the page and now it looks quite attractive, it is unlikely the prelend will improve the situation here. Another question is that sometimes landing pages are used to “sort” non-targeted traffic, for spreading the audience to target games. Here the use of the prelend is entirely justified.
Vova : Even as possible. It all depends on geo traffic and on the approach.
Yura : “install” is a very vague definition. Between CPI utilities in Indonesia for Android and the RPG of the hardcore game of iOS in Canada is a huge difference. As we discussed above, the market is overheated. And so the bids grow at a serious pace. Any figures voiced now in a couple of months already lose their relevance.
Affiliate marketing is full of features, hard and even karmic rules. However, it remains an interesting, high-risk and, at the same time, profitable business.
Vova : In the first part of the opinion, everything is correct, success in TM and VC very much depends on two things:
In the second part, in the general case, even a full copying of the campaign, taking into account that all the targeting parameters are known, works very rarely. External copying (peeking creatives, land, source) almost never works. There are many nuances - the history of the account and the return of traffic for this particular campaign, bidding strategy, targeting, special conditions on the side of the advert or on the side of the source. Since TM is not quite so, in general, even stock creatives can be started if there is a competitive advantage and infrastructure.
Yura : In fact, such an opinion is justified. It is logical that customers choose more favorable conditions, the listed traffic sources are no exception. “In the forehead” you can try to go with an exclusive or fresh offer. In the case of direct competition on the offer, the conditions are no longer such “greenhouse” and it will be much more difficult to obtain cost-effective downloads.
Vova : The truth is somewhere in the middle. On the one hand, a shaved is not such a terrible general phenomenon. On the other hand, there are definitely cases. In CPI, such things happen more often from the side of the advert. I bought traffic, I could not control the quality at the start, then I decided not to pay, because I did not like the quality. Or just decided not to pay. Affiliate programs still usually stand on the side of publishers - this is their main asset, although there are also precedents. Another thing is that affiliates at any drop in the conversion begin to make a fuss and shout about the Shave, which is not always true.
Yura : Shave by the affiliate is a question of the “values” of her owners, managers. If “bargaining” and “throwing quietly” their partners, in this case affiliates, is in the order of things for them - they will do this, trying to entice advertising advertisers by dumping. On the other hand, neither normal business relations nor a stable business can be built on this. This is the path to nowhere. On the part of advertisers, there are sometimes isolated attempts to “throw” and not pay, of course there are such risks, but these problems should not concern partners.
Vova : Of course, everything is poured through .apk. Midlets, subscriptions, gambling, trojans. On the other hand, white utilities are excellent in .apk, but with a more rigid monetization system, users are willing to set.
Jura : .apk market is very specific. There is a lot of gray in it, so the reputation is a bit “spoiled”, and not unreasonable. For ourselves, we noted a decrease in efficiency on this channel, and at the moment we are not focusing on it. Definitely, .apk is not for beginners in this market.
In 2015, we are preparing for the rapid growth of video advertising, advertising on Facebook, combining large platforms such as AdColony, Flurry, GrowMobile, etc. From the users' side, we will observe a drop in the number of downloads of new applications. But, more than half of the time spent on mobile applications, they will spend on 1-2 favorite.
Dossier :
Yuri, SMO Zenna Apps, zennaapps.com
Vladimir, barsag.com
Vladimir about himself and his work: “I have been working for a long time, I have been involved in performance marketing in one form or another for about 10 years, I have been working with the mobile business for about three years: mobile content, leadgen, CPI. I practically do not work with the Russian market for a number of reasons. There are several remote teams, all organized by a CPA agency.
He began by saying that a friend advised me to read the blog of some of the "homeless". Then it was fashionable to call your blogs “Izhevsk homeless”, another homeless, so everyone earned money on apartments. I read the blog, tried it, it turned out. He started with ringtones, then he turned everything that was spinning, except for the adult. ”
')
Stereotype: In PI only motive and bots.
Vova : Some time ago, an article about the dark side of mobile traffic was published on Habré, they say everything is bad, it is impossible for adverts to work, there are solid bots and instants in CPI. There are bots in both CPM and CPI. There are automated installations, there is a sending of motivated traffic to where it is not welcome. This is on the one hand. On the other hand, everything is not so terrible. Who does not want to buy the hidden and mixed incent or bots, does not buy. If you remove Insent and bots - nothing will change in principle. There will be a certain balancing of the cost of the install, the cost of traffic. It will become easier to work for both adverts and intermediaries. Stop earning a few players who earned from bots and mixes. Fundamentally for the industry, nothing will change.
Yura : A lot has been said and comments on this topic. I believe that the inspiration in the CPI model is tracked even faster and easier than in the CPC / CPM models. Moreover, all are interested in long-term cooperation. The key principle in Zenna Apps for traffic campaigns is to “grope” for the quality of a paying audience for the advertiser and give it as long as possible. And such “horror stories” are abandoned with the pursuit of specific goals of “distributors”).
Stereotype: For a successful UA campaign, 1-2 sources are enough - Google Adwords and Facebook. All affiliates and affiliates work with them, so they resell the air, but with a surcharge.
Vova : It depends, as usual. You can twist Facebook and Adwords. On the one hand there is a lot of traffic. On the other - not all. On the third, these are complex sources, especially if you are an intermediary, not a developer or publisher. At one time, I went to the mobile just because I saw the opportunity to “jump off” from AdWords and Facebook, to work with dozens of other sources. Now, by the way, despite the fact that I work with a large number of sources, I have returned and work closely with F / G.
Yura : In order to debunk the myth about the main sources of traffic, or confirm it, the advertiser must clarify 2 criteria for himself:
1) Successful marketing campaign in which regions? If it is the United States, Western Europe, Russia - yes, enough. If Japan, Korea, China, Australia, Canada - no, not enough.
2) A successful marketing campaign with which daily cap / maximum CPI rate / total budget? If these 3 KPIs are small, then yes, enough. If high - no, not enough.
Stereotype: Mobile marketing is cheaper than desktop. The cost of CPI is now significantly overstated by those who sell it.
Vova : Definitely not, if only because in most industries mobile traffic is converted much better. Somewhere recently I read that the area on the smartphone screen will soon become the most expensive area in the world. I agree with the statement.
Yura : I think that it’s mobile is not just more expensive, but an order of magnitude more expensive! There are several main reasons for this:
- Mobile sites lose desktop in quantity, which gives rise to high competition among them;
- Mobile is not constant, it is very difficult to find one 100% working source, so you have to constantly test sources. Tests also cost money;
- high competition, in turn, creates high prices for traffic;
- the average price per installation grows annually;
Owners of desktop sites for some reason do not risk creating mobile versions, considering these costs to be unjustified. Despite the fact that in the same US statistics, much more money comes from mobile. People much more often order a taxi, things, products, food delivery from mobile sites. During the holidays, the numbers, of course, grow at times. Just do not forget that we live in the so-called “multi-screen world” and switch during the day between 2-3 devices, at least.
Stereotype: Resale of offers can be stopped only with full transparency of cooperation.
Vova : Why stop resale of offers? As for the pen in the framework of transparency, for all the time I was working I was required to give out the source of the traffic once a few years ago, when the regulator began to bankrupt the advertiser. Depends on the advertiser, on the parameters that the advert uses to measure the quality of traffic. If it is only CR, then for any deviations they can ask to stop the traffic, to demand to show the source. If other parameters are used, then no, they do not require. In addition, this trend is noticeable for Ru to a greater extent.
Yura : Large gaming companies really strive for maximum transparency in order to reduce the likelihood of resella (at least reusable) and CPI cheating. At the same time, it is not a problem for them to operate with large traffic sources. Have your own “but”:
- the market is still quite differentiated and it is rather difficult to cover all channels with internal medibing;
- There are regional peculiarities of the markets - Korean, Japanese, and Russian, the understanding of which comes only with experience (read, with a diverted budget). Therefore, in our work we see such a tendency on the part of advertisers, but not in such a total form. At the moment, this requirement to disclose at least the “view” of the traffic channel.
CR is not even a traffic quality parameter. It is rather an auxiliary indicator that can answer the following questions:
- Does this CR match this traffic channel? For example, a new game in VK can quietly give 20-25% CR and this is normal, and an anti-virus vertical banner - 0.5-1%;
- Is the range of CR not changing in a single channel by the hour? It, just, testifies to the addition of an incent.
Stereotype: CPA will replace CPI, as a guaranteed way to attract a paying user.
Vova : The market is complex, constantly changing. There will be adverts who like to work on in-app CPA, there will be those who stay on a clean CPI, someone even pumps their buyers and buys CPM. So far, I don’t see any clear CPI -> CPA trend in the mobile. For marketers, for people who drive traffic in most cases, the reduction in transparency and the complexity of conversion requirements in an area they cannot control is a big minus. This means that for me, as a publisher, the attractiveness of such an advertiser falls. The desire to motivate the publisher to provide paying users is understandable, but (1) I cannot influence the conversion into payments within the application, (2) most often I cannot segment users with such accuracy, or the segmentation is much less obvious than in the analysis by section - traffic / install.
Yura : although they are trying to build a trend or even a new unique product on the CPA theme in mobile (they give it “their names”), in fact, the question lies in the same plane: who will take the conversion risks? This trend has long been relevant in the desktop market. But the crux of the matter is that all advertisers are already working and have always worked on the CPA model! Simply conversion risks always remained on the side of the advert - what a conversion to those who paid, registered, pumped the game hero to level N, ARPU. And those channels that do not meet the quality characteristics - disconnect. Now the market is overheated and I do not think that the transition to CPA for mobile (especially the gaming vertical) will be active and massive. Although, advertisers probably would not mind.
Stereotype: The cost of video advertising, as well as the quality of a given user from it, is significantly overestimated.
Vova : I will not tell you about the quality, the advert does not show these metrics. The conversion from video traffic is really great.
Yura : the demand for the channel “video advertising” has really grown in the last year, there have been major mergers and acquisitions on the market, new players are appearing, large game titles are shooting commercials for the brand TV advertising, thereby overestimating the “entry barrier” for medium and even small advertisers. I consider video advertising, first of all, a new cool type of user acquisition. In a 15-second video, you can show a lot more than in a static banner, which means you can hook more users. In our practice, there were both amazing results on ARPU / 30 days up to $ 4, and unsatisfactory. Video advertising is not a boy, but this direction will be actively developed in 2015. After a certain time, it will be replaced by “interactive” ads with test gameplay of the game itself - in HTML5 format, for example.
Stereotype: Landing is not needed in the mobile, it is the remnants of the desktop.
Vova : Still as needed. Utilities without land at all is difficult to get, for games 50/50. Very often there are situations when a good preland increases the CR at times. Using landings for games is often justified when intentionally narrowed targeting is used, and the user's attention is directed to 1-2 of the most valuable features of the game.
Yura : It all depends on the vertical: utilities, antiviruses, partially gambling - there is no landing here, really nothing. He really helps. But in the field of games, the page pages essentially serve as a universal landing page. For example, Google Play is constantly optimizing the page and now it looks quite attractive, it is unlikely the prelend will improve the situation here. Another question is that sometimes landing pages are used to “sort” non-targeted traffic, for spreading the audience to target games. Here the use of the prelend is entirely justified.
Stereotype: With the price of $ 0.1- $ 0.2 for the installation it is impossible to work. At the same time, traffic in the “third world countries” (Africa, the Philippines, etc.) is very cheap, there are lower prices. They work with such operators mainly in such verticals: antiviruses, app stores, batteries. For Canada, the United States and similar countries, such offers will not work. Is it impossible?
Vova : Even as possible. It all depends on geo traffic and on the approach.
Yura : “install” is a very vague definition. Between CPI utilities in Indonesia for Android and the RPG of the hardcore game of iOS in Canada is a huge difference. As we discussed above, the market is overheated. And so the bids grow at a serious pace. Any figures voiced now in a couple of months already lose their relevance.
Affiliate marketing is full of features, hard and even karmic rules. However, it remains an interesting, high-risk and, at the same time, profitable business.
Stereotype: only those who have already left a lot of money who have a financial history, a decent number of offers in their work can successfully work at VK.com and Target@mail.ru. These networks give discounts to those who poured enough money into them. And beginners will not be able to work this way, for them the price will be much higher than for experienced ones. However, they say that typical, stock, stolen, copied creatives allow you to work effectively in these networks.
Vova : In the first part of the opinion, everything is correct, success in TM and VC very much depends on two things:
- from "special competitive advantages" - discounts, bumps, permissions;
- from infrastructure: you can run and test and burn off an offer for hours - well done, if you don’t know how - suffer.
In the second part, in the general case, even a full copying of the campaign, taking into account that all the targeting parameters are known, works very rarely. External copying (peeking creatives, land, source) almost never works. There are many nuances - the history of the account and the return of traffic for this particular campaign, bidding strategy, targeting, special conditions on the side of the advert or on the side of the source. Since TM is not quite so, in general, even stock creatives can be started if there is a competitive advantage and infrastructure.
Yura : In fact, such an opinion is justified. It is logical that customers choose more favorable conditions, the listed traffic sources are no exception. “In the forehead” you can try to go with an exclusive or fresh offer. In the case of direct competition on the offer, the conditions are no longer such “greenhouse” and it will be much more difficult to obtain cost-effective downloads.
Stereotype: adverts and affiliate programs always shave.
Vova : The truth is somewhere in the middle. On the one hand, a shaved is not such a terrible general phenomenon. On the other hand, there are definitely cases. In CPI, such things happen more often from the side of the advert. I bought traffic, I could not control the quality at the start, then I decided not to pay, because I did not like the quality. Or just decided not to pay. Affiliate programs still usually stand on the side of publishers - this is their main asset, although there are also precedents. Another thing is that affiliates at any drop in the conversion begin to make a fuss and shout about the Shave, which is not always true.
Yura : Shave by the affiliate is a question of the “values” of her owners, managers. If “bargaining” and “throwing quietly” their partners, in this case affiliates, is in the order of things for them - they will do this, trying to entice advertising advertisers by dumping. On the other hand, neither normal business relations nor a stable business can be built on this. This is the path to nowhere. On the part of advertisers, there are sometimes isolated attempts to “throw” and not pay, of course there are such risks, but these problems should not concern partners.
Stereotype: CPI works only from markets, .apk - warez, chernukha and gambling. But in fact, there is good demand for .apk. It seems that arbitrators are afraid of .apk more than users.
Vova : Of course, everything is poured through .apk. Midlets, subscriptions, gambling, trojans. On the other hand, white utilities are excellent in .apk, but with a more rigid monetization system, users are willing to set.
Jura : .apk market is very specific. There is a lot of gray in it, so the reputation is a bit “spoiled”, and not unreasonable. For ourselves, we noted a decrease in efficiency on this channel, and at the moment we are not focusing on it. Definitely, .apk is not for beginners in this market.
In 2015, we are preparing for the rapid growth of video advertising, advertising on Facebook, combining large platforms such as AdColony, Flurry, GrowMobile, etc. From the users' side, we will observe a drop in the number of downloads of new applications. But, more than half of the time spent on mobile applications, they will spend on 1-2 favorite.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/283602/
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