India is a growing powerhouse of mobile penetration and hence is a good medium for advertising. According to AppsFlyer, a SaaS mobile marketing analytics and attribution platform, India gains top spot in mobile-advertising revenue and traffic in the APAC region. Sanjay Trisal, Country Manager – India, AppsFlyer in an interview with Techseen discusses how mobile-advertising revenue and traffic can lead to a drastic transformation in the marketplace. Excerpts:
Techseen: Ads on apps if not intrusive, become a blind-spot on mobiles. We saw companies getting innovative with ideas like mixing up ads in End-of Call Notifications for pre-paid buyers mobile subscribers. But that too, as a personal experience, is a blind-spot. So what are the other possibilities of getting innovative with advertising on mobile?
Trisal: The best way to advertise on mobile is to send the right ad in the right format to the right user at the right time. Advertisers should look to their performance data to determine where each message and ad format resonates. Armed with this data, marketers can develop addressable user personas based on demographics, interests, behavior and more. Success isn’t so much about finding new or creative “white spaces” as it is creatively using the data you already have to create ads that users value.
Techseen: One of your studies published in 2013 stated that word-of-mouth marketing over social platforms delivers better results in paid-app marketing than search. How does social sharing deliver better results for app marketers than search?
Trisal: The mobile and social markets have and continued to evolve at a remarkable pace. We therefore recommend that all marketers leverage fresh performance insights when considering their marketing channels. That said, strategic app marketers leverage a mix of paid, owned and earned social, as well as search media to drive their app installs, organic referrals and user engagement to improve their performance. As results will often differ across verticals and apps, we encourage marketers to let their performance data be their guide when leveraging each of these dynamic channels or opportunities.
Techseen: Which is a bigger goal- audience reach or customer engagement?
Trisal: Marketers need the right mix of both scale and engagement to build successful businesses. That said, at different stages in the business lifecycle, their focus will occasionally shift heavily towards reach (e.g. when running burst campaigns) or engagement (e.g. during peak shopping season). Both imperative to app marketing success, and should be balanced as needed.
Techseen: In 2014, AppsFlyer developed a product called OneLink to provide deep linking support for custom media sources. How does deep linking benefit marketers and app developers? Do apps need to be configured to properly handle a uniform resource identifier?
Trisal: The benefit of OneLink’s universal deferred deep linking is threefold. First, the ability for marketers and app developers to attribute users from any source, including owned media. Second, the ability to use a single link to send customers across every platform to the right page or app store for their device. And third, the ability to bring users directly to a specific location or state within their app. This single, powerful link will deliver the optimal customer experience every time, improving conversion and customer satisfaction. Just as deep links made the web more user-friendly, mobile deep links do the same for mobile apps.
Advertisers that want to get the most out of OneLink should leverage our step-by-step guide to integrating all of our functionality into their app.
Techseen: How does cohort analysis help in analyzing and presenting actionable information to a company to act on, and focus on the “average user” of a given system?
Trisal: The cohort report allows you to group users based on common characteristics to measure specific key performance indicators for these groups over different time frames. For example, marketers can identify which cohort of users is most active, or which user behavior patterns are strong indicators of long-term retention or purchase activity. You may find that users who came from specific Facebook campaigns in the US who complete a purchase event are likely to remain active for more than 30 days. These insights can then be used to improve targeting, media source selection, ad copy or creative, and more.
Remember, you can’t optimize what you can’t measure. In marketing, we put our money where our data is. Make sure you measure every available parameter so you can use these insights to improve your performance down the line.
Techseen: Mobile site or mobile app—which one, according to AppsFlyer’s analysis, serves a better purpose? What do your studies say? Can you share some figures to support the same?
Trisal: In our mobile-first world, it is important that brands offer their customers the right experience across their preferred channels. This is true for the mobile web, as well as mobile apps, connected TV apps and even desktop apps. While mobile apps often offer stronger customer retention and re-engagement opportunities than mobile websites, marketers should look to their mobile app and mobile web customer data to determine the appropriate focus for their business.
Techseen: You have recently set up operations in Bengaluru to focus on the Indian mobile market to ride on the mobility upsurge. How does India stand against Israel, where you have been operating, in terms of the Mobile advertising spree?
Trisal: Both India and Israel feature incredible mobile markets with remarkable growth and strong track records of innovation. After years of working with Indian advertisers and networks, we are proud to offer local sales, customer success management and technical support to this booming market.
Techseen: How is the Indian advertising audience different from other markets? Does the approach need to be different for different countries besides, of course, the localization of content?
Trisal: Our Q2 2016 Mobile Benchmark Report on the Indian market found that Indian mobile users are truly unique. For example, the ARPPU (average revenue per paying user – based on in-app purchases) is nearly identical to the global average, representing a far higher per-capita investment in mobile spending when considering their relative levels of disposable income. However, the overall ARPU (average revenue per user) is roughly half that of the global average. Additionally, while iOS users in India spend 5 times more than Android users, Android is the dominant mobile platform. All of these components should be taken into consideration when building a marketing model for the Indian mobile market.
Techseen: Do you plan to have any more offices in India? Can you share your growth plans in the APAC region?
Trisal: India and APAC overall represent an incredible opportunity for mobile marketers, and this is reflected in our continued investment in local offices and support across the region. Marketers in India and APAC are very data-savvy and have proven adept at leveraging our mobile attribution and marketing analytics solutions to build both regional and global mobile businesses. We are proud of our track record in these markets and look forward to continued growth.