Brand Advertising, In-app Bidding, Mobile App Growth
The mobile industry is quickly evolving and growing at a phenomenal pace, with projections that it will surpass 6 billion users in 2021. But advancements in mobile marketing and some of the latest trends go beyond just apps—they focus on catering to a lifestyle that is shaping the entire mobile environment. This includes a privacy-centric world that impacts app developers, advertisers, and marketers alike.
At the App Promotion Summit, we addressed trend-related questions around changing privacy rules for app developers and marketers. The virtual panel discussion was moderated by AppLovin’s General Manager of Business Solutions, Idil Canal, and included Dom Davies, Independent Mobile Growth Consultant, Aykut Karaalioglu, CEO of MobileAction, and Marcus Poe, Strategic Partner Manager at Facebook Audience Network.
The potential impact of IDFA privacy changes created a whirlwind of uncertainty, and many publishers, advertisers, and marketers took prudent steps to prepare their teams as well as they could before changes went into effect in April.
“Through Facebook Audience Network’s business tools, we educated customers and wanted to maintain the speed of business, anticipate change, and adapt quickly,” Marcus told the panel.
Dom pointed out that the ecosystem is constantly changing and big privacy changes happen every few years. He spoke about the improved data and what that means.
“We’re at the point in our industry where we have enough data to extrapolate, and the value of LAT (limited ad tracking) users is going up,” he said. “On the UA side, measurement methodology for non-IDFA players is becoming more concise, which helps advertisers from every corner of the industry continue to buy efficiently.”
Bidding gives networks access to every impression and helps prevent being pigeonholed in a waterfall position. Bidding also gives advertisers access to every price point with a higher possibility of lowering the cost for acquiring their target audience.
When asked about industry trends moving away from mediation to being fully bidded on the monetization side, Dom said that partners are seeing positive results at every network (in-app) bidding. “It’s working better than mediated lines, but it takes time to move ad units from being mediated to bidded. Optimistically, it could happen as early as 2022,” he said.
When it comes to widespread bidding adoption, it’s expected that the industry will make this shift, and Marcus explained what to expect from this migration. “The demand footprint from your partners will shift a little because you’re moving away from being pigeonholed to full availability of all of your inventory.”
He added, “Now is the best time to understand your bid demand volume from these partners because that’s going to represent a new metric for a lot of publishers. You can see the value of all of the various opportunities, rather than, say, 10 percent of it.”
He also suggested looking at the various ad products from demand partners and making sure you have the proper integrations. This can ensure that you’re fully vested and have the largest bid demand volume that you’re eligible for as a partner. Doing this helps drive up demand and CPM.
“You’ll then start to see the convergence with LAT traffic and opted-in traffic,” Marcus said. “All of that starts to blend together to build your new marketplace, which operates in one auction rather than being siloed into various waterfalls.”
Aykut added, “Intelligence and optimization are important. Learn from your competitors and from the best players in the market.”
As the mobile industry continues to evolve, Marcus said he trusts that app developers will be able to have the tools to quickly get closer to their audiences, connect UA to monetization, and improve profits.
“I don’t know exactly what that will look like,” he said. “But I know it will involve gaining better flexibility, being able to bring great content to various platforms—whether that’s in the form of an app, an applet, or cloud access.”
Aykut and Dom said they see mobile app trends moving toward consolidation, providing seamless solutions that improve the overall ad experience and growth through automation.
“From a high level, I see the entire market being accessed from a single dashboard, which will take care of your app growth solutions,” Aykut said.
Dom talked about industry mergers and acquisitions playing a big part in consolidation and improving the user ad experience. “Algorithms that power networks are getting really good at serving the right ads. Sitting through an ad hasn’t been as taxing as it’s been in the previous years,” he said.
He also said the mobile gaming space will continue to grow exponentially. “We’re going to see a lot of people who weren’t gamers become gamers, and people who already play a game or two on their phones will evolve to be more than just the casual player,” he said. “We’re going to see this at a faster scale.”
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