Privacy and security have been notable talking points for apps in 2023. Currently, about 42% of apps collect more data than they need to, and as a result, Apple and Google are pushing privacy policy changes with more stringent rules around data collection. 2024 marks a pivotal moment as tech giants and consumers demand greater transparency and control over the use of personal data. This shift profoundly impacts how apps are marketed, challenging traditional approaches, and necessitating the need to re-evaluate strategies to align with emerging privacy standards.

Earlier this year, Apple unveiled iOS 17, and Google released Android 14. These new updates brought privacy changes that are cracking down on how app marketers track and measure their campaigns. In 2024, these changes will slowly be rolled out, so getting ahead on your privacy compliance will be essential. Now is the time to plan your app’s data collection strategy, and here’s what you need to know about the current and future changes. 

Apple Unveils Link Tracking Protection 

Apple’s new iOS 17 update didn’t just bring a fancy new look and features for your Apple device. It also brought a few changes to heighten its user’s privacy and security. One of these policies is the crack-down on UTM tracking links, which are an essential tool for marketers. 

The release of Link Tracking Protection will strip some tracking parameters from URLs clicked via Private Browser Mode on sources such as Safari or Apple’s native Mail & Messenger apps. At first glance, this may not appear to be a significantly disruptive alteration for app owners, particularly considering that the volume of traffic monitored through these channels might be limited. Nevertheless, it could represent the initial phase of a more extensive privacy transformation in user tracking instigated by Apple, and we do not doubt that further sources will be impacted.

Currently, only a few tracking parameters are being affected, such as the Google and Facebook Click Identifiers, which could be used to support attribution of the buyer journey. We expect that going into 2024, this list will grow, so make sure to be aware of changes that have been announced.

Apple’s New Fingerprinting Requirements

Fingerprinting is a technique used for ad-related tracking. It involves creating a unique identifier for a device based on its software and hardware characteristics, which can then be used to track users across different websites and applications, circumventing explicit tracking consent from the user.

For iOS, apps that require APIs for the functionality of their product will need to declare the intent behind using them. They will need to declare this to the app’s privacy manifest. If you want to know what you need to declare and how, go to our blog here to learn more. 

These APIs include:

• Active keyword
• Disk space
• File timestamp
• System boot time
• User defaults

Android’s Privacy Sandbox

Android is trying to phase out third-party cookies entirely with its Android Privacy Sandbox. The Privacy Sandbox aims to develop new technologies that improve user privacy and enable effective, personalised advertising experiences for mobile apps. In Android Privacy Sandbox, the SDK Runtime creates a separate environment for third-party SDKs, preventing them from accessing information like battery level, time zone, and language, which could’ve been used for fingerprinting.

To help app marketers, Android is proposing a set of APIs that will enable the personalisation of ads and measure them privately. The Sandbox will still allow marketers to retarget, which is important to remember as user acquisition becomes more complex through the new restrictions. You can learn more about these APIs here on Android Introduction to the Privacy Sandbox.

What can you do?

Achieving a balance between personalised data services and privacy is essential for the prosperity of any business, with transparency sitting at its the heart. Some effective methods for achieving this balance include:

1. Strictly study and follow Apple & Google’s privacy policy requirements
2. Collect only essential data 
3. Clearly communicate to your customers the intended use of the information you gather

Focusing on gathering only essential information for your business objectives is crucial. Transparency becomes a guiding principle when dealing with customer data—keeping them informed about how their information will be utilised fosters trust and reinforces ethical practices. The significance of data analysis cannot be overstated; it is essential for informed decision-making. By adhering to these principles, businesses ensure data integrity and customer trust to pave the way for sustainable and mutually beneficial relationships.

Conclusion

The iOS 17 and Android 14 changes are forcing out old measuring strategies like fingerprinting in favour of their SKAN and Privacy Sandbox tools, respectively. This, in turn, challenges marketers to learn and innovate ways to deliver personalised and engaging content while respecting user privacy boundaries. Apple’s privacy manifest will be enforced in Q2 of 2024, so make sure your app is ready for the changes now.

Choosing the right app marketing agency partner and MMP is going to be crucial going into 2024 to make sure your app is compliant with these new changes. Luckily, most of these, including here at Yodel Mobile, have already made moves towards tracking and data transparency strategy and solutions.

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Band and M&C Saatchi Performance– Band UK Launch
BAND is a leading South Korean social messaging app with over 100m users. For its UK launch, it turned to M&C Saatchi Performance for a digital paid-media campaign.

The app enables users to create groups (or ‘bands’) of friends, colleagues, teammates, for easy group communication. Within bands, users can create community boards, shared calendars, host polls, send files or photos, post on the group wall, send instant chat messages and more. Users can create as many bands as they like, with options to make them ‘Open/Closed/Secret’ between other users.

To help BAND cement their position in the UK market, M&C Saatchi Performances focus was on targeting their most engaged users, also known as ‘Active Users’. This was defined as anyone who downloaded the app, created a group (thus becoming a ‘Group Band Leader’) and invited two new users to the app. The success metric was to generate a significant increase in Active Users over a 4-month period.

First-party data from BAND revealed that 71 per cent of the bands created in the first month were for sports teams, enabling M&C Saatchi Performance to target activity towards this area, using sports-focused social media influencers to endorse the app, with paid media activity centred on Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram. Research among users also informed the creative direction of the campaign, explaining how the app’s features addressed different needs, with the creative refreshed regularly to keep the campaign fresh. In total, the campaign used 1,222 individual ads, pushing BAND to become a top 10 app in the UK as the media spend was constantly optimised towards the best-performing channels.

BitMango and Leadbolt – Mobile Playable Ads for Word Cookies App
Casual mobile games developer BitMango partnered with Leadbolt, a mobile advertising platform, on user acquisition campaigns with the goal of growing its base of Android and iOS players of its puzzle tile game, Word Cookies.

Leadbolt’s targeting algorithms, predictive modelling, and network of premium app publishers were used to identify ideal user characteristics and top performing mobile environments. Meanwhile, the mobile advertising platform’s Playable Ad format gave users the chance to experience a 30-second mini-game of Word Cookies within the ad before deciding whether to download it or not.

Using Leadbolt’s Playable Ads, BitMango managed to acquire 60,000 new users in one month and successfully achieve its day one retention objectives – with 50 per cent of those retained on day one still active on day seven.

NBC Universal (hayu) and Yodel Mobile – App Store Optimisation and Discoverability Campaign
NBCUniversal turned to Yodel for an organic app install campaign for its on-demand TV app, hayu. Yodel began by implementing its OS-specific App Store Optimisation programme. Using Yodel’s keyword optimisation loop, the company established a bank of optimised keywords for both the app stores, then tracked app and keyword rankings on a continuous basis and updated and optimised their app store descriptions. Alongside this, it implemented optimised screenshots and a video to act as a shopping window for users who visited the app store page, offering a closer look at the app to increase conversion rates.

To increase the organic discoverability of the app and hayu’s brand visibility, Yodel implemented a new web mark-up that would surface rich autosuggestions through Apple Search results in the Safari app. It analysed their top destinations in-app to determine prioritised mark-up areas, picked 10 key pages to be marked up and then measured the uplift in traffic. Having witnessed great results, we planned for the implementation of mark-up on all pages, including supporting the web developers with the implementation.

Yodel also optimised for key phrases for App Packs, which resulted in hayu ranking number 1 for ‘Reality TV app’, ‘On demand TV app’ and ‘Reality TV shows app’, which significantly increased installs and brand visibility.

The results of the campaign were shared with the judges in confidence, and demonstrated that Yodel’s App Store Optimisation and discoverability strategies were key in driving organic acquisition for the app.

Pixelberry Studios and Bidalgo – App Install Campaign
Pixelberry Studios turned to Bidalgo to increase downloads of its multi-layered role play app, Choices, targeting users who would be likely to immerse themselves in the game and complete in app purchases. Pixelberry aimed to unify all relevant media channels, data partners and creative solutions into one platform and use AI to automate and scale the entire media funnel including ad creative and ROAS (return on ad spend) optimization across Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest, Google UAC and Apple search ads. The goals were to increase monthly Installs, lower CPA (Cost Per Action), and increase conversion to in-app purchases.

Pixelberry Studios used Bidalgos AI platform to quickly identify which creative assets work, why, how to create more, and how they measure up in the industry. The platform automatically attributed the right creatives, optimizing multiple variables to reach the right users across these channels.

Bidalgo worked with Pixelberry to access early adoption of exciting new social channel features including Google and Facebook playable ads. The campaign delivered over 980,000 monthly installs, with a 33 per cent lower CPA, and a 121 per cent increase in conversion to in-app purchases.

Seasun Games and Taptica – Seasun Games Wins the Battle for Consumer Attention
Games firm Seasun Games is best known for the number one free app in the Korean iOS and Android App stores, Clans: Shadow of the Moon. The firm partnered with Taptica to deliver a targeted app marketing campaign that would encourage new users to download and continue playing the game at a low cost per install. The campaign goals were drive 5,000-8,000 new installs per month as efficiently as possible, and to retain 30 per cent of new users after day one.

Taptica focused on engaging new users in Korea with targeted app install campaigns optimising toward Cost Per Impression (CPI), loyal user rate, and registration rate to ensure that Seasun’s quality goals were achieved. By combining the power of programmatic with regular monitoring, the Taptica team could track engagement rates and optimise in real time.

Clans is an exciting fantasy Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG), so to catch users attention, Taptica used creative from the game iself within the ads, targeting the younger players that were most likely to download and continue playing the game.

Working with Taptica, Seasun was able to drive thousands of new weekly installs, resulting in a return on investment of 170 per cent above benchmark goals. In addition, the day one retention rates of players was at 42 per cent, beating the 30 per cent target.

Join us to find out the winners of our 2018 Effective Mobile Marketing Awards at our prestigious Awards Ceremony on 15 November. Tickets are available now, so book your place and celebrate the industrys best and brightest with us.

The post 2018 Awards Preview – Most Effective App Install Campaign appeared first on Mobile Marketing Magazine.

More and more charities are taking advantage of the benefits of mobile when it comes to aiding development and outreach for their organisations. To acknowledge the great opportunities that mobile holds for charities, Yodel is aiming to support one deserving cause with its team of mobile and app marketing experts.

Yodel have worked with a wide range of businesses to support their digital transformation and entry into the world of apps, and as one of the early starters in the mobile marketing agency space, their team has a wealth of experience in this area.

The company is looking for charities that own an app which is central to their organisation, and that are willing to commit to a hands-on approach that will dramatically improve their performance. The programme will aim to help the charity bridge their marketing, product and development teams and support implementation and performance tracking, with Yodel working closely with the charity to create an internal structure and workflow that is essential for long-term mobile success.

Charities are being invited to apply via charity@yodelmobile.com by Friday 13 April with the following details:

• What the charity does
• What their current app does, and what it means for the wider organisation/digital strategy
• Their current app marketing efforts and the team responsible
• How it could benefit from Yodel Mobiles app consultancy services

The deadline for the programme is just a week away, so if you work for a charity, nows the time to apply.

The post Yodel launches competition offering 12 months free app marketing support to one charity appeared first on Mobile Marketing Magazine.

Fast forward a few years – nine to be exact – and things look somewhat different. While mobile phone OS fragmentation has eased somewhat, leaving iOS and Android as virtually the last men standing, the fact remains that there are more than 2m apps in Apple’s App Store, and another 2m+ in the Google Play store.

And while clearly there’s a massive amount of duplication, as developers build and release for both platforms, even with 2m other apps competing for attention, it’s hard to stand out. Factor in the thousands of new apps released into the app stores every single day, and it’s clear that getting your app discovered and downloaded is becoming harder with each passing day.

Even if you get that far, the numbers around app churn are truly scary for brands. According to research from Urban Airship, based on a study of 63m app users, only five per cent of people who download an app will still be using it 90 days after they open it for the first time. So all that time, energy and, let’s face it, money spent driving downloads of your app, is wasted.

So given the competitive nature of the app landscape, how do you cut through, get your app downloaded by the right sort of people, and then encourage them to open it once and keep going back to it, once installed?

For Simon Spaull, MD, EMEA, at AppLovin, the process starts with the app itself. “People spend millions on TV ads and then come to us with a crappy app where the user journey is awful,” he says. “People like Amazon have nailed this, minimising as many processes as they can, but it is amazing how many people come to us with dreadful apps.”

Josh Todd, CMO at Localytics, tells a similar story. He says: “People need to ask themselves, ‘What is the purpose of the app? What unique value does it provide?’ Creating an app for the sake of creating an app is a recipe for failure.”

Download duties
Assuming the app is fit for purpose, the next job, of course, is to get it on consumers’ handsets. In recent years, Facebook has taken billions in marketing dollars from brands and app developers looking to do just that. While his company spends no money with the social giant, AppLovin’s Spaull says he understands the platform’s appeal.

“People go to Facebook first, and we will push them that way, because the data is strong and it converts very well; there’s no hiding from that fact,” he says. “Then once you start seeing success on Facebook, we can get you to the next level. You’ll get maybe 50 per cent of your coverage on Facebook, but there are people on apps outside of Facebook and we are happy to play in that space.”

When the talk turns to mobile ad spend and Facebook, Google is usually not far behind, and according to Mick Rigby, CEO of Yodel Mobile, search is becoming increasingly important to drive app downloads.

“App indexing is becoming essential for app discovery via search through Chrome and Safari,” he says. “App packs are the tiles that come up on mobile search when you type in a request. If you type in a search on your mobile for something like ‘Cheap hotels app’ or ‘Luxury hotels app’, if you scroll down past the usual paid results at the top of the page, you get three tiles, each promoting a different app matching that description. And if you click the ‘More Apps’ arrow below the tiles, you get a full screen of app tiles. If you know what you are doing, you can steal a march on the big brands and spenders. You can get into the top three or six and completely outplay the big names at a fraction of the investment – by being smart. Lots of marketers are missing out on the opportunity of app discovery through search on mobile handsets.”

Simon Baptist, director of business development, EMEA, at Tune, puts it even more forcefully. “To win mobile users you have to win in search first,” he says. “To crack the top 150 apps in the Google Play store, app marketers need to use 15–25 different search terms to grab enough users. For the iOS store it’s more like 25+ terms to crack the top 150 apps in a given category. Savvy app marketers and makers use app store optimisation software to do keyword analysis to figure out what people are searching for and then optimise accordingly.”

But app discoverability is not all about reaching random consumers online. If you’re an established brand with established lines of communication with your customer, then clearly it makes sense to use them.

“Owned media is one of the biggest opportunities for brands that are more established,” says Localytics’ Todd. “We know more than half of emails are opened on mobile and a lot of companies have an email newsletter, so this is a great place to promote your app to your more engaged users. Companies like Staples and CBS have done a great job in this respect over the past couple of years, but a lot of others are still ignoring the opportunity.”

Engaged users
This notion of the more engaged user is one that has come to the fore in the past year or so as the app marketing business has matured. Previously, the only KPI anyone really worried about was the number of downloads, but given those scary app churn figures mentioned earlier, there has been a gradual realisation among the app marketing community that you get what you pay for.

“Sure we can drive installs for $1, but that will only get you crappy audiences,” says AppLovin’s Spaull. “If you’re prepared to pay $5 or $10, you’ll be bidding for higher-quality inventory and, ultimately, you’ll attract a better customer and make more money in the long run.”

This is the approach taken by Francesco Loschiavo, digital marketing and CRM manager at NBC Universal’s Hayu reality TV on-demand service. Hayu works closely with Yodel on its app marketing and Loschiavo concedes that in the early days “we started out being concerned about volume but now it is all about quality.”

To find higher-quality users, Hayu uses AppsFlyer tech in the app. ‘Events’ are flagged in the app, such as when someone makes it past three months as a paid subscriber, or completes a given number of programme views. The app then sends a signal back to Hayu’s media partners to say that the channel this user came from to the app is delivering better-quality users, so spend should be optimised for that channel. In addition, on Facebook Hayu will identify, for example, The Kardashians superfans who have watched more than 50 episodes and spent a certain amount, and who have a high number of app logins. It then layers its customer data against Facebook interest data to build a strong lookalike profile to find more potential customers of the same quality.

Onboarding
So you’ve lovingly crafted your app, you’ve optimised your app store presence, you’ve fine-tuned your media spend so that your ads are appearing in the right places to attract high-quality users and, happy days, the downloads start rolling in. The next thing the savvy app marketer needs to think about is the onboarding process, when the user opens the app for the first time and you, as the app developer or the brand briefing the app developer, have to decide how far to push things on that first engagement. If the app is on an iOS phone, it will ask the user’s permission to send push notifications on first open, though Leanplum, which specialises in post-install engagement, has a piece of tech that can circumvent this.

There are lots of permissions an app can ask for, in addition to push notifications. The most obvious ones are permission to access your location, the phone’s camera and its address book. “There are two types of onboarding: initial and progressive,” says Yodel’s Rigby. “Initial onboarding is getting the user to understand the app and if there are any essential elements you need them to opt in to, get them straight away. So if it’s a dating app with a ‘People Near Me’ feature, you need to get them to opt in to location from the off. Progressive onboarding is stuff they can come back to at later stages. There’s no one right way to do this because every app is different and requires different data, but as long as you understand this, you can build a strategy.”

But of all the permissions an app can seek, push notifications are undoubtedly the most important, offering the app owner the opportunity to re-engage users who have downloaded the app but haven’t opened it up for a while. So what does best practice look like here?

“You have to show them a little bit of value then earn the right to ask for those permissions in context,” says Localytics’ Todd. “RetailMeNot did a great job with this. When you got inside the app, the first thing the user had to do was to select which brands they wanted to receive discount coupons from, so when the app asked permission to send push notifications, it was in the context of getting deals from the brands they had selected.”

According to Leanplum, the average opt-in rate for push notifications is 43 per cent, but the retention rate for users opted in to push is 20 per cent higher than for those who are not. “For an app like Pokémon Go, that number means you would have an additional 1.2m players by day 15,” says Joyce Solano, Leanplum’s VP of corporate marketing. “What an arsenal that is in terms of retaining users and being able to monetise them.”

Frequency
The other $64,000 question where push is concerned, is frequency. As the app owner, it’s tempting to reach out to your users every week or maybe even every day to get them re-engaging with the app and, hopefully, spending money with you. But common sense dictates that if you turn up the dial too high, users will see you as spammy, tune out, and probably uninstall. So what is the golden number of push notifications an app owner should be looking to send?

You’ll struggle to find anyone to give you a definitive answer, on the basis that every app is different. News organisations probably can get away with a daily push, or even more, but a retailer might start to look a bit desperate if they adopted the same approach.

Emily Buckman, global strategic consultant at Urban Airship says: “Frequency is more about relevance than cadence. Our studies clearly show that among hundreds of apps analysed, more frequent engagement through messaging will drive better retention rates, so long as you have something relevant to say that is aligned to the customer journey and experience. But the messaging must be relevant, personalised and contextual. If not, if you’re just sending a message with a flash sale every day, it will have the opposite effect to what you’re trying to achieve.”

The other thing that can help where push is concerned is a bit of variety, something beyond plain text. iOS 10 – in addition to enabling app users to leave a rating for the app from within the app, rather than being redirected away to the App Store – also enables app owners to send rich push notifications, including GIFs and videos. It also enables a brand to personalise the app icon on the user’s phone, so that a Starwood hotel user who hits Platinum status in the company’s loyalty program, for example, could see that reflected in their app icon.

In the same vein, app marketers are seeing great success with that other unlikely marketing success story of the past 12 months, the emoji. “Our customers see great results when they use multimedia and non-text-based communication to re-engage users,” says Tune’s Baptist. “Emojis and GIFs are two great examples of fun tools that app makers can use to engage with mobile customers. Data suggest that sending mobile users personalised, emoji-based notifications can boost open rates by as much as 80 per cent. Why? Pictures are valuable, lasting and fun. That’s exactly what you want mobile users to think of your app.”

At The Economist, audience development director Tom McCave says push notifications have increased in importance in recent years. McCave is responsible for The Economist’s ‘World In [2017]’ series, published annually. He says: “People are engaging with apps in different ways than they did three or four years ago. There are fewer people looking for the apps they want to open by browsing their phone; it is much more prompted. We put out a notification when the new edition is published but that would only be once a year, so we go further. ‘The World In’ predicts how the year ahead will unfold, so when some of these predictions come true, we can re-engage with those users through push. It gives us a way to have a continued conversation throughout the year. This is one thing push is really good for.”

At Hayu, Loschiavo says the brand is taking a tiered approach to push. “We do a lot of A/B testing to see what works, and carefully manage that we aren’t overusing the frequency of the channel,” he says. “If it’s a C-level show, not a big premiere, we might just do an email. But if it’s a new series of the Kardashians, we will roll it out across all channels and stagger the messaging through the day, so you might get an email in the morning, an in-app notification during the day and a push notification in the evening just before the show goes out. We also use push notifications for early engagement, as an educational tool, when someone has installed the app but not subscribed yet.”

Analytics
So what next for app marketing? Tune’s Baptist would like to see brands take analytics more seriously. In this respect, he says, they can learn a lot from the gaming companies, who lead the way in mobile user acquisition and engagement because they use deep-funnel behaviour analytics to drive action; they rely on rapid testing and adjustment as a core strategy; and they are quick to jump on new opportunities and cultural trends.

“Analytics can make a real difference,” says Baptist. “Mobile games are free to play and are designed to drive players through a carefully scripted series of tutorials and events, with the objective of creating affinity for the game. At the end of this journey, or funnel, are micro-transactions like buying coins to level up faster. Gaming companies have designed their mobile product specifically to move players efficiently through this funnel to a point of purchase.

“They measure the customer journey with pinpoint accuracy along the way. By focusing on deep-funnel analytics, i.e. what behaviour a player takes just before and just after a point of purchase, gaming companies can constantly configure their game to maximise this action. It’s this level of attention and data that informs both marketing strategy and product strategy, which leads to a constant evolution of rapid updates to make the game better.”

Urban Airship’s Buckman believes brands are improving their messaging capabilities. “Businesses, especially larger ones, are finally starting to shift the culture towards being more mobile-first and data-driven, implementing DMPs and data warehouses to send the right communications at the right time, so messages are becoming more contextual and relevant thanks to better data and analytics,” she says.

Meanwhile, Hayu’s Loschiavo says he is already looking towards what comes after apps. “These are interesting times,” he says. “I read recently that people only use seven apps on a daily basis and it’s mostly between two companies, Facebook and Google, with maybe a bit of Snapchat and one or two others in there. This is the evolution of how your brand is going to talk to your customer. It might not be in the app store or in other apps that you do your marketing. It might be natively in Facebook or in chatbots and messenger bots. We are looking at this and we’re seeing how chat is becoming a global leader in terms of where people are spending time on their phone, so it’s going to be really interesting to see how this all plays out.”

This article first appeared in the June 2017 print edition of Mobile Marketing. You can read the whole issue here.

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