App developers often rely on paid user acquisition campaigns in their mobile marketing strategy, in order to grow their app user base and increase revenues. The success of mobile app install campaigns is never instantaneous and you need to constantly analyse your performance over time. Performance reports which monitor campaigns’ metrics such as clicks, installs and conversion rates, help you understand what you need to improve and how to optimise your ad spend, while maximising your KPIs.
But what parameters should you look at in a report ? There is plenty of data which you can examine in order to assess your performance, and each small optimisation can drive your campaigns’ success. Here are five insights every report has to show in order to be valuable for advertisers.
1. Advertisers’ Relevant KPIs
The first thing advertisers want to know when reading a report is whether or not their campaign is generating results. Therefore, measuring only impressions, clicks and conversion rates isn’t enough. A thorough assessment of the performance keeps track of the relevant KPIs set by the advertiser, such as ROI, CPA, user retention or customer LTV. These metrics allow you to understand if your investment in marketing efforts is profitable and you are acquiring high quality users for your app.
2. The User Conversion Funnel
Acquiring new users is only the first step in a mobile marketing campaign, because users who leave the app soon after they have installed it don’t generate revenues and don’t bring any value to app developers. Thus, it is crucial to track as many post-install events as possible, in order to have a better picture of the entire user conversion funnel within the app. By gathering this data, you can see which users are more likely to become high-LTV customers and where they engage the most while exploring the app. In addition, this analysis highlights what drives revenues in-app and how you can maximise it.
3. Performance History
A key feature that every report should include is the chance to monitor your app install campaign performance over time. Many DSPs that run programmatic advertising campaigns provide dashboards which let you view your results for a custom date range you can choose. As a consequence, you can analyse weekly or monthly trends and you can observe how your ads perform during selected periods of time such as holidays or any other events related to your app and services.
4. Ad Creative Performance
Creatives play a big role in mobile app install campaigns and their performance needs to be assessed to better understand which ads work best and why. Banners, GIFs, native ads and videos are only some of the most common formats used in programmatic advertising and each of them has a different impact on users, based on where and how they see it. By providing data and stats for each ad format, a report helps advertisers know how to successfully display the most engaging ads for specific post-install events.
5. Geo Performance
In conclusion, when you run paid user acquisition campaigns in different countries and/or states, you need to know where your ad spend generates the best results. Some countries or states may perform better than others and figuring out why they do benefits the overall strategy. Indeed, by observing the different performances, you can optimise your ad spend towards the best geos, while understanding what to improve in the less successful ones.
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