User Acquisition Predictions -2015

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In this episode of App Marketing Conversations fombog  and GameHouse make their user acquisition predictions for 2015. Watch the video here, or read the transcript below!

Ryan: Good morning and welcome to the first edition of 2015 for App Marketing Campaigns. I am Ryan Morel of GameHouse. As always, I’m joined by Robi Ganguly of Apptentive. Ian Sefferman of MobileDevHQ by Tunes. So Happy New Year, guys.

Ian: Happy New Year.

Robi: Happy New Year.

Ryan: So we’re going to do a set of predictions as we did last year. We’ll also do a recap of our predictions, which probably turned out to be incredibly wrong from last year. Robi did a session on loyalty. Ian did one on App Store optimization and so in this episode we’re going to talk a little bit about user acquisition.

User acquisition continues to evolve and get better from a data perspective. I think 2014 saw a lot more intelligence go in to the marketers’ playbook in terms of how they handle user acquisition, especially for the big publishers. Ian, do you want to kick us off by giving your initial thoughts on 2014 and what you expect to see happen in 2015?

Ian: 2014 for me seemed like it was just a massive growth year, right? Everybody who was in this space just leveled up their game tremendously. We were actually just talking about this. I think Supercell’s push towards TV is really interesting. TV has become a really viable channel for a lot of publishers that I don’t think anybody thought of prior to 2014, or in very small amounts. I think in 2015, my predictions for 2015 are twofold. One, I think the industry as a whole has dealt with privacy relatively poorly today, and privacy will become more and more important, especially I think the E.U. will push for that further. Then secondly, I think, you sort of touched on this in the loyalty time, where it’s dynamic re-engagement. But I think deep linking in general for ads is still a little bit too nascent and needs to be taken to the prime time, and that’s a piece that will see 2015.

Ryan: Robi?

Robi: Well, I think in 2014 we saw a lot more non-traditional app marketers spending on UA. Moving from games and entertainment into commerce, the Fortune 500, PG brands, that sort of stuff. So I think what we’ll see in 2015 is, we’ve heard this consistent year over year, “Oh, CPIs have grown in 30% to 40%.” I think it’s possible this year we’re going to see an explosion, because as the growth rate of new customers slows and we continue to see the crush of new advertisers, I think the price is going to go upward pretty dramatically, especially back end of the year, and we’re going to say, “Oh my gosh, when is this going to end?” But in a different direction than we’ve seen before, where it’s been kind of consistent. It’s just going to spike out.

I’m going to cheat and have a second prediction. I think there’s going to be a lot of consolidation in UA space. Companies that’re helping with this I think there will be several that will probably in the first six months of the year.

Ryan: Yeah. So I’ll add. Well, I think you stole one of my predictions.

Robi: Sorry.

Ryan: That was a really good one though. One thing that I’ll add is that 2014 felt like the year that we finally started seeing everyone in the user acquisition space paying less attention to the install and more attention to the conversion, and then how much they’re willing to pay was really data driven to ease this user pain before they know. So I actually think as a result of the rise in UA costs, we’re going to see that taken to the next step where people are following users across a broad base of their applications to really understand who are their good users across all of their apps, and where else are they? We’re not going to just see dynamic re-engagement. We’re going to see dynamic and initial engagement. So that means we’re going to see a lot more problematic stuff. We’re going to see a lot more changes. So I think that market will continue to grow and get better. Because you’re right, I don’t know if the total universe of impressions has grown as fast over the last year or so as it was before. It’s got to slow down at some point. And more importantly, the number of really good users isn’t necessarily growing as fast as it was before.

Okay. So if you’re a user acquisition specialist and a big publisher, regardless of type, what are the first things you’re doing as we go into 2015?

Ian: I’m experimenting. I think setting aside a good amount of budget to try new channels that are not just the traditional performance display channels is going to be really exciting.

Ryan: Okay. Do you have an example of . . . ?

Ian: I mean, TV is one, but I think anywhere; radio would be another, exchanges and DSPs if they’re not focused on that world.

Robi: The point about the channels is really important, because people are definitely looking at them. I think the aspect of it that, I mean it’s obvious to you, but it still feels like it’s not obvious to most. That really matters, is trying to figure out the attribution across those channels and trying to get better and better data and almost getting to the point of, “I’m not going to run this campaign if I can’t do it any attribution around it, just because I don’t get the butter.”

Ryan: Okay. I would echo all those things. I don’t have anything to add there. I think maybe the one thing you could add is if you aren’t already doing downstream attribution, then you need to be thinking of that.

Ian: Here’s my question. Do we know if any advertisers have purchased the Super Bowl idea for now?

Robi: No, I haven’t seen anything. That’d be interesting.

Ryan: You’ve got to see Clash of Clans or Game of War. I mean, they paid Kate Upton all that money. I can’t imagine they’re not going to put her front and center.

Ian: I will predict that we see an app during the Super Bowl in a month and a half, or whenever it is, right.

Ryan: That’s a good one.

Ian: Because it’s not even . . . it’s like three weeks out.

Robi: Three weeks. Yeah.

Ryan: Okay. Well, thanks very much for watching. Make sure to check out the segments from Ian and Robi as well as our recaps of our 2014 predictions.

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