AppDrive Presents: Mobile Apps & Advertising

With a great increase of mobile-first internet users, how is the mobile advertising industry responding? Check out Samuel Lim’s talk at AWeurope 2016.

Speech by Samuel Lim | General Manager SEA, AppDrive

Samuel Lim Speech Transcript

Hello, hello everyone!

Basically, I’m from AppDrive. I’m sure most of you have not heard of AppDrive.

We’re a brand new, self-serve platform. What we do is we connect advertisers directly to the publishers and likewise as an STK integration.

Self-serve meaning it’s very easy to use. You can compare it to maybe Facebook advertising, Google advertising.

I’m gonna jump straight into the case study.

Case Study: Flappy Bird

I’m sure many of you have heard of the Flappy Bird. So, I’m gonna discuss the curious case of Flappy Bird.

What happened here was a few years ago, CEO launched this wonderful game. He launched it on the AppStore. And, what happened was he ordered about 96,000 installs and from there, the app climbed up in the AppStore.

And before he knew it, quality users latched on and then more and more users latched on to the game.

Before anyone knew it, it was the best game in the world. Well, in most countries at least.

What happened after that is a little bit sad. A lot of speculation came to light. And what they said was, people were questioning the initial batch of installations that he ordered.

Obviously, there are no facts. I’m not siding with any side, it’s just an opinion right now.

And from there, it led to the downfall of Flappy Bird. And with many other factors, before we knew it, the CEO took down the game.

Why did he take down the game? Purely because he couldn’t handle the pressure.

So what I’m saying here is that, installs, there are many different kinds of installs. Incent, non-incent, there’s always different kinds. There are bots all the way to your best users, highly-targeted.

AppDrive For Advertisers

So this leads me to AppDrive. What is AppDrive?

A self-serve platform, basically we allow advertisers to run their own platforms.

Why did I create AppDrive? This is the big question.

Basically, I was with Gameloft earlier last year. I was the country manager in Indonesia. And an ad network headhunted me and decided that “Okay, Sam I want you to take the lead for Asia.”

And I came on board.

So, being in the sales function for about 7 years, I developed quite a strong portfolio. Belief in products has always been my driving force.

And what happened in the next few weeks was, I ran a few campaigns for my clients, non-incent campaigns, and the quality was zero.

So it came to a point when my reputation was even being questioned.

I did a little bit of research and I found out that the ad network I was with was actually running incent traffic on our non-incent campaigns. I’m sure many of us have had similar experiences in advertising.

So this threw me off completely, Obviously, I left the job.

What happened next was I dared to question whether there is a possibility where incent traffic can drive not only more total installations but quality installations altogether.

Incent + Quality

So, what we did was I gathered a team. The team has been in the ad network industry for about 8 years now.

We tried out a few methods to run incent campaigns. And after a bit of trial & error, we found a truly special method that guaranteed retention of 10%-12%.

If we look at non-incent campaigns, it can be a little bit precarious. Because the minimum budget would be US$0.60, averaging US$0.80, which in my view is a high price to pay just for installations. And with a chance of having some quality installations.

{4. Samuel Lim – Incent + Quality}

So what we did for incenting was…

Let’s look at the average prices for incent. It comes down from US$0.12 all the way up to US$0.25. And it can also be even lower than US$0.12.

In short, we found a special method. And we ran a few incent campaigns. To my surprise, it actually worked out.

So, what happened earlier this year was we decided to try this out on a few campaigns.

I got a call from TrueMove which is a major telco in Thailand. They launched a new game called Girls Reload.

This excited me because they ordered 2 campaigns. 1 non-incent and 1 incent, which would be the perfect measure.

Incent and Non-Incent Campaign

Let’s look at the case study of the non-incent campaign. So, they ordered 20,000 installs, we also delivered it.

CPI, US$0.80. Retention, 31%. Recurring users 6.2k. Total campaign cost, US$16,000. That’s your average campaign.

For the incent campaign, they ordered 35,000 installations, we delivered it.

The CPI is slightly higher, US$0.25. Retention, 13.4%, which is pretty good. Total recurring users, 4.6k. Total campaign cost 8.75k.

So for almost half the price, we got way more installations and just 1,000 less in terms of total recurring users.

If we were to compare it on the same budget, say they were both running on 16k, these would be the results.

Incent would have 2.1k more quality users. It will also have 29k more total installations which are massive considering the volume and the budget that we were working with.

How do we do this? We are early movers in CPI and also in the ad network industry with 8 years experience. Obviously, this company has been around for 6 years.

But our team itself, some of our team members have been in the industry for up to 8 years.

We have exclusive partnerships with gaming developers, app developers as well.

And, we’re also looking for new publishers from all over the world if anyone is interested. We have a booth just outside, you can approach us later on.

Case Study: Temple Jungle Run

Here are a few more case studies. We ran a campaign for Temple Jungle using the same platform.

They ordered 75,000 incent installations, we delivered it in 3 days.

Retention, 12% on the dot.

Case Study: Girls Reload

Here’s Girls Reload.

Case Study: Seven Knights

Seven Knights. This one was interesting because this is actually a close friend of mine. He ordered 100,000 non-incent installs.

I actually advised him that for the same budget, I can give you double the total installations and way more in terms of quality installations.

He was stubborn, he decided to stick with 100,000 non-incent. So we delivered 37.4% retention.

This was more of a managed kind of approach. We didn’t use a self-serve platform.

Case Study: Flipkart

We also ran one for Flipkart. Ran for 10 days, 200,000 installations. Retention, 10.4%.

Case Study: Myntra

Also for Myntra, it’s the same case where they actually ordered non-incent after being advised to try out our self-serve platform incent.

They decided to go with non-incent. And the retention was 27.7%.

Case Study: Voonik

Here are a few more campaigns.

This one was particularly successful for Voonik. We ran it actually just in April. So we generated 100,000 installations as ordered.

Total retention, 15.2%. So this is one of our triumphs.

Case Study: Amazon

Also, for Amazon.

Case Study: Make My Trip

And Make My Trip. I’m sure you’ve heard of all of these platforms.

So what is AppDrive for advertisers?

Basically, we empower marketers. We allow them to connect directly to the publishers and likewise for publishers to the advertisers.

The reason why we ran this is that I’ve worked with a lot of agencies throughout Southeast Asia. And many of them actually wanted to run their own campaigns.

They didn’t have the resources, they didn’t have the inventory. And, they didn’t have the experience.

So after running a few managed campaigns, we decided maybe let’s create this self-serve platform. We’ve run it a few times. And, it’s been terrific.

If you’re an agency and you’re also looking for a platform that will allow you to run effective campaigns, come to us.

How It Works

How does it work? There are 5 steps.

Set up your campaign. First, you just insert the AppStore URL.

Create a campaign. You set the targeting locations, the KPIs, the budget, the bids.

Step 3, set up tracking and postbacks which is pretty simple.

Step 4, you can test it right on the spot using your mobile phone.

And step 5, launch your campaign.

AppDrive For Publishers

Okay, now going to the other side of the business, AppDrive for publishers.

What we offer is a new revenue stream. Many of our advertisers have experienced 20% to 50% increase in revenue. Some of which have actually seen 300%, which is a handful.

Monetisation For Apps

So monetisation for apps. This is the big question everyone is always asking. Out of the whole app world, 2% of app developers accumulate 54% of all revenue.

A lot of people say there’s a secret formula but in my view and in my experience, there is no secret formula. You need to understand your industry, you need to understand the market. Anw, you need to understand your users and your app.

And from there, strategise an ad campaign or whatever kind of campaign to monetise.

4 Key Ways To Monetise Your App

So there are 4 key ways to monetise your app.

First, sponsorships, in-app advertising, in-app purchases, and freemium.

So, sponsorships, these are much a very native way to advertise. I’m sure some of you have seen this. For instance, this campaign was from Gameloft, the game Asphalt.

So it ran a little competition in a period of 7 days.

Basically, it was the Ferrari challenge brought to you by Huawei. This gave the users the opportunity to challenge other users to see who was the best. And obviously, the winners would win Huawei phones.

In-app purchases, this is huge. A very steady revenue stream for most app developers.

It’s terrific if you’re a game, it’s terrific if you have services or a retail sort of app.

Freemium, very popular in games again. It’s terrific if you have levels of enhancement, long sessions.

And it’s very important that the free experience that you give is quality because who would pay some more if your quality is not there?

And in-app advertising, so this is where we come in.

It removes the cost barrier between user and app. So you don’t demand any money from the user at all.

You can generate data from your users so you know who’s playing the games when they’re playing the games, where they come from. And this will offer advertisers a chance to segment and run targeted campaigns.

Obviously, it’s a lucrative and growing industry.

Innovative Revenue Stream

So innovative revenue streams. I’ve seen many app developers and apps and games use very much an ad network approach.

This is terrific. It gives you a lot of, a lot of revenue but also at the same time, in my view, it drives down the quality of your game.

I’ve also seen some app platforms such as Gameloft that actually enforce, they actually bring on a sales force which accumulates a lot of costs just to work on the field and drive campaigns on their own.

Content Locking

This is the special method that we use, Content Locking. I’m sure many of you have heard it. We use exclusive apps, mainly gaming.

We also have a lot of these exclusive partnerships that rely on us 100% for their monetisation.

The good part about it is there’s no re-brokering. So it doesn’t go through 10 affiliates in order to get the campaign running.

The advertiser will experience true quality, the publisher can also get a fantastic margin.

Global Campaigns

So we have a global sales team that is on the ground and finding exclusive campaigns, that’s one of the ways that we drive all of these offerings.

We’re also connected with all of these major agencies.

So what we have is a lot of inside deals, exclusive deals. If you’re a publisher, it’s perfect for you guys.

Anyway, okay sorry, one more slide.

Key Benefits

So one of the key benefits of AppDrive.

Firstly, real-time reporting. Access to thousands of publishers, never seen before scale, wow support. I’d like to expound on the wow support.

Basically, everyone that has an account, every agency that has an account will be allocated a campaign manager.

Obviously, it’s a self-serve platform but say you have a few questions, the campaign manager will be available to you at any point of time.

Yeah, the rest is a given.

Multiple payment options, streamlines that process. So, obviously, payment sometimes is a little bit tedious. What we offer here is very much streamlined and easier. Its direct transactions.

Cool, so that’s all I have to say for tonight.

If you guys have any more questions, we have a booth literally just outside.

I don’t have a Q& A session. So if you have any questions, please come to me.

Thank you!