Mastering Mobile App Discoverability

Quotes

• “We help app developers and gray app brands with carriers and OEMs and we do this with a piece of technology that we call Ignite™ that gets embedded in the operating system. If you’re a mobile user have your LinkedIn, Facebook or Yelp automatically embedded in the device, that requires a piece of technology that my company develops and designs with our carrier and OEM partners.” - Matt“Specifically for Digital Turbine Media we’re responsible for working with all the applications, brands, agencies out there to get their applications integrated with our telecom platform.” - Matt“When you buy an android phone, each OEM and carrier have their own flavor. What Google had done a really good job of is having a flexible platform where, with the acquisition of android and expanded it on the platform and it has allowed carriers and OEMs to customize their software that sits on the phone so in some cases, there may be extra social features or widgets.” - Matt“What happened in the world of android and in all of OS really, is that typically whoever sells the device gets to customize the firmware as it is getting sold. OEMs do also sell their own phones so you can go and buy an open market Samsung device in the US and it will be the Samsung version of that phone. But if you buy it from a carrier, and by the way in the US majority of phones are bought from the carrier and outside US, they’re typically bought in retail which is OEM built.” - Matt“Even though Apple’s ecosystem is clamped a bit more, there is customization. So a Verizon Apple phone can be different from an AT&T Apple phone.” - Matt“So from a marketing perspective, the relationships you want to have are with the carriers if you are trying to have some sort of a presence pre-installed on the phone?” - Ben“That’s correct, yeah.” - Matt “It’s part of the problem we’ve been solving over the last 7 years now. Even companies like eBay, LinkedIn will have a hard time getting in front of AT&Ts and Verizons and do large business development deals across the board. It takes a tremendous amount of time, is a heavy lift and that’s assuming you can even get in front of the right people.” - Matt“So we basically democratized this process whereby app developers, brands, and apps can basically come to Digital Turbine and we act as a media arm for carriers and OEM partners that integrate our technology.” - Matt“I want to talk about the value of having an application pre-loaded. I spent a good five years of my life negotiating the deals for eBay to have a fixed placement on HP computers and they were like $10 million deals.” - Ben“More than 50% of people do not download a new application on a monthly basis. That’s one of the dynamic and the other is that if you look at the importance of app installs based on the time a device is sold, having a new device or an app on a device at an early stage is dramatically important to the performance of the app developer.” - Matt“It’s about the placement. Think of it at an impression level. If my app is already there, people are generally lazy and they are probably not gonna delete it and they just might ignore it. But if I’m there and I’m on that first page, every time somebody picks up their phone, they get a quick glance at my app, and so impression levels equal conversion.” - Matt“Facebook, eBay, gaming, social, news, utilities all do incredibly well through pre-loading of applications and through our own device technology. The counter is for those one-time use or low-frequency use of applications.” - Matt“Our average revenue per download, different from revenue per open, and when I saw revenue, I say the cost per download, it’s anywhere between 50 to 75 cents. It’s not much. The next typical question that we get from a lot of our partners is, ‘what’s the average open rate?’ and typically the average open rate in the first 30 days is around 25% to 30%. However, after 90 to 180 days, that open rate can get upwards to 60 to 70 and sometimes even 80% open rate.” - Matt“We work with 23 of the top 25 gaming companies today and all of them have worked to fine-tune their pricing and their monetization methods both for in-app purchases as well as advertising inside their applications.” - Matt“Specifically with our platform, we allow our app partners to target by device make model, carrier, and country. We have a lot of app developers and brands that will start off on a series of devices and carriers that they think is the most applicable to the demographic. An example would be in LinkedIn on high-end Samsung devices vs. solitaire game on a low-end LG. They’re target-based and there are different pricing dynamics.” - Matt“Every day we activate around 400,000 to 500,000 devices globally.” - Matt“Is it something that can be dynamic?” - Ben“First-off we’re only an in-direct. 100% in-direct now on iOS. Second, yes we can do daily capping. We typically don’t do deals that are less than $100,000 but we do have some partners that will come on and trial it.” - Matt“These MMPs (Mobile Measurement Platform) are integrated into applications so you as a buyer at LinkedIn or at a gaming company, you can integrate one of these MMPs and you can track the performance both from a click to an install to any downstream event and eventually get to an LTV based on the traffic source that you run it with.” - Matt“As a marketer, these tools are fantastic at being able to frame up and tie the source of inventory to the performance of that inventory. Digital Turbines, as well as many other platforms out there, can ingest these, essentially click URLs, tie back the performance of the media spend, or the partnership in this case to the LTV for that media buy or for that campaign manager.” - Matt“LTV in 30-days of pre-loaded application is not higher than you would say, either from an organic click from an African accommodation website or even paying for other display and media. However, the return on ad spend typically tends to be a great deal higher over the course of 30, 60, 90, or even a 180-days compared to the other media types.” - Matt“The way that we like to advise our partners is, ‘hey, look if you’re on a device media, a media that Digital Turbine commands and control, is one leg of the stool. You’ve got search, you’ve got other app recommendations, services that you’re spending money in, maybe you have a display where there will be video or stack display of video advertising spend, and you’ve got your on-device media on the pre-load and inventory.” - Matt“We have seen budget shifts over the last 4 to 5 years from display advertising or even affiliate networks representing mobile app companies over to the on-device media that we manage just because the return ad spend is so much better. If you can get in front of the user when they’re buying a new device and exploring their phone, that trumps pretty much every other method today in terms of return ad spend.” - Matt