Mumbai: The Smartphone industry in India is projected to grow by 7.20 per cent in the next five years, with a resulting market volume of 234.50 million units, amounting to US$59.08 billion by 2028. This can be attributed to multiple factors, such as an increase in disposable income, a strongly associated socio-economic status and rapid innovation chief amongst them. In 2024, the segment is expected to grow by 5.9 per cent. (Source: Statista). It thus comes as no surprise that mobile advertising spending is expected to reach 78 per cent of the total digital marketing expenditure by 2023. (Source: Statista). In April 2023, the Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) currently led by Xiaomi, closely followed by Vivo, Oppo, Realme, OnePlus and others occupied approximately 80.42 per cent of the smartphone market share in India. (Source: Statcounter). This opens up a big opportunity for app developers to utilize mobile OEM advertising and in particular the option of Dynamic Preloads campaigns, for apps and brands looking at maximizing their mobile marketing campaigns against the backdrop of a highly competitive and saturated market.
Dynamic Preloads presents a highly targeted on-device customer acquisition channel wherein brands collaborate with OEMs, with device manufacturers dynamically prompting users to download their app upon activation of new devices. Dynamic preloads ensure a smooth user journey, from prompt to app download, significantly increasing app awareness and download rates.
What makes Dynamic Preloads a promising channel to leverage by app marketers.
Scalability and Targetability: India is the second largest smartphone market, with 2022 seeing smartphone shipments reaching 144.3 million units. With the mobile industry innovating at an unprecedented rate, app marketers should turn to dynamic preloads, as it provides access to focused and strategic targeting of this huge prospective user base.
Measurable and Optimizable: The effectiveness of Dynamic Preloads can be accurately gauged with mobile attribution KPIs providing the value of each channel, mapping the user journey, and drawing actionable insights based on demographics, geo-location. Additionally, Dynamic Preloads allow for quicker turnaround from app launch to app discovery, as apps can be discovered by the user as part of a Dynamic Preloads campaign, making for a quicker turnaround as compared to discovering an app organically.
Relatively Lower CAC and positive ROAS: Marketers are always hustling to reduce the overall customer acquisition costs (CAC) for their brand campaigns. Strategically approaching and optimizing Dynamic Preloads on various OEMs can ensure an overall low CAC and a positive return on advertising spend (ROAS).
Dynamic Preloads allow advertisers to pay for Cost per Install (CPI) allowing advertisers to secure CPI prices at a lower cost, shielding them from the fluctuating prices borne out of seasonality, more commonly seen in display ad pricing from traditional providers such as Google and Facebook. making it essential for marketers to align their focus to an ecosystem that has grown more agile, quick, flexible, and affordable with the arrival of dynamic preloads.
User Choice: Unlike Traditional Preloads, Dynamic Preloads work through user consent, as users would have to opt-in to downloading the app. This makes every install of the app very deliberate and moves away from the model of forcing an app onto a user without their consent, more typically known as bloatware.
Up-to-date: Unlike Traditional Preloads where the app is preinstalled months before the phone hits store shelves, Dynamic Preloads only downloads the latest version of the app upon user consent, ensuring that the user is interacting with the latest version of the app
Improves Organic Ranking: A surprising yet welcome side-effect of using Dynamic Preloads is the fact that an apps’ organic ranking can be elevated, as the nature of this solution requires the app to be downloaded directly from the Google Play Store, thus affecting the Play Store numbers.
First Mover Advantage: Being the first app in a particular app category allows users to discover the app faster. This can translate to loyalty to the app if the users now convert to using the app.
Incorporating a Dynamic Preloads campaign into your user acquisition strategy
1. Set attainable goals and a realistic budget: Realistic goal setting is key to strategizing any user acquisition campaign. Set a definite install target based on the specifics of the target audience and reach capabilities of various channels in the marketing mix. Based on the industry average CAC for a particular OEM, marketers can zero in on the required budget based on their goals and targets. An additional factor that also needs to be considered while setting up targets and budgets, is the minimum per-day download threshold set by different OEMs.
2. Select OEMs and devices carefully: Conduct research on which OEMs are widely used by the brand’s target audience, together with the app’s organic performance on the different app stores. A marketer can then select a combination of OEMs and devices it would like to run their Dynamic Preloads campaign. These factors would also help determine budget distribution amongst various OEMs.
3. Attribute Installs to Dynamic Preloads/Pre-Install campaigns: With the help of the right mobile measurement partner (MMP), brands should strategise and continually monitor the performance of their campaign across different OEM advertising channels by tracking downloads and engagement levels both pre and post app installation.
4. Setting the Right Attribution Window: To measure the optimal quality of your preload campaign, it is essential to set the right attribution window. There are often delays between launching the campaign and seeing any user action, and as such a short attribution window could lead to misattribution or seeing no results in the campaign at all. Thus, the minimum recommended window should be set at 60 days.
5. Measure the Results and Optimize: Tracking data and analyzing insights will help in understanding campaign shortfalls and allow for optimization by improving placements and creatives or redirecting resources towards better performing segments, locations or devices. Ongoing monitoring and the right optimizations will lead to a greater ROI
6. Take an integrated marketing approach: Though a particular channel might perform better than another, it is essential to take an integrated marketing approach encompassing various channels, to maximize paid as well as organic results.
The projected statistics and capabilities of Mobile OEMs clearly state the importance of utilizing these alternative app stores to reach high-quality untapped users at scale. To stay on top of their game, advertisers and marketers should leverage this channel’s potential by strategically incorporating Dynamic Preloads in their mobile marketing mix. Expert agencies such as AVOW that have close partnerships with Smartphone OEMs can help brands and app developers by providing them greater visibility and the opportunity to become a ‘go-to’ app for new users. These agencies not only effectively assist marketers in reaching their user acquisition goals but also help them launch their apps on different mobile OEMs with specific geo-targeting for the selected markets.
The author of this article is AVOW co-founder Ashwin Shekhar.
