User acquisition stands as both the initial and ultimate objective of mobile marketing. Without an audience to showcase the value of your product or service, profitability ends up becoming an elusive goal.

The challenge is that resources are finite, prompting the need for strategic thinking. In an ideal world, you might be able to pour money into a myriad of ad campaigns, but in reality, you need to find a way to engage users within a set budget.

This is why you need to follow the three action items that are to be introduced in this blog post. To boost your marketing return on investment (ROI), optimize user acquisition, and drive growth, let’s start by getting the basics right.

Action item #1: Measure your performance

One of the most critical things you should to do improve your return is measuring your campaign performance. You can use an attribution and analytics tool like Airbridge to gain insights about each channel, campaign, and creative.

In fact, only by having visibility into your ad effectiveness can you answer questions like the following:

• What were the factors that drove your app installs in the past two weeks?
• Which creatives attract the highest-paying users?
• Which combination of marketing channels is the most effective?

To measure performance, you first need to decide which metrics to track. Depending on the characteristics of your app, you can choose from a plenty such as cost per action (CPA), average revenue per user (ARPU), return on ad spend (ROAS), user lifetime value (LTV), impressions, clicks, click-through rate (CTR), daily active users (DAU), monthly active users (MAU), retention rate, and funnel conversion. Based on the data collected, create a dashboard that provides you with relevant insights and reallocate your budget to maximize marketing ROI.

Action item #2: Send user behavior data to ad platforms

Sending your users’ behavioral data to ad platforms is another essential step to take to optimize your mobile user acquisition. This is because it becomes easier for ad platforms to show personalized ads to your target audience when they receive rich in-app event data. The more “hints” you provide, the more likely it is for them to find the users who would perform a desired action, such as making a purchase.

Let’s say you have an e-commerce app. In addition to install data, you can share with ad platforms who completed actions like View Product Detail Page, Add to Cart, and Purchase. You can also transfer event properties like transaction ID and product ID as well as identifiers such as advertising ID, user ID, and hashed email address or phone number.

There are three common means of sending user data to ad platforms: an ad platform SDK, a mobile measurement partner (MMP) SDK, and Conversions API (CAPI). Among them, CAPI is a server-to-server signal sending interface that allow you to send user data on sign-ups, purchases, and other actions directly to ad platforms via API calls.

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Remember, the more granular data you provide, the more accurately and effectively the ad platform can target your audience.

Action item #3: Prevent and detect fraud

Ad fraud is a significant concern for mobile marketers, as it can lead to wasted ad spend, decreased ROI, and damage to your brand's reputation. The three most widespread types of mobile fraud are click spamming, click injection, and SDK spoofing.

Click spamming involves generating a massive amount of fake clicks and impressions to be part of the user journeys of those who are supposed to install the app. This type of fraud can be detected by looking for abnormal click-to-install-time (CTIT) distribution, massive numbers of clicks or impressions, unusually high CTR, and unusually low conversion rate.

Click injection occurs when a fraudulent media injects a fake touchpoint immediately after identifying the install on the device but right before the first open. The fraudster will try to attribute the install to its platform by taking credit for the user action and earning the payout. To fight against click injection, you can disable postbacks for any install with CTIT less than five to ten seconds, as it is impossible to click, install, and open the app within this short time.

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SDK spoofing involves generating and sending fake installs and in-app events by hacking the MMP SDK. Fraudsters create a fake app that can be ad-based or legitimate and pass it off as a real one to earn the payout for installs and clicks. To fight against SDK spoofing, one of the ways is to compare user IDs and transaction IDs from internal server data (e.g., ERP, CRM data) and MMP data to detect any inconsistencies.

Through rigorous efforts to prevent and detect fraud, you can protect your app from and ensure that your ad spend is used efficiently. To learn more about the concept of mobile ad fraud, refer to our glossary.

How should I get started?

Optimizing your mobile user acquisition can be challenging, but the three proven strategies can always help you drive growth. And by working with Airbridge, which has both the technology and expertise, you can jump through hoops without any hassle.

Airbridge is an MMP that can provide you with an all-in-one dashboard that includes web and app analytics, deep linking features, real-time marketing analytics, an easy-to-use audience builder, and customizable fraud protection. We make it easier for you to implement all of the three action items.

Interested? Get a free demo from our sales team and find out more!

The content of this blog post is based on the presentation that Roi Nam, CEO of Airbridge, delivered on ‘Performance Day 2023’ event hosted by OMEGA GROUP and Omega Martech on April 21, 2023.

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