Click is not a Click: Measure the True Value of Your app Campaigns - Ben Jeger, Moloco

[Music] [Music] [Music] hello welcome everyone um I realize this is late in the day and I appreciate you showing up regardless um some of you are here because you feel pressured you know me and you want to do me a favor or the opposite you want to tease me by being here and making fun of me uh either way

it's appreciated you could as Jay-Z says you could have be anywhere in the world but you're here with me thank you very much um today we're talking about a click is not a click and um I I think the the the next sentence is much easier said than done uh in today's environment uh where uh there's just different incentives at play out there uh to make the job of a marketer um extremely difficult and what we're going to do today um is hopefully educate you on some of the developments that have led um to this phenomenon um what uh we think we will be doing about it and and give you actionable insights to hopefully um for you uh to be the

thought leader within your organization um Drive change and make sure that you actually deliver value uh to your stakeholders as you're trying to allocate your marketing budgets which has become increasingly difficult okay so briefly about myself I'm Ben uh I've been in this industry uh app performance Market marting space for more than 10 years now um I started off in a company called fiber it was sponsor pay now it's part of digital turbine hello um and later I spent uh almost seven years at abser which is leading MMP and finally I ended up at MCO uh which in case you don't know us in this context um mocco is a user

acquisition performance app performance DSP and what we do is we help um app businesses grow by finding users in a profitable way and before joining malocco I I knew um I I I've I've been in the space for a while and I've seen um really uh good behavior and bad behavior and and adding value to the ecosystem was something that I felt proud of when I was at apps flyer and um it was really important to me to ensure that uh the company that I join next does the same um and I'm pleased that year in I still feel that way about malocco um just some of the um numbers that I think uh they they they seem a bit show offy but I think the the idea is to to say

okay if if we are performance only business then we can only grow in this way if we deliver value to our users and that's why we we feel we have earned the right to to have an opinion on this topic and um talk about it today here with you um and then we have some external validation um from others which is always nice but enough about um um us uh and more importantly about what we're actually here to talk about um and I think you you're all familiar with with some of these problems uh when it comes to just poor ads quality um and and this this problem is so pervasive that it has been picked up by mainstream Medias such as New York Times um um and W Wall Street Journal

and I particularly like that um meme over there which just shows how difficult it has become or at times it is to to exit and add um and and what what I think is uh important to see is that there's several um powers that play So initially what we what we have is uh yeah misleading ad creatives I'm I'm afraid I can't show you the um the videos here because this is a PDF uh and we didn't manage to embed videos but um I I I I believe everyone is experienced an impossible to click x button that magically shrinks or disappears or moves and so on so that's uh just one phenomena that we've uh uh seen over the past um years and then

something that is particularly frustrating at least when I'm um handing a a a game to one of my kids and they're trying to play the game and I see them struggle to actually play the game because they're they're stuck in in this endless loop of advertising end cards exiting uh pressing done then a popup then and so on so it's uh I I think as as users and and and cons end users we've experienced these type of um yeah creative creatives I would say um and then there's uh App Store uh rendering so when you think about probabilistic attribution or MMP attributed um um

installs you will find that when when it comes to iOS uh the there have been some very decent um ux improvements made on the ads format side so SK overlay is one and auto store is another that's um uh a designed a store kit uh Apple Store kit designed ad units um and what happens is on SK overlay you have a small popup po at the at the bottom um like a banner ad and auto stores essentially an interstitial full screen um ad and the challenge um for the MMP measurement side is that any interaction with those ad units aren't registered outside of um ska Network so what what's become common practice is that every time any of these

um ad creatives are being rendered on iOS in the background clicks are being fired to ensure that you can actually measure this in your MMP and that means that actually understanding what was user intent versus what is unavoidable clicks or clicks that are being fired in the background is something that has become increasingly difficult and making marketers um job of allocating budgets uh ever more challenging now when we look at uh the history of this uh we we spoke about I showed you some of these um creatives nicely marketing uh Team

nicely called it the fat thumb era um from 2017 up until 2021 and and I and I don't so we we see ctr's clickthrough rates steadily increasing um and I don't want to say everything is due to uh misleading creatives that's definitely played a role here but obviously also marketers are getting better and improving and um um so so there's there's an element of just clicker rates genuinely um increasing because the creatives are getting better and then there's also these misleading creatives that are um leading to it and then with the release of iOS uh 14.5 and the ATT app tracking transparency framework um being enforced we have click through rates shooting up through the roof and for the reason that I just described because uh um Markus has

wanted to ensure that they can still measure uh on the MMP side and that's why we call this a click is not necessarily click just in case um anyone was wondering where this uh title comes from now this is bad for everyone in the ecosystem um um and so we spoke about users I spoke about my kids how they struggle to actually experience a game that they want to play uh because they get stuck in Endless Loops um I think for Publishers there is revenue which is uh the positive but it it in my mind it it comes at the expense of user retention and ratings as we see because uh users want to play your game and can't do it

uh struggle so it it it is somewhat shortsighted and then lastly for marketers yes you will see numbers look great but actually you are investing and allocating your dollars in a way that is potentially suboptimal um so if if every everyone if it's bad for everyone how come this is happening that just seems counterintuitive and I think the problem is that we have uh just incentives of various stakeholders that are forcing this kind of behavior and it's it's uh a game theory approach where the race to the

bottom is inevitable in order to survive in this um ecosystem and so for advertisers they want to uh or ad networks they want to um increase the credit that they that they've been allocated um exchanges need to ensure that Revenue goes up and Publishers as we just mentioned earlier ALS also are um addicted to the revenue that has been D um yeah is driven by these ad creatives um and that is uh what is underpinning this movement now it's all doom and gloom and uh not not the most uplifting uh is it Monday yeah not not the most uplifting Monday

afternoon that you thought you would spend with me today uh but there is some hope uh so we um want to share briefly what how we think about this what we do about it and then how you can take action within your organization so for us I think our philosophy when it comes to how we want to build our products it's about visibility and transparency we want to make sure that every single um every single impression every single uh piece of measurement is available to uh our partners um and and we want to give advertisers control and choice of how ads are rendered when a click is being fired um and so on so that they can ensure parity

across um their Media Partners and when it comes to ecosystem Partnerships we are uh pretty uh proud uh that that we are uh part of appies enriched engagement um launch which uh was announced at the at the back end of last year and is being um developed together with with us um and others uh who want to drive transparency and and make sure that um a that that a click that there's not just a view and a click but actually different types of uh touch points are being recognized and are being um made yeah visible to advertisers so that we can uh learn as an industry and make the appropriate budget allocations and

Prov give weights to different touch points and regain control as to what has what was a user intent was was a user intended click and what wasn't um and we're doing this kind of um engagement where we try and educate and engage with the market and make sure that uh marketers know what is going on uh um and um and I think that's big part of what you all can be doing uh to to take control when it comes to new product uh development it's it's about ensuring that we we drive all of what we just said earlier um uh develop tools where where there's control uh give transparency and also provide some measurement if it's not provided um through uh other

parties and what you should be doing um is these three things so uh we'll we'll go into them in a bit more detail but when it comes to reviewing your channels I think it is it is vital for you to ask your Partners when you see something that is too good to be true so if you see clickthrough rates that are north of 70% it's okay to ask hey how do you how do you go about uh firing clicks to the MMP what what is your how what do the what do my creatives look like um and um and just having that dialogue and making

sure that you are uh pushing your partners to give you that transparency and ensuring that there is uh at least if not parity you have understanding what is going on with the ads and your your ad dollars so that's uh number one having th those tough conversations with your partners is is the first and most important thing um you can do secondly incrementality tests is a very good um way to circumvent all of what we just discussed because fortunately when it comes to incrementality tests they are not impacted by what is going on on the clicks arm race because what an incrementality test does it it

basically shows you what would have happened if I wouldn't have ran this ad and in order to do that um you don't need to be concerned with with what's going on on the creative side and the clicks and so on and the here when it comes to incrementality tests there are various ways of going about it when it comes to uh retargeting incrementality is is nowadays quite widespread and fairly easy to do uh but uh incrementality tests on the UA side is more challenging but there are various Partners out there external providers there's also the ability to um build incrementality test plans in house but I think what's most important is

that when you run incrementality test that you run them across your entire portfolio of Partners you use the same methodology so whether it's whether you use a ghost bid approach or a GEOS split approach whatever it is that you're doing you use the same methodology across the board um and then lastly we are here to help so we're not just throwing this out there and sending you out in the wild if you have um questions about how to build um these incrementality tests uh and what measurement approach and how should how does incrementality and your MMP measurement how does that fit together uh what should you inhouse what are the tools out there we are here um to have that discussion and we have much smarter

people than me working at mocco uh who can really help you um Drive Clarity and confidence in your uh measurement and then your um marketing budget allocation and um this is just one more final uh reminder of what we said and have noticed we've we've uh run out of time so I um I appreciate um your patience and I think the most important thing is uh challenge your partners uh Drive be be the a curious person in your organization raise awareness um make sure you're uh whoopsie um your uh CFO will probably very interested in in in these kind of topics when it comes to uh effectively

allocating the your marketing dollars um and um yeah adopt a testing mentality and approach and and and you will be uh rewarded with with growth thank you thank you round of applause thank you so much indeed