OEM Advertising Explained: Busting the Most Common Myths

OEM mostly Asia story. Uh kind of all right. I saw like Xiaomi, I saw Samsung. What what what else was there? Oppo.
Yeah.
Uh OnePlus was there if I'm not mistaken.
OnePlus. Uh yeah, that So, this is also a big misconception uh where OEM is mostly Asia story. Like you said, Samsung, Xiaomi, Oppo, all of them are originating from the Asia market. Like most manufacturing companies right now in the world, uh most of these device manufacturers come from Korea and China. But does this mean that they are only penetrated in the Asia markets? No.
Hi. Welcome to another episode of Tangent ROI 101. I'm your host, Roman from Tangent. And today our guest is Ashwin from Air of. Hi, Ashwin.

Hi, Roman. Nice to connect with you.
Yeah, always a pleasure. Today's topic is OEM, what it is, and what are the most common misconceptions about OEM. Uh Ashwin prepared some slides for us. Uh Ashwin, just go ahead and share your screen and I'll just uh explain the concepts that we prepared.
Sure. I'm very excited to be here. Uh so, just I hope you all can see my screen.
Yeah. So, this is what we did. We collected all of the like common misconceptions or myths about OEM. And we'll try to explain what uh is true and what is not true. Um so, basically, yeah, you will see it in the slides. But I'm getting ahead of

myself. Maybe Ashwin first of all, please introduce yourself who you are and what do you do in A well?
Perfect. Thank you Roman. So hi everyone. My name is Ashwin Shekhar. I am the co-founder of A well and I'm also heading up all the revenue operations at A well. A well at A well, we are an app growth marketing company focused on helping advertisers acquire users via mobile OEM. I personally have been at A well for eight years and we I am involved in all of the advertiser side of the business and we help advertisers scale globally using mobile OEMs. I'm excited to be here and I'm an excited to show you what the misconceptions are and then help hope everybody listening here can take away something on what OEMs can do for you and how you can work with them at scale

and deliver quality.
Sweet. Yeah, here is a goal. I think you can can talk about this.
Yeah, so just to kick off the entire idea when Roman and me had a chat initially was there is a lot of people in this podcast or people sitting in the US who don't know how mobile OEMs operate and why a mobile OEM should be a part of your marketing mix. Today in the goal of this podcast, we hope that we can explain to you certain misconceptions which is there and what I've heard from Roman has heard about and we hope to break those misconceptions and then help you understand why and how you can make mobile OEM a part of your marketing mix for your app growth.
So, we Uh yeah, let let's see what you have next. This is already a

misconception. Uh may maybe let's just talk briefly before we jump in here, what is OEM?
Yeah. So, what is an OEM? An original equipment manufacturer. This means anybody who is manufacturing a smartphone in this case is called an OEM. Uh so, an OEM can be Xiaomi, can be Samsung, can be Oppo, it can even be Apple. Uh so, this is what an OEM is. And at Avow, we focus on working with everybody in the Android ecosystem because it is very fragmented to help advertisers tap into this OEM and entry.
Okay. Okay. And this is where the misconception number one comes. This is like Okay, I have an iPhone. Like most of the people that I know have an iPhone. And therefore, like again, this is a misconception that okay, like all of

those brands, like there are not too many of them and like can those users pay as a legit quality users for my user acquisition campaigns?
Yeah. So, very good question and it's a very So, uh at Avow, also we get this a lot, right? Currently, with our reach, uh with our partnerships with all of these OEMs here. I'm sure you've seen all of these brands and outside Apple, these constitute 100% of the uh Android ecosystem. So, what we do at Avow is with our current reach, we are able to reach around 1.85 billion daily active users. This means across the globe we are able to reach the users and we drive around 10 million monthly installs. So, uh when you when this misconception of hey OEMs are too small,

uh it could be stemming from the fact that if for example an advertiser or an any particular publisher wants to work in one particular market, then it could be because there is every market has a different market mix of uh smartphone smartphone manufacturers and each one has a different market share. Right? For example, if you take Germany, Germany's got Samsung, uh Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, and then Apple. So, if you decide to work only with Xiaomi as an example, you will not be able to get the reach here. And this is why it is important that when you work with OEMs, it is good for you to aggregate multiple OEMs. And when you do this, you are able to hit high quality and high scale in terms of reach. Uh so, yes, so there is different ways to play play around with this. It depends on the market you are. It depends on the smartphone penetration of those markets, which brands are penetrating into those markets. And

based on this, we do a consultation and we help you in terms of understanding which smartphone manufacturers you need to tap into a particular geo to achieve scale.
Got you. Got you. Got you. Um yeah, this is all clear. Uh let's jump into the next one. Uh OEM is mostly an Asia story. Uh kind of, right? I saw like Xiaomi, I saw Samsung. What what what else was there? Oppo?
Yeah.
Uh OnePlus was there if I'm not mistaken.
OnePlus. Uh yeah, that So, this is also a big misconception uh where OEM is mostly an Asia story. Like you said, Samsung, Xiaomi, Oppo, all of them are originating from the Asia market. Like most manufacturing companies right now in the world, most of these device manufacturers come from

Korea and China. But does this mean that they are only penetrated in the Asia markets? No. If you look at them, most of them are moving in to global markets. Here you can see the breakdown of um the market share of the OEMs which we work in which we work with and what is the reach. For example, in Europe, we reach 57% of the total smartphone population. So that means um more than one in two people are using a Android smartphone and we are able to tap into them. If you go to Southeast Asia, it's around 87%. LatAm, 55%, Middle East, 70%. So basically what we are trying to say is anyone outside the Apple ecosystem is a potential partner we can tap into, especially with the partnerships we have.
Yeah, yeah. It seems like the only exception is China.

Yes, so China China is also a market where it is dominated by these smartphone manufacturers. Unfortunately at AWA, we don't tackle China as a business because it is just a very different beast and you need to be registered as a company in China to be able to run user acquisition campaigns there. China is even more fragmented because they don't have the Google Play ecosystem. So China as a market is very, very fragmented.
Got it. Got it. Uh yeah, yeah. Makes sense here. Let's jump to the next one. Uh OEM advertising is basically just preloads. Yes, this is what I remember from the old days. Uh we would buy basically app installs on the new devices. So, when the user buys a new device, they will they will have the uh my app preinstalled on it.
Yes.

Is that
Yes.
still true? Of course, you you're going to change my mind now, but this is what I remember.
So, what you're talking about is something called a factory preload, right? And this was the traditional way of running uh for the OEMs when they started off to do monetization. Basically, you would sign if you're an advertiser who was a global advertiser, you would sign a deal with one of the big OEMs, and you would be preinstalled in the factory itself uh with your particular app, and you would the user would have no choice when you open the phone to see your app on the screen.
Yes.
But over the years, like I said, here the concept is to break the misconceptions. Over the years, this has changed a lot. What does this mean? The OEMs or these device manufacturers are have been like, "Wait a minute. We are sitting on a ton of data. We know a lot about the user, and we can encourage discoverability of

for advertisers using multiple methods. Right? If you look at it, the four major gambits into which the mobile device manufacturers, and most all of them, for example, Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, Samsung, all of them have gone into these uh four pillars to try and encourage user discoverability and to monetize their native inventory. The first one is dynamic preloads. Uh dynamic preloads, like you said, is a bit different from the older version of the preloads where when the factory where you didn't have a choice, here when you do uh, set up a phone, for example, when you are doing an out-of-box experience, they will we have the opportunity, for example, if Roman is setting up his phone, we have the opportunity of providing you with apps which you would be interested in to download right now. Uh, why this would work uh, is um,

it is a very scalable way to get to new users very quickly. The other one is display ads. Now, what does this mean? Display ads are basically anywhere within the native ecosystem. For example, the minus one screen. When you open the default browser, when you open the music player, or you open a video player, we have the capability of natively showing placements where the user can discover new apps, also. And then there is the branding. Yes.
Sorry, what's a minus one screen?
So, on an Android for example, on your on your Apple phone, when you go if you want to see all your widgets and your snapshot of what your day looks like, on an Android screen when you go left from the home screen, if you go left, you have a snapshot, which is called the minus one, which gives you a recap of your day, what your day looks like, what is the calendar, what are the

upcoming events, and so on. In these cases, we have capabilities of uh, showing advertise showing apps to users who have higher propensity to uh, discover these apps. Right? Let's say, if for example, on a display ad in my minus one screen, I know I have to go for a meeting somewhere, and it is booked. Uh, at this point, showing an app for a user who doesn't have an Uber is a very good way to say targeting. We will come to targeting later on, but this is where the OEMs and the device manufacturers are betting on on being and encouraging use apps to be discovered by users at the right time using seamless formats which don't look very uh intrusive.
Got you.
This is the display ads.
All right.
Uh the third one is the alternative app stores. Like you Like I said, um if you

look at the uh iOS ecosystem, there is only one app store and there is heavy competition. Uh what Android developers and what Android is doing and right now the device manufacturers are building their own app stores. What does this mean? There is less competition. It's easier for your app to be It's easier for your app to be featured there and it is easier for users who are using the default app store to discover your apps. It also breaks out from the clutter and gives you much higher visibility than when you are on the Google Play Store and so on.
Got you. Uh do we have a branding? I think we have branding left, right?
Yes, branding is also something which is very new to the OEM ecosystem where we can't target users based on the right timing and for brands to tell a story, uh we are able to use device manufacturers inventory to tell the

story here.
Got it. Uh any recommendations of when and what to use? So, branding okay for enterprise and those like big guys?
good question. So, let's jump to the branding part of it, right? Uh Yes, uh so most of the time advertisers we work with have been like, "Hey, most of my um knowledge on the OEMs has been around performance and so on. And this has been the case more or more or less uh where most of the OEMs when they built out their ad platforms was mostly to drive app installs and encourage discoverability. However, branding is something which the OEMs are now pouring more heavily into because they've realized, "Hey, for a brand to tell a story, you need to be able to dis- uh engage with the user at multiple points of time. So, now what we are doing with

the mobile OEMs is we have the capability of showing our ads or for a brand to engage you uh with the user in a lock screen. For example, when you're unlocking your phone, uh we can show an ad of a particular brand. Uh we can show a splash interstitial. We can also show a top banner ad when you open a particular alternative app store. A very good example here I can tell you of how we can use branding to leverage is um uh very recently when we had a a company doing a rebrand, right? Which was uh doing a rebrand of their entire brand image and brand logo. Uh we leveraged brand campaigns wherein we were able to show on user devices in the lock screen that switch of a brand from one brand logo to one brand identity. And this was shown in lock screens across the across the particular

geo. And this increased awareness of what a brand was changing through and why the transition was happening and so on. So, uh it is a very powerful tool for brand advertisers, not only performance, uh and it gives uh them the ability to touch users or interact with users at multiple times of the day, multiple placements within the device ecosystem in a way very native and non-intrusive way.
I I I like this example of like rebranding of for enterprise companies.
Yes.
Um let's go further and see the use cases for smaller guys, too. Exactly. So, you you presented like four types of ads. Um let's talk about like when should I use

each. Branding is clear, but what about the other three?
Okay. So, this is another question where an advertiser comes to me and says like, "Hey, the OEMs have so many products. What do I use?" Uh it comes down to where in the life cycle of your brand story or your app growth you are in, right? To give you an example, um if you are launching a brand new app and so on, one thing which we always encourage app developers is while you are on the Google Play Store, like I said, the Google Play Store is very crowded. It is important to be on the alternative app stores also because we see considerable number of users use the default app store or default stores on phones itself. And what we can enable with you them is enable app store featuring. We can get you featured on particular

app stores. When you launch a new product, we can get you visibility on new devices and so on. And this is a way to break out from clutter on a Google Play Google Play Store or an Apple Store when there are so many comp so many competitors there. Right? This is if you're a new app going to launch into a particular market.
Awesome. I There is so so so much legwork if you're doing alternative stores like to upload and then to update like in all of the 20 stores where I uploaded it.
So, again, this is another misconception which we we face a lot. A lot of advertisers come back to us saying, "Hey, we want to be only on one particular store. We don't want to maintain different builds and we don't want to maintain different app stores and so on. What we did at Aptoide and we work with all of these OEMs is we make it easy. We make your life as easy as possible.

Currently, with most of the OEMs we have a setup where if you upload the app once and we have the ability to say whenever you next time you update the app on Google Play Store, it will pull the same build into all of these alternative app stores. While this is the case for most OEMs, it's definitely not the case for all OEMs. But, it just still opens the ability for an advertiser to once set up an account on a Xiaomi, once set up account on another OEM like Samsung, then when you update it on Google Play Store once and push an update there, it will automatically update on the other OEM stores. So, this will um significantly reduce the number of work and effort you have to put. And also for developers, they still need to maintain just the main iOS build and the Google Play Store.
Okay. Okay. Okay. Exactly what I wanted to ask. Got you. Got you. Got you.
Yeah. Uh the second the second point is, like

I said, if you're a very new app, then store discoverability is a very good place to start. The other one is for example, if you're an app which is in growth stage and you're looking at more you have a tighter wallet and you're looking at more down funnel events. You want to see hey what my LTV is like and so on. Then we would recommend display where we can target users based on what apps they have. We can target users based on what kind of time they spend on a particular app. And this is where the display comes in, right? Display is a little more pricey than stored and so on. But the the quality is being driven by us in terms of optimizing and showing users the most relevant ads. The one which is for the most efficient and for high scale and at a lower cost is the dynamic preloads. Now, good example which I say all the time is how uh for gaming companies this works really well. Right? Uh let's say you are playing a match

three game and you're setting up a phone for the first time. Uh for any particular user of a match three game, once you get hooked onto a game you're not going to change your game even if you see ads on this. So for these particular users uh and for casual games start getting these users very early when they set up a device is very important. Right? Right now I'm on a uh once I'm hooked onto a match three I'm not going to change. So we see a lot of uh app developers and game developers trying to attract first time users by using dynamic preload. And dynamic preload gives you the ability to do a lot of scale uh very quickly and achieve uh let you be one of the first apps on those devices where the user can discover you uh and then uh convert into a long-term user.

Got you.
So so there is a mix of different categories. We help you understand if you if you come to us and an advertiser comes to us, the first question is like we ask them, "What is your goal? Is it scale? Is it growth? Is it quality? Is it awareness?" And so on. And based on this, we help build a media plan on the different products we have for each OEM.
Got it. Got it. Got it. Cool. Let's go to the next misconception. OEM inventory does not offer real targeting. Yeah, kind of like I can choose a brand, maybe country, where it's distributed. Is it it?
Not really. The OEMs have come a long way, right? They can do almost all the basic targeting like you said, country, geo,

socio-demographic, and so on. And all of this is done with deterministic data. But what is most interesting for us and what drives performance mostly for us is with the OEMs are the three ones which are highlighted. And using them in combination is a very very strong tool for display ads. First is appographic. Appographic is the ability for us to target users based on what apps they have installed on their phone. Right? For example, Roman, if you are an avid movie buff and let's say you have Netflix on your phone, I can show you another streaming app as an example, Amazon Prime, if you don't have If you have Netflix and don't have Amazon Prime. And this appographic is the ability for us to target users using what apps they have on the phone. And if you tie that into user behavior based on uh who has opened a particular

app on them in the last 7 days, or who has opened this particular who is interested in this particular category in the last 7 days, gives us a very strong capability of driving higher intent to the right users and showing them the right ads at the right time. With the World Cup coming up, for example, with we're running a lot of betting campaigns and so on, and we are able to target users, for example, anybody who's using DAZN uh and has a live score app and a scoring app. Uh we know the propensity for them uh is sports, then we are able to show other sports-related campaigns, show brand campaigns for sports, and so on, to engage with those users.
Okay, that's uh appographic. What about the user behavior, and you also highlight time spent on app category?
Yes.

Uh okay, so it's like ideally you can buy all three of them, right?
Exactly. Exactly, you you can use one of each other, but ideally you want to combine all three to reach the right user at the right time at the right point.
Mhm. Got it. Okay, this is clear. Uh OEM campaigns can't be can't be reliably tracked. Think just because you are on uh our podcast Tangle MMP. Uh but this can't be true. Like with Tangle, you can measure the performance of uh Aevo like any other channel, but maybe you can
Exactly. I think OEMs have now become very mainstream, right? Most of the advertisers we talk

to work with one work with some OEM aggregator or OEM directly now. And thanks to our partnership with Tengine, right now we are integrated with all the major OEMs with Tengine for you for any advertiser using Tengine to be able to track any OEM advertising activity similar to what you do on Facebook, Google, or use Tengine as your sole single source of truth for tracking multiple campaigns. So, it's pretty much set up already for advertisers who want to tap into this.
[snorts]
Yeah, sure. Yeah, makes a lot of sense. Just like for us it's just another channel, same for our users.
Yes.
Um and working with OEMs is complicated and getting started is hard. Um well, based on what you presented so far, I guess you guys are taking care of the hard part of like negotiations and

the integrations with all the brands.
Yes. Uh so, um it is true that getting started with some of the OEMs are hard because again, like I said, if you if an advertiser chooses to go directly with any OEM, they are more than welcome to do so, but this comes with the hard part, right? Where you need to have paperwork to sign with each of these different 13 OEMs. You don't You need to put a considerable amount of budget for each of these OEMs, and you don't know how it's going to work. And this is where I think Avow has stepped in. At we were at there at the right time at the right place. When we started working with the OEMs, we started aggregating all of the OEMs. So, when an advertiser works with us, uh we act as a one-stop solution and we aggregate all of the OEMs. They just sign one paperwork with us. Um and you we have a single point of contact and we help you scale on all of these partners.

Like I said uh in the beginning, right? There is no one-size-fits-all or one OEM-fits-all for any particular thing. So, you need to have a mix of OEMs for different parts of your campaign, different targeting capabilities, and mix of different products. And getting learning on this can be very quick can be very difficult. Uh a for an advertiser to start off and go from zero to 100 uh with each OEM uh is going to take time, money, and effort. Whereas, if you start working with about or you work with any other OEM aggregator, they know already what works for similar campaigns, what kind of advertisers, what kind of channel to use, what kind of marketing mix is let's say if you wanted to advertise in Brazil, then if you set up a particular OEM which doesn't have market share in Brazil, you're basically wasting time, right? So, you need to say, "Hey, if I want to do a LATAM campaign and if I

want to do a Europe campaign, the mix of OEMs is very different, the products are the very different." And getting to know all of this can take a lot of time and effort. Um and for small nimble teams and even bigger companies, uh they just don't want to want to do this. And this is why we offer this as a solution. And for us currently, we work with more than 150 advertisers globally across different verticals. So, if you look at our portfolio, it is everyone from a gaming advertiser uh to banking, fintech, uh travel, anyone in the M-commerce space. Uh well, and you see a lot of big names here. Even the super big companies are hesitant to work with each of these OEMs directly and prefer to have one expert who's there to help them navigate through this and help them go through and identify placements and help them

scale um across the board.
Nice. Uh I think you I think that's the last of slides, right? The next one is how we can get in touch with you maybe. Uh please cover this. How do people can learn more about Avow and reach out to you personally?
Anybody who wants to reach out to us can just Google Avow or reach out to me. You can find me on LinkedIn. You can also go to our website or just send us an email [email protected] and we will be in touch with you. Uh we truly believe that mobile OEMs are important for any advertiser who's seriously looking to scale because search and social can only take you so much. There are also networks which can also take you so much. Uh and I hope you understood that with mobile OEMs in today's session that they have the scale, they have the targeting capability, they are fraud free, and

they have the capability of driving actual users to your app.
Uh thanks a lot, Ashwin. We will leave all of those links and the description of this video. If you have any questions to Ashwin, please leave them in the comments. We'll ask him to reply. Also, give us a like if you like this video. Leave the comments, too. Um this is what I use when I determine what uh next video should should be. I'm sure there are plenty topics on the OEM that we can talk about. Uh so, if we get a positive response, then we'll do another one. Um then again, thanks so much, Ashwin, for preparing all the material. I've learned a lot a lot, and it was a pleasure hosting you here.
Thank you, Roman. It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much. Have a nice day. Bye.
Cheers.