Panel: Full-Funnel Growth for Mobile Apps: From Install to Lifetime Value.

Okay. So, a different tact here. Um, looking exactly at that, you know, some of the signals, some of the things we're not thinking about, but if we worked them into fullfunnel growth, well, guess what? it would be a win because we're understanding what people are telling us and showing us at the beginning of the journey taking it all the way through to power that. So just a show of hands um anybody out there if you've been acquiring users and you're thinking well you know I know what brought the user in but I'm not sure if it ultimately converted or contributed to LTV or even churn or anything like that. You're understanding how you're getting them in, not understanding how you're keeping

them or losing them. Nobody. Good. Then we are very well set for this panel because that's what we're going to talk about. Hey, I couldn't hope for a better segue. I mean, did I'll have to send the check. Um, so on that note, let's do exactly that. Just get this out of the way here. Uh, and introduce my panel. One second. There. I wanted to have a wireless mic, [laughter] but they didn't give me one. So, this is like multitasking. That's why I did it with
Exactly. Oh, that's a good idea. There you go.
There you go. Of course.
All right. So, let's go down the line here. Um, I'll start at the end and come over because we don't have a screen that shows us. Uh, Suma Amrite, senior develop developer relations lead at audio mob. So you're focused on retention, safe monetization and in particular how audio carries across the funnel and into conversion. And we have itai Cohen, chief strategy officer at digital turbine. And you're going to

tell us about the full stack view across distribution monetization and alternative growth paths which I think are very intriguing in our fragmented ecosystem. Felix Felix Braberg modization veteran expert. I'm not I can't say OG because you're not they're not that but you have the feeling of it. [laughter]
Thanks.
You're you're like a youngtimer if you want to call it that. Um host of Two and a Half Gamers you've overseen 500 plus million in ad revenue and working hands-on. So we're going to hear that across the growth cycle. and Hannah Parvas who of course Hannah founder of Aperture whom we know know from before because you stepped in also to moderate earlier and yes one of the sharpest voices out there and activation and very into customer psychology so you're in your element understanding that as a growth lever so here we are this is the panel but we talk about fullfunnel growth full disclosure I just wrote a

playbook about it and I will share that with you if you come to me afterwards and it'll be out there soon So, we talk about it, we define it, talk about a funnel, a loop, um, an ongoing loop, a flywheel it, let's start there, right? Because it isn't the marketing funnel. We're clear on that. But how should publishers and our audience here, marketers be thinking about fullfunnel growth today given that um, it also includes life cycle marketing? Very much.
Yeah. So I think um it is an evolving space for app developers because historically it's been very acquisition focused
and then we kind of made progress down the line. I get the users in and I have some sort of usually historically it's been a predefined monetization strategy ads inapp purchase or both and I think there are just more and more tools coming into the market nowadays that make the acquisition process more diverse but then also the way that you onboard with the firsttime user

experience through how you engage through live ops optimization and then how you monetize across ads inapp purchase and now that is even becoming increasingly fragmented and complicated with alternative app stores or or direct to consumer uh titles which with just which uh just uh changes the math on that whole operation. uh so I think yes there are more more tools at the at the disposal of app developers but at the same time there's more complexity so bigger opportunity more complexity more to deal with and I think that's what a lot of people here in the room want to kind of exchange thoughts about is is how do we navigate that complexity
absolutely and that of course makes all the more opportunity for growth consultancies and agencies like yours Hannah I mean it's interesting how many people understand there's something wrong but just don't quite get it right about what's wrong. You know, they think they have a retention problem. It turns out to be something very very different.

Um what is that? What is the cost of just not understanding that not all installs are equal?
I mean the cost of that can be absolutely massive. firstly so over and over again and I think that there has been and there continues to be
just a misunderstanding of what retention is you know we've probably all in this room heard of like the our pirate metrics right but people tend to forget about activation
and I have a lot of companies or founders or teams coming to me and saying oh yeah you we're really acquiring so many installs but we're not retaining any of them like our retention you know it's it's just not working and they think that they have this retention problem, you know, oh, people aren't staying or or day 90 isn't good, you know, or they're looking after one year. I actually had one uh when I was in house about four or five years ago, one of my the one of the founders of the company wrote on a whiteboard, you know,

every single day and what the drop off of every single day was. And he was like, "Look, there's a problem at day 30." And I was like, "No, there's a problem on day zero." [snorts] And that is what we're missing a lot of the times. we're not uh adequately activating our users. So, they're not actually getting to that point of success where they're really experiencing real value. Like we think about, you know, Got just had on screen before, like M met is 10 friends in seven days. And we we we aren't really doing that for our for our products a lot of the time. and looking at what is that combination of events or that core action that someone needs to do x amount of times to experience true value uh and then stick around inside my product.
What about you, Felix? You're seeing that similarly, but in admon you're getting people into the top of the funnel, but you're not really truly understanding why you're acquiring them.
Yeah. I mean that's probably one of the biggest insights that uh a lot of gaming companies realized a couple of years ago that actually admon tool for

segmentation because if you group that with the user acquisition campaign type also the value that you're acquiring these users that that actually tells quite a lot of about the users. So if you actually combine that with your inapp or in-game metrics you actually know a lot about these users when they first enter the app which means you as an app developer can actually change what you're showing to the users. Some users that come in at a low value from let's say an ad row campaign that come in at an ecpm value of $5, they're not going to subscribe. So why not show them interstitial ads for example, which means you can also open up more UA campaigns and get more scale. So for me, Admon is actually more of a segmentation tool than anything else, which allows you to tap into a lot more scale that otherwise wouldn't be able to. And it's weird to me because I started in the gaming side, but now half of my clients are app clients and they're starting to realize this. And it's a very powerful realization when you actually do realize

it
because there are signals at that. You know, I'm I'm hearing also a lot of marketers telling me that they're going to do more to ingest those signals. you're understanding at a very very basic level if someone is watching an ad and then coming into your app it's like okay well that they're accustomed to apps uh to ads rather AP no they're want to purchase we'll do something different but even right there the segmentation starts but the experience also starts there and you know oftent times the ad monetization approach is interruptive now with audio mob it's something very very different you're not blocking the attention you're trying an in an effort to enhance it. How does that look downstream?
So down down downstream um we find that a lot of brands in the bottom of the funnel even as well and they convert and actually get a lot of the users because a lot of the prior work was done very much at the top of the funnel, the brand awareness through let's say video ads. Um an audio ad essentially it's less intrusive but it's not meant to be

replacing something like a video ad. It's just telling developers to tone down the frequency a bit for video ads. don't crank it up to the highest level to the point where you're trying to squeeze as much value out of your users as possible and then you end up having a problem with LTV and then you wonder why do I have a problem with LTV? It's because you're not using the data to actually create an healthy balance in your ecosystem essentially.
Well, that's it. You know, it's about having that balance and we're hearing now this is a layer of intelligence. You know, the ads activation and the enha the engagement is telling us something. Um, you experiment a lot, Hannah, you know, not just [laughter] not just in life, but in in creatives, uh, you know, and you look and you lean into customer psychology for this. I mean, maybe you can tell us a little bit more about how this should look in a flow because you're going from ad to onboarding to to product decisions.
Absolutely. Yes. And as you say, everything that we do starts with customer psychology first and foremost.

So we really want to start with that deep and rich understanding of the of of the customer psychology of the jobs to be done and we we that that framework that well that theoretical framework underpins everything that we do at Aperture. So we start with understanding you know what are they actually hiring our product for and then we start to separate all of those different things that they're using us for into themes and we use those then to start experimenting on our ads. So that helps us identify different creative directions that we can go in or different kind of avenues that we want to follow and then everything goes from there. You know you your product can be used in many different ways but ultimately people are only hiring it for so many different things for a finite number of different things but the way in which you can execute that and communicate that in you know different types of static designs or videos or different faces in your videos is is basically infinite. And then you can take the things that are the winners there and then start thinking about, okay, what's coming next on my custom product page? How am I optimizing my CTI? How am I optimizing my install flow

after that? You know, you can link your custom product page to a dedicated flow inside your app now, like like back in the good old days again. And so, you know, you want to just take these and work through them one by one until you can just really optimize all of those journeys
and also architect those multiple journeys.
Exactly. Felix in your work um you know it's telling you a lot in the segmentation but how are you applying it or how can marketers publishers apply that you know you're hearing something in the first instance and it's really powerful if you can bring that through as Hannah is saying you know bring it through the flow and architect that in admon what does that look like
yeah uh good question so a lot of times I work with app developers or game developers and they like I don't know anything about my users But then I usually say you know who does Google they know a lot about the users applovin they know a lot about your users digital turbine they know a lot about your users and essentially what I talked about

earlier right the the price at which you acquire an impression says a lot about the historic data what that user has done before for example a user that has a $1,000 eCPM you can be quite sure that they've actually made purchases before right so usually what's the most efficient way of doing or working with this if you want to use it as a segmentation tool, you bucket eCPMs on all your users and you look at the historic conversion rates or hours to conversions in apps or hours to subscription. And then what you do from that is essentially, oh, this group, the $80 to $100 CCPM group, tends to convert after an average 80 hours.
Mhm.
If they don't convert, do you want to use an offer wall to extract more economic value from these users? Do you want to show more ads or less ads? Or if they're really valuable, then you know that flag it and maybe you want them to get them to convert them to an offer, right? But the beautiful thing with this as well, if you look at it like that, you also know roughly what price point

your users actually convert at, which means you can start doing segmentation on pricing. So if you know a $50 user typically converts at a subscription rate of $4.99, then that's the first offer you should show them.
Yes.
Yeah. so logical but also so complex. I mean we spoke about it's it's fascinating how many people aren't really looking at the full context of this and now it's going to become more complex because you know we talked about the distribution matters. So you know in your case Aai it's also about context you know ondevice of course then we've got alternative environments um different app ecosystems that are evolving you know that change intent as we move downstream to monetization I mean how how does that you know how does that change going downstream
so I think I think first and foremost um there is a unifying theme across all of it which Felix was pointing to which is

segmentation and how you treat groups of users differently. It now then depends on what is the strategy for that individual app developer for that business that will inform what segmentation could mean. Right? So if I have a subscription-based app, I'm going to have a completely different strategy and downstream impact of that strategy and choices that I will be making compared to a hybrid monetized app or an ads monetized app etc. I think that what that means in terms of alternative app ecosystem is just okay there are now additional avenues for optimization which basically all they do is they change the math on inapp purchase right so the rev share is different and therefore if the rev share is different now I can start making as a developer I can start making different choices that choice can start all the way upstream which version of my app I want the user to end up in right and they will there will be scale to profitability trade-offs around that choice But then also downstream, how can I better monetize certain users within that environment? My price point for

subscriptions are going to be different because I can roll over some of the discount of of getting better economics on that inapp purchase down to the user. So just as a conceptual example, if I did not scale my app in um emerging markets because the purchasing power in that market doesn't allow the users to pay the my original price point if I use an alternative version of my app where I keep more money in my pocket, can I change the price point in that market and now my app can scale? Right? So that's an example of how alternative app versions can open up new opportunities for scale where the traditional model failed. But at the end of the day, the overarching theme, it's just another lever for segmentation and optimization, which is more complicated, but really interesting opportunities. And Felix made a really interesting observation of developers actually coming to him saying, "I don't know my users. I don't have the data." There is a lot of data there. It just depends on how you think about it. And we're starting to reframe that because if we reframe it and use

that then we can shape what fullfunnel growth is about which is you know personalization back again but different in that it's a different journey but it's also a different ad journey and I'm talking to so many marketers who are like you know we're going to do sort of live ops approach to ads because the ad is an experience and the ad experience and the app experience they also come together and that brings me to do Suma as well because we're talking about extending LTV and fueling fullfunnel growth. You know, we want to make certain we're monetizing people in a way that we have an experience. So, you're introducing audio. What does that change overall in the response to monetization over time? Do you have some examples or some ideas of the impact? Um I I would definitely say for our biggest clients, our top publishers for example, um a lot of them are finding that they can generate six figures per month or seven figures annually as well just from audio ads, which you about 5 years ago, they

would think, well, that's impossible. But we're seeing the numbers grow because developers are starting to take us more seriously in terms of we're the product experts in this field. We've pioneered a new field that and a new revenue stream essentially that basically did not exist. So what we're finding is that developers are not burning out their users and in fact they're finding ways to actually increase the frequency with different AB tests. Um and looking at the data as well.
We our audio ad SDK for example starts caching ads immediately as soon as the app initializes. And what we're finding is that there's really low hanging fruit that you can look at the render rate, for example, the amount of assigned ads to the amount of displayed ads. And then you can ask the developers, hey, could you maybe try AB testing instead of one ad every four levels, one ad every two levels, and see with that bucket of users if it actually turns them or burns them. We found from our experience that it does not do anything to them because it's the user does not have to stare at

their screen. So, and just wait for the ad to complete essentially. they can continue doing whatever it is that they want to do. But that doesn't mean that audio ads is the only answer. Like going back to my earlier point as well, um we find developers as well that find value in video ads too as well because obviously the CPMs are higher. And we're not asking you to not use that.
We're just asking you to use the data to essentially make a more uh datadriven strategy going forward. Like Felix was saying, a lot of his app developers, they don't know what what their users how their users think, how they operate. And the best way to do that in my opinion is AV test. Give it a shot. Give give us a small subset of your users. Try it with them. If it work, if it works out, great. If not, there's lessons in that too as well.
So that's Did you want to add something or
Oh, no.
Okay. Um, so it's very much about that mix, that balance. And then that becomes interesting when I think of someone like you, Hannah. You're talking to people and they're like, "Yeah, I think I have a problem, but I'm not quite certain where it is or where it was." And sometimes it breaks down in the ad

experience. I mean, is there a sign to you when you're talking with your um clients, you know, that this is where the ad experience broke down? This is the mismatch. This is impacting the campaign,
the ad experience inside the app.
Yeah,
I don't work with apps that monetize through ads. So, I'll pass that one to Felix. I mean, subscriptions.
You're No. Well, it could be the same because it's it's a signal that the ad experience is a mismatch with the audience or the campaign objective.
If I'm thinking about
if you're thinking about
if I'm thinking about I'm choiring I'm acquiring through ads and then I'm bringing someone in. Absolutely. I mean one of the things that we were speaking about earlier um together was that we we're working with one app which is a recipe app at the moment. Um I mean we've scaled their spend dramatically and we've got a lot of learnings on their creatives and one of the things that we have seen is that obviously uh across all accounts but with this one specifically different types of creatives and different messaging inside the creatives has led to vastly

different trial conversion rates. So for this one app specifically there's this one ad that is driving very great cost per installs, great cost per trials and it's uh it's an ad that's about snacks. So the ad itself has someone like snapping one of the snacks in front of the camera to begin with. And what we identified was that people who are coming through from that ad are taking out a trial at a similar rate, installing at a similar rate. But then what they were doing was going on and searching for snacks inside the app. And people who searched for snacks inside the app converted at half the rate from trial to paying as people who didn't search for snacks inside the app. So we turned off that ad basically because it was getting loads of spend because we were optimizing for activated trial and then we identified okay our other creatives that where people are searching for meal planning or things that are happening that aren't snackrelated. So you know a like family like if I'm a parent and I'm cooking or even making something simple like chicken and rice and that's what they're

searching for those people were converting extremely well. you know, we're on day 0 three to one LTV to CAC, you know, from some of these ads and that's pretty nice. Um, so what we want to do is look for then, okay, what are the signals that we can see inside the app that we can identify? Okay, these are some of the creatives that we can that we can turn off or that we can scale as a part of that. Um, so it is all connected. It all has to work holistically together. And there there's no other way around it really
because you make the point if the ad is that way, that's what you're bringing in. And if that isn't what the product is really focused on, then it's not going to convert. You're not going to see those subscriptions. Ex. And and and the app does actually have a lot of material inside it about snacks actually, like healthy snacks, how to bulk create healthy snacks. But people don't want to pay for a subscription for that specifically. They want to pay for the subscription so that they can take off the mental labor of their meal planning and their cooking and their shopping lists and things like that more

than just I'm making some chocolate date bars, you know, um which might not which people might not want to spend like4 a month a year on.
Okay. So, skipping ahead a little bit because I'm looking also at the time. Um it I did want to touch back though on one thing that you said because we were talking about not just being um balanced, not just formats, but you know, advertiser mix. So what happens when apps rely too heavily on aggressive performance ads because that's where we came from, but that's where we need to move on from as well.
Yeah, absolutely. I think um we in general often have to just come to terms with the reality that we have usually pretty small teams working on these things. So they're looking for straightforward repeatable actions that they can take and so they choose fairly simplistic metrics to optimize towards and when they optimize towards higher CPMs in a very simplistic manner they often invite repetitive aggressive ad

experiences into the app and yes that increases eCPMs in many cases because conversions are high but if you're not looking at churn at the same time that you're not looking at the full extent of the math equation and so one approach that we've taken and I think you know very much through the lens of making sure that the ultimate goal is to increase the monetization of the app without sacrificing the user experience. And the churn is to bring in both, you know, these user acquisition ads that can tend to be, you know, very performant but also aggressive, but balance that experience with premium brand ads and ads from other types of advertisers that don't ne necessarily seek that immediate action. And that creates this more balanced experience. And what we've seen is that that really played in in favor of of long-term retention. And it's always cheaper to keep the user around than to try and re-engage them, reactivate them, or acquire them on a brand new app.
And also to continue with that, you know, you told me in uh prep we were talking about cross promo ads as having

a space in there as well that I found intriguing because you're thinking performance. You're not thinking about what happens when you prioritize your own ads. So that's an another element that I think is is an interesting strategy for developers to explore when they have a portfolio of apps because a lot of times operationally those are different studios or different teams within the developers you know uh operation but at the same time it's again much better for the developer to look at the user holistically and say if the user is about to turn and you can see that in the engagement level you can see day-to-day signals giving you the indication that the user is about to stop using your first game or your first app, can I start prioritizing house ads to cross-promote them to a different app in my portfolio and then again look at the user retention not through the lens of a single app but actually from the publisher lens from the portfolio point of view. We've worked with certain developers that have implemented that strategy very successfully. you know, hyper casual or hybrid casual is a prime

example of that just because those are uh you know, games that turn to have a pretty short shelf life, but they're also coming up with new titles all the time. And they've just taken cross promotion as a primary retention strategy for the studio. So, let's bring this home. What we're basically saying is ad signals inform you to architect the fullfunnel growth strategy that's right for your app, that's right for your audience. um going to ask some rapidfire questions to wrap us up, but uh I'll start with you Hannah. Okay. Taking a look at the whole journey. Um where do you see the biggest opportunity to focus first? The biggest opportunity to focus first is around your ads. Like it's very low lift for you to to to get things running and getting your initial getting all of your initial learnings through. But outside of ads, then where you should be focusing on nailing is your activation. understanding what that means for you as a business and then really pushing that up and getting as many people as

possible to activate so that you can monetize better so that you can retain better.
Okay, Felix, for you it's about signals as well. What's the signal that tells you or should tell them that they are working on the right growth lever?
Oh, that it can increase the overall LTV of a user. Right. Yeah. Uh but basically kind of to hark on what I talked about before is that the sooner you realize that ads is actually a direct insight into the user value uh you can start actually using that right and the best thing to figure out about this is you can actually read this data from cached ad so you don't even need to show the ads for it right so if you're on level play or max you can actually just do it and cash ad so you don't even show need to show it
all right um quick question for you then itchai um one decision around segmentation that teams should arrive at based on how the users arrive.
I think uh a lot of it has to do with

Hannah's point around activation based on the type of creative and the type of channel and which might entail different level of intent or a different type of hook that attracted the user that has to immediately translate to how you activate. So I think that's the most direct and most pragmatic connection that that you can make.
Okay. And Suma, lastly, one monetization change or one overall change in the ad experience to extend LTV without increasing UA spend.
Um, definitely diversify your users as well. People might think that there's not much value in acquiring users and geos that are considered maybe tier two or tier three. Um the reality is that a lot of them can provide a lot of early insight in data that can help you understand how to monetize in tier one geos as well or in areas where you want to focus on um gaining true incremental revenue as

well.
Excellent. Well, I'm sure we're all around for the rest of the day and such an expert panel with really opinions and I encourage you to meet up with them afterwards and yes, thank you so much for sharing your insights for our panel. Thank you.
Thank you, Peggy.
Thank you. [applause]
So, I will switch very quickly to my other role. [laughter]