A POST-IDFA GUIDE TO USER ACQUISITION FOR MOBILE GAMES

1. What is user acquisition?

User acquisition is the process of acquiring new users to all mobile-based platforms such as games, applications, and websites, using various marketing channels and different techniques.

2. What Is user acquisition for mobile gaming?

User acquisition for mobile games is the process of gaining new players to mobile games by using various marketing channels and different techniques.

3. How does user acquisition work for mobile gaming?

Before Skadnetwork, User Acquisition consisted of specific steps for mobile games. You’ve created your game; your first step was identifying your target audience and choosing the best marketing channel. With MMP (Mobile measurement partner), you could track every action taken by each user and calculate the user’s exact LTV. Then if luck in your side, here you are on the list.

However, Apple fundamentally changed user acquisition with iOS 14.5. Now, targeting is hard, and there is no such thing as retargeting anymore.

One of the biggest challenges for advertisers in the user acquisition process was the lack of data. Therefore the user acquisition process for mobile games has changed drastically with the increasing emphasis on data science and machine learning.

Advertisers need to be data-driven to choose the right marketing channels, measure the efficiency of their investments, and run the right advertising campaigns by generating meaningful insights. In this way, mixed and huge data sets will not look like monsters to your eyes.

AppNava predicts player behavior with machine learning algorithms, allowing you to understand your players more deeply. This way, you can run amazing marketing campaigns for your user acquisition process.

4. How do you optimize user acquisition for mobile games?

We told you advertisers are dealing with a lack of data, it’s hard to target with very limited demographic data, right, so you can analyze your competitors’ audience to get started. This will give you a good idea of ​​who is playing games similar to yours.

For example, if you have an interactive story game, you will find that the user base of most games in this genre is female.

Go ahead and define the basics — gender, location, age range, language, devices, etc.

Investing your acquisition budget in ad networks, app store optimization (ASO), and content marketing is still very important for mobile games.

Acquiring new users can be solved through social advertising and mobile advertising networks. That’s why it’s a good idea to invest your user acquisition budget into these.

Most mobile game app developers run UA campaigns to attract high-impact users by serving in-game ads in other games. Pretty smart, isn’t it?

Also, to optimize user acquisition, you should focus on the quantity and quality of ads without ignoring ASO. It’s a good choice for creating a high-performing video ad that delivers the highest conversion rate.

5. What is the user acquisition process?

The user acquisition process is that companies allocate a budget to achieve long-term profitability and maximum growth with positive Roi, reach their target audience through the right acquisition channels and gain users with the right steps.

6. What are the objectives of user acquisition?

The Purpose of User Acquisition is to increase brand awareness, engagement, conversion, and retention, acquire high-LTV users, enabling your company to achieve maximum growth with long-term profitability and positive ROI.

7. What are the best user acquisition strategies for mobile games?

User acquisition strategy for mobile games consists of two main approaches; paid and organic UA.

Understanding the dynamic, variable, and competitive nature of the mobile game world and making your strategy flexible will be the main step in developing a good user acquisition strategy. It is necessary to use both organic and paid channels correctly.

Research your Key Performance Indicators well, they will help you measure the performance of your UA campaigns; KPIs will show you how successful your campaigns are.

It’s a good idea to look at the number of installs to track more user acquisitions. Then cost-per-install (CPI), cost-per-acquisition (CPA), and customer-acquisition-cost (CAC) metrics are critical to your UA campaign.

So the user installed the game, what next? user retention, session length, LTV, conversion rate, ARPPU, and ARPDAU (ARPDAU helps you understand whether the daily changes you make in your application make your users happy.) these metrics will provide you with very important information about the user you acquire.

For your ads to continue to drive effective traffic for your company, you need to constantly test your ads and monitor the conversion rates they achieve. App developers should calculate a real and effective Return on your Ad Spend (ROAS) and Return on Investment (ROI). Measure your ROI & ROAS right now, and then read on.

While it is still a good strategy to acquire through paid channels, which is the fastest way to acquire users, you need to enable both paid and organic UA in the IDFA-less game world. For example, an e-mail marketing strategy can be applied by receiving e-mails from users who downloaded the game to be able to retarget.

8. What is the purpose of a user acquisition strategy?

The goal of the acquisition is to enable the company to achieve maximum growth with long-term profitability and positive ROI by leveraging paid, owned, and earned media. Also, the goal of the acquisition strategy is to plan the right steps for them.

9. What is customer acquisition cost (CAC)?

CAC is an important performance indicator used in applications or games to determine the cost of acquiring a user.

The ratio of the total sales and marketing costs spent on attracting users and converting them into leads during a given period to the customers you acquire.

Since you can achieve customer acquisition organic and paid, reducing your user acquisition cost is beneficial by focusing on increasing your performance in organic channels to optimize your profits.

The LTV to CAC ratio indicates whether a user is worth more than the money spent acquiring that user. Failure is inevitable when an app’s CAC is higher than its LTV.

10. Why is CAC crucial for mobile gaming companies?

Mobile Gaming companies are getting smarter in making data-driven decisions, and their emphasis on CAC is growing. Measuring CAC helps the gaming company understand whether players are getting a return on their investment.

11. Why do you need a user acquisition strategy for mobile gaming?

Because among all small-medium mobile game studios competing fiercely in today’s market, you cannot expect one to become a successful large-scale mobile game studio with a magic wand.

For your mobile game to exist, it requires players to play it or even just to see it. All UA strategies and the allocated budget are for the game’s survival.

You can acquire players by attracting traffic through organic and paid channels and protect your existing players with these strategies.

12. Types of User Acquisition for Mobile Gaming

There are two types of user acquisition for mobile games: organic and paid. While paid UA for your mobile game is the total of your actions to advertise your game with money, organic UA is the sum of all the channels you use to boost your game’s visibility.

13. What is paid user acquisition?

The paid user acquisition approach involves converting users with paid ads on social media platforms and social networks. Users are shown quick and action-oriented ads, such as downloading the app.

14. What is a paid acquisition channel?

It is to make your company visible to your target audience in a digital environment with methods you use by paying money.

Among Inorganic (Paid) Marketing Channels:

Search ads: Text-based ads on search engines to build brand awareness,

Paid social media ads: Displaying ads or sponsored marketing messages on popular social media platforms,

Affiliate marketing involves directing a product or service to it by sharing it on a platform.

Paid referral marketing: Giving paid referrals to previous loyal customers with offers such as in-game gifts, discounts, and extra lives.

Display ads: It is the most preferred model in the game world. It consists of text-based, image, or video ads that encourage users to download your app and make in-app purchases to existing users.

15. What is organic user acquisition?

Organic user acquisition refers to the process of driving installs without using paid ads. To increase brand visibility and discoverability, attract users’ attention through various channels such as ASO, word-of-mouth, social media, e-mail, and content marketing.

As the first step, one or more channels you think may be best for your brand are selected to increase brand visibility.

Such as ASO, word-of-mouth, social media, e-mail, and content marketing. Then a strict strategy is created to distribute the content you create.

Organic users last longer because they install apps, not because of custom-built ads.

16. What is an organic acquisition channel?

It is to make your company visible to your target audience in the digital environment with your methods.

App store optimization (ASO): Process of increasing an app or game’s visibility in an app store.

Apple App Store Ranking Factors:

• App Name
• App URL
• App Subtitle
• Keyword field
• In-App Purchases
• Rating and Reviews
• Update Cycle
• Downloads and Engagement
• Some Hidden factors

Google Play Store Ranking Factors:

• App title
• Short description
• Long description
• In-app purchase
• Rating and reviews
• Updates
• Android vitals
• Downloads and engagement
• Hidden factors
• App keywords and the fundamentals of app store algorithms

Word-of-mouth: Exceeding people’s expectations allows users to recommend your game, product, or service to others. For this, providing a personalized gaming experience and resolving a pain point is crucial.

Social media marketing: Using the free tools provided by the social network, sharing posts, and responding to customer comments.

E-Mail marketing: It is a chance for retargeting. Personalized e-mails can be prepared to increase your existing users’ value.

17. What are mobile gaming ad networks for user acquisition?

One of the keys to successful user acquisition is choosing the right ad network for your game.

Selecting your ad network based on the KPIs you observe and care about makes sense. For example, if you care about retention, you can choose Google Ads, which ranks first on Android and where you can target users based on location, language, mobile platform, operational system, and interest.

This is fine, but with Skadnetwork, the targeting has become very difficult, and our ad network selections will also favor those that best adapt SKAN. According to the research of AppsFlyer, the order on this subject is as follows;

TikTok for Business: TikTok’s users praise the platform for its highly accurate algorithm. This is good news for the post-ATT era, where monitoring has become increasingly complex. According to TikTok’s data, the top 100 gaming-related hashtags on TikTok receive more than 40 billion video views per month.

Facebook: Facebook is particularly good at retaining hardcore gamers. You can reach your target users more easily thanks to superior targeting options. The Facebook targeting options are location, demographics, interests, behaviors, platform, devices, and connection.

AppLovin: AppLovin’s goal is to provide high-quality app users. It assists in the acquisition of both Android and iOS users.

Google Ads: The Google ad network is a market leader in player retention for almost every type of mobile game. Google supports all major app formats for in-app advertising, including banner ads, interstitials, native ads, and rewarded ads.

Unity Ads: This ad network has had tremendous success in a variety of mobile gaming genres. It ranked first in racing games and second in hyper-casual, action, arcade, and adventure games. One of the most main uses of this network is its ability to target people who are interested in a certain type of game.

IronSource: IronSource is regarded as one of the most cost-effective mobile ad networks for publishers. IronSource has the best retention rates across all gaming categories, including music, sports, adventure, arcade, and simulation games.

Twitter: Advertisers can use Twitter Ads to drive traffic to their apps on Twitter and Twitter channels. This network supports both Android and iOS systems. You may limit your results by type.

Liftoff: Liftoff specializes in CPI and CPA campaigns. This network targets users who will provide your mobile app’s highest return on investment. Android, iOS, and mobile web platforms are all supported on Liftoff.

Snapchat: Snapchat Ads network is for iOS platforms, CPI, and CPC campaigns. Snapchat offers a few other unique formats like filters and lenses for this acquisition platform. It allows targeting younger generations.

Jampp: Jampp is great for reaching new users and increasing post-installation conversions. In its own words, it leverages machine learning, creative optimization, and proprietary advertising solutions to drive incremental growth for its customers.

18. What are the best ad networks to acquire users for Hyper Casual, Casual, and Hybrid Mobile Games?

Google Ads: With the tech giant’s focus on the App Campaigns tool, constant updates, and machine learning, it obviously has managed to reach the right users. On the other hand, in App Campaigns, Google automatically adjusts targeting and bidding to get maximum value from each install.

Unity Ads: One of the most effective ad networks as it specializes in mobile game advertising; one of the main features of this network is that it can target users who are interested in a certain type of game.

Facebook Ads: Supports different ad formats, including game-specific ones, such as rewarded video ads and playable ads. These kinds of ads help game advertisers reach high-value and high-intent users.

Mintegral: Ad platform that originated in Asia and made a global impact. Today, it’s a part of more than 20 international ad exchanges and works with over 26,000 app partners.

AppLovin: The ad formats on this platform include interstitial ads, banner ads, mobile app install ads, and video ads. This network’s main focus is finding high-quality users based on campaign analysis.

IronSource: IronSource comes with a set of tools that automate bid optimization across multiple breakdowns. Moreover, it allows you to also place different ad formats like video, interstitial ads, and offerwalls.

19. How do mobile games make money?

• In-App advertising: There are several ad formats to choose from, such as rewarded videos, banner ads, interstitials, and offerwall ads.
• In-App purchases: This allows you to buy things like in-game currency, power-ups, etc.
• Premium paid apps: It is a method of making money by selling games for a fee.

20. How do users grow on apps?

Test demographics for paid user acquisition

App Store Optimization (ASO)

Integrate social media platforms

Make use of your game’s visual appeal with video ads

Cross-promote your mobile games

Leverage automation tools