The mobile advertising ecosystem is a complex landscape with a myriad of layers. The mobile app industry grows by tens of millions every year, and, so do the struggles of app marketers. Over the past few years, the industry has evolved radically to become more and more sophisticated.
To be precise, according to reports, today, there are an average of 3.4 million apps available to download in the market. Besides, Android and iOS app revenue reached a whopping $133 billion, a 19% year-on-year increase.
The primary goal of a successful app marketing strategy is to acquire quality users, but with the ever-growing number of apps, the competition is fierce. Thus, as a result, advertisers distribute their budget among various channels to maximize their reach.
Although this process is the norm and seems alright to the untrained eye, it also results in an overlap of audience.
But, how?
In this article, we’ll discuss:
- The current fragmented state of ad campaigns
- What is the audience overlap?
- Why do app marketers need an overlap index?
Let’s dive in.
The current state of fragmentation in ad tech
As mobile ecosystems have evolved, large platforms have waged a war on their users – each fighting for the ultimate platform where the user spends time.
Unfortunately, the ad tech industry is plagued by fragmentation.
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Each year, new tools and technologies rise to harness the power of mobile devices with the hope to target unique users and improve conversion rates.
However, the ad tech world is crowded and convoluted. The aforementioned image visualizes the monstrosity of the mobile landscape as it exists today.
Getting your app to be noticed and have a high volume of quality downloads is a three0ring circus in the ad-tech maze. Considering now that mobile advertising is undergoing dramatic shifts in the way ads are being consumed, app marketers face a gigantic challenge in acquiring quality users.
What is fragmentation in ad tech?
With the ongoing privacy enhancements making it harder to track and understand user journeys, advertisers are looking for technologies that will make their media-mix strategies more efficient.
Although the imminent demise of cookies plays a vital role, the biggest challenge faced by most app advertisers is the problem of fragmentation.
Fragmentation in the ad tech world refers to app marketers diversifying their ad campaign strategies with a myriad of players – channels, DSPs, DMPs, and more.
How does fragmentation affect app marketers
With the primary currency, namely the third-party cookies for targeting going away, the common ID does not exist anymore.
As a result, this will have profound implications on:
- Media spend being reallocated
- Limited visibility of data
- Spend a higher percentage of money to target the same user
- Limited room for easy A/B testing
So, how can advertisers minimize the issue of fragmentation and maximize their ad reach?
Answer: Overlap index.
What is overlap index?
Overlap index or audience overlap, developed by MAAS, is a first-of-its-kind technology to help advertisers unlock the true value of their channels and minimize paying an incremental cost for duplicate users.
As the name suggests, the overlap index aggregates the advertiser’s channels and publishers under one roof to:
- Maximize unique user reach
- Minimize duplicate users from each channel
- Optimize media mix for better marketing strategies
- Unlock the true potential of the channel(s)
Overlap index helps advertisers get a clear picture of true vs real user attribution for their channels to identify the percentage of overlapped users for maximum unique user reach.
How can the overlap index help the modern app marketer
For every successful app launch and marketing campaign, visibility is of utmost importance.
Here are 4 reasons why overlap index can transform the way app marketers look at user acquisition –
Amplify unique user reach to maximize the effectiveness of ad campaigns
Unique vs Actual Unique Reach
Source: MAAS by Affle
The problem of fragmentation looms over most advertisers and one of the primary concerns to maximize the effectiveness of ad campaigns is widening the user reach.
With fragmentation, the target audience remains stagnant, thus the advertiser targets the same pool over and over again, narrowing the reach.
The overlap index helps solve this problem.
The technology helps advertisers understand the break-up of their target audience for all channels and identify how well the channels are performing.
In addition, the overlap index also helps advertisers to minimize the number of duplicate users to display their ads only to actual users.
The overlap index also ensures that every penny spent on the ad campaigns is utilized to its maximum. It ensures each dollar spent towards acquiring new users is invested on a fresh lead, instead of targeting the same user across different channels, in a version of mobile spray and pray campaigns.
Identify the true strength of a channel to improve ROI efficacy
Real vs True Attribution
Source: MAAS by Affle
Impression duplicity is a significant issue for most advertisers.
With an overlap index, advertisers can easily improve cost efficiency by targeting users based on the effectiveness of channels and the tendency to convert by blocking users with repetitive ads.
The overlap index helps advertisers understand the performance of each channel to improve efficiency by targeting unique users to create a quality, revenue-generating user base with a higher LTV.
Granular analytics and reporting for media mix
Present vs Proposed
Source: MAAS by Affle
Marketing strategies that perform well and are highly relevant rely on analytics and reporting.
For any ad campaign to be successful, advertisers need to have an understanding of how well their channels are performing.
The overlap index breaks down campaign/channel performance section by section for advertisers to get a holistic view of their ad spending and impressions.
The central dashboard available for advertisers can help them identify unnecessary costs by avoiding targeting the same user repeatedly and diversifying their user acquisition costs to unique users.
How can app advertisers access the overlap index
With the problem of fragmentation and ad tech maze high, moving towards a unified aggregation of all supply and demand channels is the right step.
MAAS’s overlap index has a central self-serve dashboard that benefits all advertisers to track and analyze their campaigns in one place.
The benefit of going exclusive with one aggregator not only reduces operational costs but also improves the chances of widening their horizon to fresh, new leads.
Advertisers can identify users based on their footprint attribution to optimize their media mix for better campaign strategies. The overlap index helps advertisers to empower their campaigns based on three pillars – audience, creatives, and media with exclusivity.
Not just that, advertisers can also compare their channels based on their performance to fine-tune and improve their spending for a greater ROAS.
This exclusive feature released by MAAS has the ability to transform the way advertisers look at UA with utmost transparency.
To explore deeper into overlap index and its benefits, book a demo with our app marketing experts now and jump on the bandwagon to experience seamless, transparent, and effective app advertising!
