This blog post is here for you to explore what rewarded monetization is, its various types, its benefits, and strategies for implementing it, as well as the best practices for mobile user acquisition and monetization and the challenges and risks that come with it. Let’s go!

Introduction

Rewarded monetization refers to incentivizing users to engage with an app or take a specific action in exchange for a reward. This reward could come in the form of virtual items, currency, or access to exclusive content. This monetization method has become increasingly important in mobile user acquisition and monetization due to the fierce competition for user attention and engagement.

Types of Rewarded Monetization

Loyalty Programs

Loyalty programs can help retain users by rewarding them for performing specific actions within the app, such as completing levels or inviting friends to join.

One of the benefits of loyalty programs is that they can increase user engagement and retention. Additionally, they can encourage users to invite their friends to use the app, leading to organic growth. However, loyalty programs require careful planning and execution to ensure they don’t feel like a gimmick. 

Rewarded Engagement (Offerwalls)

Offerwalls are another form of rewarded monetization that presents users with various offers in exchange for virtual currency or other rewards. These offers include watching videos, completing surveys, or signing up for other apps.

Offerwalls provide users with various ways to earn rewards within the app. Rewarded engagement options in your app keep your users in the app for longer, thus increasing session time and engagement. Additionally, offerwalls can generate significant revenue for the app developer. Offerwalls are fully user-initiated, so ensuring that the offers are relevant and don’t feel spammy or intrusive is essential.

See how we utilize the power of Rewarded Engagement campaigns to boost mobile games.

Rewarded Videos

Rewarded videos are a form of rewarded monetization that offers users virtual currency or other rewards in exchange for watching a video ad. These videos can be displayed before or after a user completes a specific action within the app, such as completing a level or unlocking a new feature. 

Especially in mobile games, rewarded videos are a great way to keep the player in the game longer by giving them more content to stay in the game, such as extra lives, items, or boosters, and keep them playing for more extended periods.

Benefits of Rewarded Monetization

Does rewarded monetization worth the effort? Decide for yourself by looking at its benefits:

Increased user engagement

One of the biggest benefits of rewarded monetization is increased user engagement. Rewarding mechanisms create a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction that keeps users returning. This can lead to higher usage rates, more frequent interactions with the app, and, ultimately, more revenue for the developer.

Enhanced user experience

Another benefit of rewarded monetization is enhanced user experience. Users like to have the chance to complete tasks and get a reward. This makes the app more enjoyable and engaging, leading to higher user satisfaction and loyalty and increased word-of-mouth promotion as users share their positive experiences with others.

Improved retention rates

Rewarded monetization can also help improve retention rates, which is crucial for app developers (specifically mobile game developers) looking to build a long-term user base. Developers can incentivize users to stick around and explore more of what the app offers by offering rewards. This can lead to higher retention rates and lower churn rates, thus creating a more stable and profitable user base.

Higher revenue generation

Of course, higher revenue generation is one of the most significant benefits of rewarded monetization.   By incentivizing users to make purchases or engage with the app in other ways, developers can generate more revenue than they would with traditional monetization models. This can lead to higher profits, better investment opportunities, and a more sustainable business model in the long run. With all the benefits above, a more successful revenue generation process is almost inevitable (well, who’d want to avoid that?)

Increased brand loyalty

Finally, rewarded monetization can help increase brand loyalty among users. App developers can create a sense of loyalty and attachment to the brand that can last long after the initial interaction. This can lead to higher customer lifetime value, better brand reputation, and, ultimately, more success for the developer.

Strategies are crucial for implementing rewarded monetization

Now that you’ve decided that rewarded monetization could work for you, it’s time to see where to start and how to prepare the best strategy. Don’t forget that even the most successful monetization techniques may not work as you hoped if you don’t have a plan!

1. Integration with in-app features

The first step in implementing rewarded monetization is integrating it seamlessly with your app’s features. For example, if your app has a feature where users can earn points for completing certain tasks, you can reward users with an in-app currency that they can use to unlock premium features. This can incentivize users to engage more with your app, increasing retention rates and revenue.

2. Personalized offers

Another strategy for implementing rewarded monetization is to use targeted advertising. With targeted advertising, you can integrate rewarded monetization models in your app based on your users’ demographics, interests, and behavior. For example, based on the data, you can display more relevant offers from relevant apps through Offerwalls, which would incentivize the users even more. This means users are more likely to engage with the rewards, increasing your app’s revenue.

3. Gamification

Gamification is a powerful strategy for implementing rewarded monetization. By adding gamification elements to your app, such as badges, leaderboards, and challenges, you can incentivize users to engage more with your app. This can lead to increased user retention and revenue. Additionally, gamification can enhance the user experience by giving users a sense of accomplishment and recognition for their efforts.

Here’re the Best Practices for Implement Rewarded Monetization Models 

1. User-Friendly Interface and Design

One of the most critical factors in implementing rewarded models is having a user-friendly interface and design. Users should be able to navigate your app easily, and the design should be visually appealing and consistent with your brand. Since rewarded models are extra elements to be added to your app, you should be careful to blend seamlessly with the app’s UI. 

2. Consistent User Experience

Be mindful of providing a consistent user experience across all devices and platforms. Ensure your app functions the same way across different devices and operating systems with the rewarded models included so users don’t get confused or frustrated. A consistent user experience will help build trust with your users and encourage them to return to your app and engage with the rewards.

3. Frequent Updates and Improvements

You must provide frequent updates and improvements to keep users engaged and interested in your app. Regularly adding or improving new features will keep your users excited and engaged. Additionally, users are more likely to recommend your app to others if they see that you’re actively working to make it better. After implementing rewarding models, keep an eye out for feedback and be ready to make quick improvements!

5. Analysis of User Behavior and Preferences

Finally, analyzing user behavior and preferences is essential for mobile user acquisition and monetization. Utilize data analytics tools to track how users interact with your app or website and what features they use the most. This information can help you make informed decisions about future updates and improvements. Additionally, analyzing user behavior can help you tailor your marketing efforts to reach your target audience more effectively.

Yes, There are Challenges to Rewarded Monetization

Well, even though everything seems perfect, rewarded monetization also has challenges for app developers (like we do in everything!). This is not a reason to be scared and back down from finding innovative monetization solutions but a reason to evaluate where your app stands and whether it’s ready to go for more. Let’s look at some of the challenges you might encounter:

• User Privacy Concerns

One of the biggest challenges of rewarded monetization is user privacy concerns. Developers often need to collect and analyze user data to offer users in-app rewards. This data can include users’ browsing history, location, and app usage. However, this data collection can raise user privacy concerns and lead to legal issues. Developers must ensure they collect and use user data in compliance with data protection regulations.

• Inaccurate Targeting

Another challenge of rewarded monetization is inaccurate targeting. To maximize the effectiveness of the rewarded models, developers need to ensure that they are targeting the right users and personalizing the content accordingly. However, this can be difficult to achieve as the data used for targeting can be incomplete or inaccurate.

• Over-Reliance on Advertising Revenue

Rewarded monetization can also lead to an over-reliance on advertising revenue. While they can be an effective way to generate revenue, there should be other sources of income. Over-reliance on advertising revenue can make an app vulnerable to changes in the advertising industry and limit the potential revenue streams available to the developer.

• Negative Impact on User Experience

Finally, rewarded monetization can harm the user experience. Make sure that you utilize rewarded monetization models without being disruptive. If prompts for rewarded models are not well-targeted or are shown too frequently, they can become annoying to users and even lead to app uninstalls. Developers must ensure that they are integrated seamlessly and not detract from the overall user experience.

Conclusion

Rewarded monetization has become an essential tool for mobile user acquisition and monetization. Developers can increase user engagement, retention rates, and revenue generation by incentivizing users to engage with an app. As the mobile landscape evolves, rewarded monetization will likely play a key role in engaging and retaining mobile app users. However, successfully implementing rewarded monetization requires careful consideration of best practices and strategies and understanding the challenges and risks involved.

The post The Power of Rewarded Monetization in Mobile User Acquisition and Monetization first appeared on AppSamurai.

What does an App Brand Mean?

An app brand is a name, logo, and other elements that represent an app or mobile product. This includes the way the app looks, the way it functions, and the experience it provides. It also includes the messaging used to describe the product and the tone used to communicate with customers. Creating a brand identity for your app is a surefire way to improve the awareness, recollection and recognition of your app amongst users and a powerful tool in any marketer’s arsenal.

Key Tips for Creating your App Brand Strategy

Branding your app is more than just coming up with a clever logo and catchy tagline. It’s about creating an image and identity that will resonate with your target audience. Here are some key things to consider when creating your branding strategy for 2023.

Understand Your Target Audience

You need to know who your target audience is and what they’re looking for in an app. Do some research to get a better understanding of their needs and preferences. This will help you create a brand that resonates with them; a brand identity can NOT be created without taking your target audience’s values into consideration, otherwise, your brand strategy is bound to fail as your users will not resonate with it.

Define Your App Brand Identity

Once you have identified your target audience, you need to create a brand identity that speaks to them. This includes defining your brand’s values, mission, and aesthetic. Your brand identity should be unique, memorable, and easily recognizable. Consider the values, beliefs and needs of your target audience to tailor your brand such that you can communicate clearly to it.

Establish Your Brand Voice

A brand voice represents the tone and style used in all communications from the app to its intended users. It is based on the app brand’s personality and typically includes elements such as language, tonality, and style. The brand voice helps to create a consistent image and message across all platforms, which can help you to build trust and loyalty amongst your target users.

Develop a Comprehensive Marketing Plan

You need to create a comprehensive marketing plan that outlines how you’ll promote your app. This should include digital marketing tactics like performance-based user acquisition creatives, content marketing, ASO, and influencer marketing, as well as traditional marketing methods like physical billboards and print ads.

Focus on User Experience

The user experience should be at the core of your app’s branding strategy. This differentiates app branding strategies from contemporary branding strategies. Given that user experience is pivotal to the survival and growth of an app, it is of paramount importance that your app is easy to use, addresses your users’ needs and provides a pleasant experience. An app with a bad UX/UI will create negative impressions which can damage your brand identity and relationship with your target audience.

Primary Elements to Create an App Brand Identity

Primary elements are the building blocks of an app’s brand. They help build particular styles and themes, which then go on to create the aesthetic element of the brand which helps users understand your brand identity. The primary elements of your app include colors, shapes, typefaces, sounds (background music, jingles and/or voiceovers), and textures. These elements include your app’s layout, in-app content, icon as well as marketing materials.

Colors

Colors can help to identify your app based on the different hue or shading combinations you use, and can also help create app sub-categories. The Deliveroo app in the UK uses a light green colored platform for its standard users and a velvet colored background (and app icon) for its premium users (users that buy the Deliveroo Plus subscription service).

Shapes

Shapes are excellent at creating a global identity for your app because they transcend written language. It is worth incorporating shapes in your app especially if you are attempting a global strategy. Different dimensions can have different associations amongst your users. On Android devices, app launcher icons are generally 96×96, 72×72, 48×48, or 36×36 pixels (depending on the device), however Android recommends your starting artboard size should be 864×864 pixels to allow for easier tweaking.

Typefaces

A typeface is composed of shape, color & material, and adds representational qualities directly to words which already convey meaning through content. Consider the fonts, sizes and combinations of different designs for your typography based on the associations you wish to create. Capital letters represent a strong daring stance, for instance.

Sounds

Sounds are especially powerful in aiding in brand recognition and recollection. Consider the native notification sounds of different apps like Snapchat, and Facebook (Messenger) as well as OEM’s notification sounds (Samsung, iPhone, etc.); they are easily distinguishable from one another. If your app can design a catchy audio tonality, it will improve its recognition amongst users.

Textures

While not tangible, you can design digital textures to provide a certain sense of ambiance, attitudes, and mood settings by amplifying the visuals within your app. This also helps with promoting your brand’s integrated marketing communications; for instance, the PlayStation Companion App mimics the textures of the PlayStation 5’s interface in order to give users a unified experience exclusive to the Playstation brand.

Monitor Your Brand’s Performance

It is important to track your brand’s performance and make tweaks as needed. This can help you stay on top of trends and ensure your app remains competitive. Measuring brand identity is not as simple as looking at a metric on your attribution tool, unfortunately. You can run surveys to measure your app brand’s clarity, distinctiveness, relevance and consistency based on the users’ mindset, market performance outcomes and investor sentiment (where applicable). Here are some key terms to consider when monitoring your brand’s performance:

Customer Mindset

Brand Awareness

Extent & ease of recall & recognition of your app’s brand.

Brand Associations

Strength, favorability & uniqueness of your app’s brand attributes & benefits as perceived by your target audience.

Brand Attitudes

Brand evaluations in terms of quality and satisfaction. 

Brand Attachment

User loyalty and resistance to change.

Brand Activity

Do users download your app, talk about your brand and actively seek out and share information?

Market Performance Outcomes

Price Premiums

How much extra are customers willing to pay for your app or in-app purchases because of its brand?

Price Elasticities

How much does demand increase or decrease when the prices of your app or in-app purchases change?

Market Share

The ability of your user acquisition and other marketing campaigns to drive revenue generating users.

Brand Expansion

Can your app’s brand support line and category extensions? For instance, Uber’s ability to expand from being just a transportation app to a grocery delivery app.

Cost Structure

Ability to reduce user acquisition expenditures because of prevailing customer mindset. 

Profitability

All five outcomes combined define profitability. 

Investor Sentiment

In the scenario where your app is sponsored by investors, investor sentiment should be factored in whilst measuring brand performance.

Market Dynamics

Whether the dynamics of financial markets and competitive landscape are opportune or risky.

Growth Potential

The growth potential and prospects for the brand; can be done via the PESTEL analysis for instance.

Risk Profile

How vulnerable is the brand to the marketplace and other external factors?

Brand Contribution

How important is the app’s brand within the company’s overall portfolio?

Conclusion

Branding your app is essential for success in the competitive app market of 2023. By following the steps outlined above, you can create an effective branding strategy that will help your app stand out from the crowd and promote awareness, recognition and recollection. AppSamurai is an industry leading mobile growth platform that can help apps achieve their full growth potential; in order to learn more about how to grow your app, visit AppSamurai for more information.

The post Growing your App Brand: A Guide 2023 first appeared on AppSamurai.

User acquisition is the act of bringing new users into one’s app through non-organic means; in the mobile marketing industry, this would specifically refer to the act of building an app’s user base by advertising to and acquiring new users. In this blog post, you will find the top emerging methods of user acquisition to consider using in your marketing strategy in 2023, in accordance with the specialists at Edge226 and AppSamurai.

DSP: Programmatic Media Buying

The mobile performance industry is constantly growing and rapidly changing. With companies looking to gain valuable users outside Social or Google, and with the ever-growing need for transparency, many app developers and brands turn to programmatic to push their app growth forward.

With DSPs focusing on machine learning media buying, marketers can now choose from several programmatic options: self-service DSPs, Managed DSPs or Hybrid DSPs (offering self serv and fully managed options). Let’s break down the difference between them: 

Self Service DSP

A self-service DSP is a platform that allows mobile marketers to manage and control their ad campaigns by themselves. However, there are several disadvantages to running a self-service campaign: it suffers from a limited array of targeting options; and provides very narrow and limited actionable insights and data that are crucial to run a successful programmatic ad campaign.

Managed DSP

A managed DSP on the other hand is a platform that uses its own proprietary bidder and offers marketers a full spectrum of services from campaign setup to management and optimization towards defined client KPIs. A fully managed campaign has several strong and advantageous attributes: it requires low involvement from the marketer’s standpoint – as the DSP sets and fully manages the campaign (while marketers get dashboard access to monitor the campaign results). The second advantage, fully managed campaigns are finely tailored to the client’s acquisition requirements. A fully managed programmatic campaign draws key insights based on behavioral data and prediction methodologies set by KPIs (such as users most likely to deposit, commit IAP purchases, etc.).

In the case of a DSP that supports both self-service and fully managed, it is better to first start with the fully managed option and allow a specialist to set up a campaign. Once the layout and capabilities of the DSP are clearly understood, it may then be prudent to opt for the self-service option and customize campaigns by oneself.

Segmentation

Programmatic DSPs utilize machine-learning capabilities to target the most relevant audience with high precision by segmenting users into specific groups. When choosing a DSP, it is important for a marketer to ensure it can target and optimize based on the following key data points:

• Demographic: gaining insights into your users’ demographics such as location data, gender, and segmentation, etc.
• Device Attributes: such as OS type and version, mobile carriers, device type, etc.
• Contextual Targeting: while not new, contextual targeting was dormant for some time now, mainly due to the dependency on user-level identifiers like IDFA. Now, due to the changes in privacy spearheaded by iOS14, this targeting method rose to prominence once again. In this method, characteristics of the host media are used to determine ad relevance. For instance, players that play RPG-type games may receive other RPG gaming ads.
• App Category Segmentation: when running a programmatic ad campaign, fully managed DSPs can also categorize the in-app performance of a campaign into selected app categories, allowing marketers to see where their users are coming from. For example, a fintech growth marketer can see if his users are coming from finance news apps, entertainment or forecast apps, etc.

Testing

Regardless of the user acquisition strategy chosen, it is essential to test a wide array of creative formats. Not all audiences engage with all ad types equally. For example, RPG players may prefer an in-game video ad, while casual players would prefer the effectiveness of a playable ad. It is important for a marketer to ensure their partner/agency is well diverse in multiple ad formats and provides 100% transparency to track and A/B test the performance of each creative (by type, size, and format).

Influencer Performance Marketing (IPM)

Arguably one of the newest forms of performance-based user acquisition, influencer performance marketing (IPM) is not to be confused with influencer marketing. Whilst Influencer Marketing is aimed at building brand awareness for a product or service, IPM campaigns are specifically designed to target app installs. Hence, this campaign method runs on a cost-per-install cost model, not per impressions or clicks.

IPM campaigns mesh the boosting nature of rewarded engagements with the high quality users of performance-based user acquisition, making it the perfect must-have app advertisers’ strategies.

Via a centralized dashboard, advertisers are able to provide a tracking link and optional ad creatives that influencers then use in their content or on their profile whether in the form of a QR code or directly clickable link. Viewers are then redirected to the app store page to install the advertised app.

It is worth noting that in this type of campaign 30% of the total viewers of an average IPM campaign install the advertised app without even clicking on the tracking link; which means 30% of an IPM campaign is attributed to organic installs, creating a considerable amount of organic uplift and beneficial SEO implications for the app in the process. That makes Influencer Performance Marketing one of the most ROAS-positive (Return on Ad Spend) methods of user acquisition and a must-have for every serious marketer in 2023.

Rewarded Engagements

Fast growing as a popular method of user acquisition, rewarded engagements are advertisers’ go-to method for hyper-growth. This form of advertising requires only the app’s main icon as the sole creative to be used.

This method of user acquisition incentivizes users to download an app in return for the in-app currency of the application where the advertisement was initially shown. The most prevalent form of rewarded engagement is an offerwall – an ad extension within an app that allows users to perform actions to earn bonus points that may be redeemed for monetary rewards. Incentivized users tend to install new apps for bonuses which mean rewarded engagements can earn an advertised app a huge amount of downloads in a very short span of time.

When granted this boost of installs in a targeted time period, an app also manages to increase its app rank which leads to greater visibility (similar to ASO effects) and an organic uplift.

This user acquisition type gets its name from the fact that users can be incentivized to engage with advertised apps beyond simply installing them. An advertiser can request that users not only install their app, but sign-up and interact as well; for instance, play a game up to reaching a certain level, or install the delivery app, enter their information and order food. The strategy here is to initiate a tutorial of the app’s utility to the end-user and earn their loyalty through prolonged exposure.

This campaign type is particularly well suited for gaming, fitness, delivery, finance and loyalty apps looking to boost their growth.

OEM Inventory

While OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturer) refer to companies that manufacture their own smartphone devices, such as Samsung for instance, OEM Inventory refers to a particular type of mobile marketing campaign whereby an advertised app is recommended to end-users on their smartphone device. End-users do not need to visit a website or an application in order to view the advertised app, which is what makes this such a powerful tool in the arsenal of a mobile marketer. OEM inventory allows advertisers to pole-vault over their competitors and reach their end users when they first activate their new smartphone devices.

OEM inventory can be divided into 2 common types, preinstall campaigns and recommendation engines.

Preinstall Campaigns

In a preinstall campaign, an advertiser’s mobile app is pre-loaded onto an Android smartphone device before it is sold to an end-user. Often, manufacturers such as Samsung, Xiaomi, and Huawei allow for 3rd party apps to be featured as pre-loaded apps to be used by their end-users, after passing their screening processes. Once a user initializes their smartphone, they see the pre-loaded app on their home screen and after opening this app for the first time, the campaign officially recognizes a conversion. This campaign does not convert based on impressions or clicks.

In addition to beating the competition to the end-user, through the use of a pre-install campaign one is also able to build one’s brand equity as more users become aware of the advertised app. The fact that one’s app is preinstalled on reputable manufacturers is also beneficial as that would entail sharing in their brand’s success and reputation as well.

Recommendation Engine

Many manufacturers have begun to rely on a new method to help further monetize some of their smartphone devices, especially their non-flagship mid-tier models. They do this by creating an advertising space within the operating system of their devices such that they include a widget on the homepage of the device that “recommends” new apps to users based on their geo-location, age and app preferences to name a few demographics.

Recommendation engines are flawless in terms of delivering a seamless advertising experience to users but, unlike a preinstall campaign, this method does not preload apps. Users who click on the recommended app will be taken to its Play Store page to download it.

It is recommended to mesh this user acquisition model with additional methods including social media awareness and influencer marketing so as to keep the app at the forefront of the end users’ minds and build brand equity.

Conclusion

In the cut-throat world of user acquisition, choosing the right partner can be quite challenging. There are many factors to take into consideration, such as transparency, quality, reach, and campaign-style offerings of the platform.

Platforms that provide you with campaign performance visibility allow you to make streamlined optimization decisions and will offer clarity as to your audiences and where they come from. Opting for a user acquisition platform that can offer you a high volume of highly sought users is a no-brainer, though it is important to note that achieving these users may take multiple channel strategies. Being one of these strategies, DSPs are rapidly becoming more popular and in demand with their machine-learning capabilities and different programmatic options that boost app growth.

Edge226 is a performance marketing platform that delivers high-quality user growth, positioning apps for immediate results, and brands for long-term value. Edge226 proprietary technology determines the ideal customer for each app, targets relevant audiences, and delivers campaigns programmatically to those that are more likely to install, continuously engage, and spend on the brand’s offering.

AppSamurai is a mobile marketing one-stop shop that aggregates the top mobile ad publishers around the globe into one state-of-the-art user acquisition platform. AppSamurai’s multi-award-winning dashboard meshes quality with quantity and allows users to access millions of highly rated placements through a myriad of different campaign styles ranging from performance marketing to pre-install & recommendation engine traffic.

AppSamurai and Edge226 remain two of the most valued mobile marketing platforms that can offer app marketers the opportunity to boost their growth and achieve their user acquisition goals. For more information, head over to the AppSamurai and Edge226 websites to learn more about what mobile marketing solutions they have to offer.

The post Top User Acquisition Methods for 2023 first appeared on AppSamurai.