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Tag: mobile app install ads

  • Facebook Launches Video, CPA Bidding For Mobile App Ads

    A year ago, Facebook launched mobile app install ads, and today, they get video support and the ability for developers to set cost per action bids.

    Video ads will appear in the mobile news feed when the user clicks the play button. They can then view video featuring the app, which gives developers the chance to try and sell them on it.

    “Video creative has proven to be an effective way to drive engagement in News Feed, and we look forward to helping developers use their video creative to find new app installs,” says Facebook’s Radu Margarint in a blog post.

    He shares the following quote from John Clelland, VP, Interactive Marketing at DoubleDown Casino, an early test partner for video mobile app ads:

    “In our early tests, we found that using video in our mobile app ads resulted in increased install rates and decreased costs per install. We’ve seen tremendous success with mobile app ads and are looking forward to using video to make them even more engaging with rich media like video.”

    Videos in mobile app install ads

    In the past, Facebook has only let advertisers bid on cost per click or optimized cost per impression, but now, they can set a cost per action bid, so they’re only charged when a user downloads and installs their app.

    According to the company, this drives a 20% lower cost per install compared to CPC (on average, based on internal testing).

    Both video creative and CPA buying will be rolling out over the next few days.

  • Facebook Will Now Publish Your Mobile Game For A Cut Of The Revenue

    Developing and publishing a mobile game is pretty easy. Unfortunately, it can also be pretty expensive. For those who find mobile games development to be too costly, Facebook has a pretty tempting offer.

    At the Casual Connect conference today, Facebook will be announcing a new program that will see the social network publishing mobile games in return for a cut of the revenue. It’s called Mobile Games Publishing and Facebook says that it’s “a new pilot program to help small and medium-sized developers take their game global.”

    Here’s what Facebook says it has to offer developers that sign up with its program:

    Find the right people

    With our unique targeting ability and mobile users who like playing a diversity of games, we’ll help the right people discover your game.

    Grow to scale

    Let us introduce your game to our more than 800M monthly mobile users. We’ll help you drive installs at scale with Facebook’s massive reach.

    Build lasting success

    We’ll also share analytics tools and the expertise we’ve gained from helping games grow on our platform for many years.

    That seems like a pretty good value, but it’s hard to say at this point. Facebook isn’t revealing how much of a revenue cut it wants from games that it helps publish. If it’s too high, it wouldn’t make sense to share revenue with Facebook when the iOS App Store and Google Play already take 30 percent from the games sold on each platform.

    We may not know the revenue cut, but some developers already do. Those same developers have apparently found it to be fair enough to sign up with the service. TechCrunch reports that 10 developers, including Rainbow, Kiwi, Space Ape, Gameloft and others, have already signed up for Facebook’s Mobile Game Publishing.

    This latest announcement seemingly ties into Facebook’s experiment from earlier this month that saw the social network putting mobile game ads directly into a user’s notification tab on mobile devices. It already advertises mobile games via Mobile App Install Ads on a user’s mobile news feed, but going directly after the notifications tab may prove to be an excellent advertising avenue for developers that sign up with Facebook’s pilot publishing program.

  • Facebook Might Be Putting Mobile Game Ads Into Your Notifications Tab

    Late last year, Facebook introduced a new type of ad called mobile app install ad. The ads, which would appear on your mobile news feed, would take users to the App Store or Google Play page for that app. Now it looks like Facebook might be bringing more ads to its mobile app.

    Britt Selvitelle, one of the founding engineers at Twitter, tweeted out this morning that Facebook was now putting ads directly into his mobile notifications tab:

    Like mobile app install ads, the new notifications tab ads will presumably take the user to the App Store or Google Play page for the game in question. All Things D says the ads are based upon your previous play history, and those who don’t play games will not see the ads.

    As for Facebook, it says that it’s “always testing new channels to promote games.” The latest “is part of a small mobile distribution test” that the social network is currently running for game developers.

    This isn’t the first time that Facebook has put ads into users’ notifications tab. Shortly after launching App Center over a year ago, Facebook began to suggest you play games that you’re friends were playing via notifications. Unlike those previous ads, these new ads don’t dress themselves up as social invites, but are rather unapologetic ads.

    Like most other Facebook tests, this latest one will probably not go anywhere. It’s an interesting idea for sure, but it also has the potential to annoy many users. Facebook has already limited the amount of updates developers can push via open graph so it’s not hard to imagine Facebook doing the same with notification tab ads to limit abuse.

    Still, it’s an interesting idea. Would you be okay with developers hawking their games via your notifications tab? Or should they just stick to the news feed? Many people probably feel that their notifications tab is a sacred ground that should be devoid of advertisements. Of course, many felt the same way about email, and look at how that turned out.

  • Facebook Makes Running Mobile App Install Ads Easier

    Facebook announced that it has a new way for developers to gets started with mobile app install ads. They can now do so by just copying and pasting their app’s Google Play or Apple App Store URL into the Ads Create Tool.

    Mobile App Install ads

    “If you’re new to developing on Facebook, this is the quickest way to start advertising your mobile app, and you can measure click-through rates for your campaign,” says Facebook’s Chris Pan in a blog post.

    “As you gain experience and scale with Facebook, we encourage you to measure installs and optimize your bid for installs,” says Pan. “To start measuring installs, 1) register your app with Facebook and 2) integrate our SDK or work with a mobile measurement partner. Once you complete these steps, you can then simply input the app’s URL into the ads create tool to run mobile app install ads at anytime in the future and measure installs.”

    Facebook also released an update for its iOS SDK. This comes with bug fixes and “minor” enhancements. You can check that out here.

  • Facebook’s Mobile App Install Ads Can Now Target Specific Versions Of iOS, Android

    In October of last year, Facebook unveiled mobile app install ads. These ads allowed app makers to go directly after mobile users by directing them to their Google Play or Apple Appstore pages. Now Facebook is giving advertisers and app makers even more options when targeting mobile users.

    The biggest change to mobile app install ads addresses a major problem with mobile devices – platform fragmentation. Previous mobile app install ads would only take into account whether the user was on iOS or Android. Unfortunately, some users, especially those on Android, couldn’t use the apps advertised as they were built with a later version of the mobile OS in mind.

    Now, app makers and advertisers can target users based on which version of the operating system they’re using. For example, an app that can only run on iOS 6 and Android 4.2 can now be advertised only to those using these operating systems.

    Going even further, Facebook says that mobile app install ads can now target people based upon their connection. An example would be an ad targeting those currently on a Wi-Fi connection so as to take advantage of the consumer’s decreased reluctance to download large apps.

    So, now you can target very specific consumers with mobile app install ads, but is Facebook making it any easier to create these ads? Indeed they are, as Facebook also announced that advertisers and app makers can now easily create and launch mobile app install ads using the ad create tool. Previously, mobile app install ads had to be created with the app dashboard, power editor or the Ads API. Now these ads can be made with the same powerful tools that help advertisers create sponsored stories or Page like ads.

    You’ll be able to get your hands on the new ad create tool soon as it rolls out to English speaker first. The tool will then launch to other languages in the near future.

    If you want to know more about mobile app install ads, Facebook will be hosting a live Q&A session with its product team on April 17. You’ll have to register for the event, which you can do so here.

    For more info, check out this talk from last month on how you can drive app installs on mobile:

  • Facebook Introduces New Features For Mobile App Install Ads

    Mobile app install ads are one of the better avenues developers can use to reach users on Facebook. As more and more people are using the Facebook mobile app, these ads can drive those same users to a developer’s app on Google Play or the App Store. Now, it’s not perfect, but Facebook is making it a little better today.

    First up, developers can now customize ad creatives directly from either the app dashboard, the power editor, or the Ads API. The customization options extend to both the banner image and the app description. In even better news, those using the new Facebook app for both iOS and Android will get a much larger ad. You can find out more here.

    Facebook Mobile App Install Ads

    Ad customization is always nice, but what about the actual installation of apps? With Facebook being integrated into iOS 6, it’s now easier than ever to install apps from Facebook’s App Center. Facebook will now open up an App Store popup in App Center so users can install the app without ever having to leave Facebook. It will undoubtedly earn developers more app installs and it keeps users on Facebook. It’s a win-win situation for everybody, except for those on Android devices.

    Facebook New Features Mobile App Install Ads

    Finally, app insights has been updated with a demographic breakdown of all app installs on mobile. Now developers can see exactly how many users from each age group download your app. It also displays a breakdown of users by gender, language and country of origin. All of this information will be incredibly important when creating future ads for a specific audience. It’s noted that the updated app insights won’t be available to developers, however, unless they integrate your app with the latest SDKs for both iOS and Android.

    Facebook New Features Mobile App Install Ads

    It’s a good thing that Facebook is upgrading its mobile app install ads before Christmas. Plenty of people will be getting new iOS and Android devices as presents, and those people will most assuredly be using Facebook and downloading apps. Developers should be able to drive some installs with an aggressive mobile app install ad campaign.

  • Facebook’s Mobile App Install Ads Are Now Available To Everyone

    Earlier this morning, we reported on some test images that show Facebook’s new mobile app install ads. These are the same mobile ads for apps that were made available through a beta back in August. It’s pretty clear that they have gone through some changes since then.

    Facebook announced today that mobile app install ads are now available to all developers. These new ads are being billed as an “effective way for mobile app developers to drive installs and increase app discovery.” The real kicker here is that the ads feature an install button that takes users directly to an app’s page on Google Play or the App Store. App Center is already doing an admirable job of pushing mobile installs, but these ads could be much better.

    So how effective are these new ads? During the beta period, a number of major players in Facebook gaming found the ads to significantly raise their CTRs and conversion rates. In fact, TinyCo saw 50 percent higher CTRs and a significantly higher conversion rate.

    Preferred marketing developers also saw a similar increase in effectiveness when using the new ads. One such firm, Nanigan, saw its clients achieved eight to 10 times more reach compared to traditional advertising methods.

    So, the new ads work. Now you’re going to want to implement them yourself. Facebook has it incredibly easy by integrating the ads into the App Dashboard. From there, developers can use existing ad tools and the new mobile app install ads API to build their own custom ads. These are the same ad tools that developers use on the main Facebook Web site so all of those options are available to you.

    To see the effectiveness of your ads, developers will need to integrate with the latest Android or iOS Facebook SDKs. The insights will measure the overall clicks and installs for your current ad campaign. Using this data, you can optimize your ad delivery for installs.

    The first release only offers basic ad functionality, but Facebook will begin pushing some pretty ambitious updates to the ad platform in the coming months. For instance, developers will soon be able to customize ad units based on audience and ensure that ads are only shown to those who don’t already have your app installed. Most importantly, a future update will make it so that users can start installing your app without ever leaving Facebook.

    You can start creating mobile app install ads right now. To do so, just head over to the documentation that provides all the details you’ll need to create your own mobile ads.