Promoting your Mobile App Using Cross Promotion Networks

Welcome to another mobyaffiliates app marketing guide. Today we’re going to take a thorough look at cross app promotion networks, covering cost per install (CPI), incentivised networks and cross exchanges. Over the last few months, cross promotion networks such as Chartboost, AppFlood and TapJoy have been making some big waves. Earlier in the year Chartboost secured $19 million in new funding and announced it now reaches 300 million monthly active devices. We’ve also seen TapJoy moving into non-gaming genres and bolster its consulting efforts with developers, while Papaya’s AppFlood platform, which is already driving around 4,000 to 7,000 installs per app per day, is tapping into the potentially lucrative Chinese market.

A picture is starting to emerge of the app promotion space and it looks highly likely to be dominated by cross exchanges and CPI. Developers are gagging for more affordable and less risky avenues to gain users. The more traditional networks operating on CPC and CPM may find themselves playing a serious game of catch-up. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. What exactly are cross promotion networks? How do they work? What are the drawbacks? In this guide we’ll attempt to answer these questions and more. We’ve also got interviews with all the major platforms, as well as a handy directory of cross promo networks for you to check out.

• For more on mobile app promotion check out our Mobile App Marketing Directory

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Contents:

1. What are cross promotion networks?

2. Key stats

3. The benefits of using cross promotion networks

4. What’s the catch?

5. Cross promotion networks: Ask the experts Q&A

6. Directory of cross promotion networks

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Go Fish with MobPartner’s May Ultimate Challenge

MobPartner have a brand new promotion out for their affiliates this month, which offers some great prizes and is well worth getting involved in if you’re a publisher or mobile media buyer. In partnership with Tekka, the best Italian converting campaign currently available on the network, MobPartner will give the top 3 publishers who are able to generate more than 100 subscriptions to the campaign a selection of iPad related goodies and are offering the iPhone 5 as top prize.

MobPartner explain a little more about the Ultimate Challenge: “The Winners are going to be declared at the end of Promotional period and the prizes are going to go to the TOP 3 publishers on the Tekka Campaign who will have generated the biggest volume of validated subscriptions”. The Challenge is open on all actions on the Tekka campaign:

- Musiklub: CR up to 2.98%

- Meet’n’Fun: CR up to 2.98%

- KlubGame: CR up to 2.58%

- Joliess: CR up to 1.27

Targeting Tips

Here are some targeting tips to guide entrants in the promotion of the Tekka campaign:

-Top converting operator: H3G

-Top converting OS: Android and Windows Phone”

Open to all current affiliates and new ones who join during the month (new affiliates need to sign up here first to enter the challenge: http://www.mobpartner.com/en/publisher/registration), the challenge runs from 1^st to 30^th May.

Head on over to MobPartner today to join the challenge!

Announcing the App Promotion Summit

We’re delighted to be co-producing an exciting new event in London on July 11th all about Mobile App Marketing - The App Promotion Summit.  We think the topic of mobile app promotion needs a dedicated event to debate the key issues given that it’s the single most important challenge facing mobile app developers and marketers.  Typically mobile app marketing gets a short slot within the agenda of a larger, more general mobile conference which just doesn’t do the topic justice.  Our Manifesto is set out below.  You can check out more details over at http://apppromotionsummit.com and stay in the loop via twitter @apppromotion.   We’re interested in hearing from potential speakers and sponsors so get in touch.

If you want to attend you can register here – we have a limited number of early bird tickets available.

Our Manifesto

There are now 780k active apps in the Apple Appstore and at least 620k in Google Play. So getting noticed is harder than ever and distribution is the biggest challenge facing the mobile app industry:

“Distribution is much harder on mobile than web … You need to master the ‘download app, use app, keep using app, put it on your home screen’ flow and that is a hard one to master” Fred Wilson, Union Square Ventures

“Why we’re pivoting from mobile first to web first…. At best, we retain 5% of users through the entire onboarding process I believe this is the primary reason that mobile is failing”Vibhu Norby, Origami Labs

For those that succeed the rewards are enormous as a growing mobile user base results in higher appstore placements and virtuous circle of user acquisition. However, breaking through requires mastering one or more of a range of channels including:

• Mobile Advertising and Media Buying
• Appstore Optimization (ASO)
• Cross Promotion and Exchanges
• App Reviews, Press and PR
• App Discovery Services

Established online marketing strategies such as SEO are no longer relevant in the mobile app ecosystem and channels such as paid advertising also require working with completely new traffic sources and approaches. As a result, a new generation of mobile-native marketing platforms has emerged to deliver solutions for app distribution and discovery. The App Promotion Summit brings together developers, media companies, app studios and brands with the mobile ad networks, cross promotion exchanges, platforms and agencies that can help them succeed in mobile app marketing.

Issues to address

• Appstore SEO – How to do Appstore Optimization
• Beyond the Appstore – App Discovery Services and Cross Promotion
• Mobile Advertising – how to bring down your CPI and deliver high quality users
• Analytics – tracking and managing your metrics
• Engagement – turning downloads into MAUs and DAUs

Together we can solve the mobile app distribution problem and grow the mobile app industry.

The App Promotion Summit – Manifesto by mobyaffiliates

We’ll be releasing more details about this event soon.

5 Things We Can Learn from Mobile Social Games @SocDevLon

Below is a presentation given at Google Campus during the London Social Developer Forum sponsored by Central Working.  It’s all about how Mobile Social Games have lessons for other types of businesses.  The slidedeck was meant to be talked at but you can get the gist of it from the slides.  Thanks to all at the Social Developer Forum for hosting.

Here’s a link to the file on Dropbox -15 Things We Can Learn from Mobile Social Games.

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