I will be discussing some of my insights from Pay Per install advertising at my presentation at AnDevCon next Monday.
But since I will probably only have about five minutes for this topic, I'm posting some insights here. Please add your own perspective so I am not too biased by my own. I looked at four pay per install networks. AppBrain: Free apps only, .20+ per install. Flurry AppCircle: Free or paid apps, .75 minimum bid. TapJoy: Free or paid apps, incentive based, 50% of app price required as a bid. Everbadge: Free or paid apps, incentive based, .35 minimum bid, 50% of app price recommended. While three of the four networks above allow advertising paid apps, the representatives I talked to were shocked that I actually wanted to do that. I do believe that pay per install is much more cost effective than pay per click, such as Admob, which I believe to be a untargetted money pit, and Adwords, which is a poorly targetted money pit. (I have data backing this up too). Here are some of my first impressions: AppBrain: I like it. It only allows free apps, which means I have to make some estimates of how many convert to paid. It may take several months to know if I am bidding too high or too low. I will probably spend more money there. AppCircle: I have bid $2.50 for a $10 app. I have gotten three (3) new customers over the last month. If that were the only metric, it would hardly be worth my time. But I have gotten thousands of clicks for about .0026 per click, and some may find my app later. Everbadge: Bidding $2.50, I've gotten 2 installs, and only 213 "taps" in a week. TappJoy: Their setup process was confusing. There is a lot of extra steps to delay "incentives" until they have the app installed for 15 minutes, when I believe that should be the default for a paid app, duh. Because of that, I haven't really gotten going with TapJoy , but I really hope that it will be a failure. Why? Well, if I pay 30% to the Android Market, and 50% to TapJoy, that leaves 20% of the app's revenue for the company that does 100% of the R&D, QA, customer service, and maintenance. I don't really like incentive based because I really want to find customers who actually want my app. They exist. I'd prefer not to pay people to install my app. That may vary depending on your app. Incentives are the chief reason why 50% is the recommended bid for paid apps, and I'd guess the ideal bid would be more like 200%. In all, I think pay per install is the most cost effective of paid advertising, but any paid advertising is a stretch for someone who makes single digits per customer. On the other end of the spectrum, Amazon Kindle could afford a lot of advertising for a free app when they make so much money on the books. Consider where you fall in that spectrum. Nathan PS: I believe in tracking the performance of any customers you pay for, but the latest version of the Android Market has broken that possibility. (Everyone star this issue please). http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=19247 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Discuss" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-discuss?hl=en.
