Ross Sheil is the Senior Account Executive & EMEA Mobile Specialist of Twitter and spoke at the App Promotion Summit London 2014 on the topic of Twitter and app promotion.
The talk covered the following topics:
An Introduction To Twitter For Mobile Applications
Analysis Of Twitter’s Mobile App Storyline
How Can Twitter Be Best Utilised For Mobile App Promotion?
We’re able to share the video and audio recordings of the event and, if you want to, you can find this talk and more in our App Promotion Summit London 2014 Bundle.
How to Use Twitter for App Advertising Video:
How to Use Twitter for App Advertising Audio:
How to Use Twitter for App Advertising Transcript:
Hi, everybody, I’m very excited to be here with you today to talk all about mobile app promotion on Twitter. Some of you guys might be aware, we launched a new product suite last week to effectively distribute your application across the Twitter ecosystem, and that’s what I’m going to talk about today.
Some data points before we move into the product itself. We have 255,000,000 monthly active users globally. In the UK alone, we have 15,000,000 monthly actives. Of course, 80% of that usage is mobile. We are a mobile-driven platform. Mobile is in our DNA. Twitter is always a mobile-driven product. It originally started out as an SMS product, and it has evolved into the platform it has become today. We can see the ubiquity of that usage across every single access point for the consumer, where 50% of our users use Twitter during their commute, 25% while shopping, and of course 66% in front of the TV. Given that second screen phenomenon where Twitter is very, very strong.
What we’re seeing more and more, and why we’re all in this room today, is because app discoverability is a key challenge for every marketeer. It’s a pain point in the industry. We see that our user behavior on the platform leverages that, where Twitter is an app discovery platform. Sixty-five percent of our users alone have installed an app in the last month, and it’s not across one single category. It’s across every single category in the app store, from mobile gaming, through to sports, through to entertainments. Twitter is by far and away a space where these users live and breathe. They come to Twitter to learn about new apps, to share new applications, and to build up buzz in the platform as well.
As you guys are well aware, there are 2,000,000 apps in both the iOS and Play Stores respectively. The challenge is, how can you break through that noise? How can you break through that clutter that exists in the marketplace today? And in that context, that’s the challenge that we were presented with as a business. The challenge to build a more robust and comprehensive mobile app solution for developers and marketeers, an end-to-end, fully integrated solution to distribute your application on Twitter, which I’ll talk about in a moment.
Two themes in the industry are, obviously you have right user acquisition, but secondly, how can you re-engage consumers? Because consumers’ users are downloading your application, there’s no guarantee that those users are going to be highly engaged users. Re-engagement is a theme for us. It’s something that we’re focusing on extensively. You see recent acquisitions like the top commerce that we’ve made, which will become clear as their product matures. As it stands now, there’s a very, very effective way to re-engagement consumers on the platform, cross-promote those users, reactivate those dormant users that many of your applications may have.
And what makes Twitter so special is that across every single category, there are all these predictable moments of intent. Predictable moments of intents to drive out discovery on Twitter across all of those app store categories that we discussed, gaming, sports, finance, music. There’s a clear space in the platform for every single business. It’s not just one app store category where we are strong.
Here’s a really good illustration of that, and apologies for the cheesy video. This is a piece of content that my American colleagues made. So this is Chloe. Chloe’s at a concert. She’s having a really good time. She’s with all of her friends and taken a picture of a disco ball. What kind of concert do you think this could be? Maybe it could be Pharrell, might be Rihanna, or Beyoncé maybe. Well as it turns out, Chloe’s a big Tom Jones fan. She’s tweeted out, “This Tom Jones fan in London is rocking right now. Really, really excited about it.”
And if you’re a savvy marketeer, and you’re listening, and you know how the Twitter platform works, around those predictable moments of intents, watch the opportunity. The opportunity is to reach Chloe, based on the subject matter and content of her tweets, and narrow the funnel to reach high value users, users that would have good lifetime value.
In this example, Spotify could be targeting Chloe as a Samsung S5 user who’s on a Wi-Fi connection, who’s interested in music, who’s tweeting about Tom Jones, and follows Tom Jones along with multiple other contextual and real-time signals. Chloe clicks through and installs the application, but as a business, we’re aware of a second pain point in the industry, and that’s that users are downloading applications, but some of those users do not open the app at that point in time, or at any point in time.
This is the product feature that’s completely unique to Twitter. It’s called iOS install notifications. So at the highest moment of intent, when Chloe is downloading that application, her highest moment of intent, she’s just downloaded, we will surface a reminder to Chloe inside the application that will deep-link her into the app that she’s just installed. Once she goes back into Twitter, in order to close that gap between users who are downloading, but users who are not opening. And obviously conversion attribution only takes place when the user opens the application post-install.
So let’s deep-dive a little bit more into the product. What is mobile app promotion? Mobile app promotion is now this robust and comprehensive that it enables developers and marketeers to drive installs through Twitter. It is extended far beyond the single app card that some of the folks in this room may have used previously.
It has four core pillars. The first is targeting. The second is creative. The third is measurement, and the fourth is campaign management. And all of those in combination form the foundation of why it’s a very, very compelling and valuable product.
I want to give you a quick product overview of the user flow that you’ve just seen in the Chloe example. So initially, the user is exposed to the promoted tweet, visually engaging and creative, compelling message, ensuring that relevancy exists between the user cohorts that you’re targeting, and the creative itself. Chloe clicks through to the app store in one click, and that conversion is immediately registered in ads.twitter.com, through partnerships with mobile measurement partners that I’ll talk about in a moment.
First of all, it starts with targeting. Everything starts with targeting. But to fully understand the value of how to reach users on Twitter, we first need to understand what the user behavior is on our platform. So Twitter is that live medium. Everything happens in real time on the platform. It’s why topics trend on Twitter. Twitter is a space where users are coming to learn about new things, what’s trending in their world.
On the platform every single two days, there are a billion tweets sent and delivered on Twitter. But I don’t want you to think of them as tweets, because they’re not tweets. They’re not tweets alone. They’re opportunities. They’re opportunities for every marketeer, every developer, to drive an install on the platform every two days, one billion opportunities.
And when we look at those predictable moments of intent that I discussed to drive app discovery on the platform, it’s across every single category. Here’s an example in sports, 13.5 million sports related mentions in a single week on Twitter. Likewise, with retail, if you’re an ecommerce application, a mobile commerce application, there are all of these opportunities to leverage the recency and intents exhibited by our users on our platform, and finally with gaming.
Nine-point-three mobile gaming mentions, delivered on the platform on a daily basis. And with all of that in mind, that user behavior, Twitter excels at two things, and that’s uncovering recency, uncovering intent, and being able to find and leverage those users who are most relevant to your application. And you’re able to target users on the platform through what they’re interested in, whom they follow, what they’re tweeting about, the actual keywords, what they’re searching for, what TV shows they’re interested in through TV conversations targeting, giving that trend we’re seeing with a lot of mobile gaming, mobile advertisers currently, and overlaying all of that with location-based targeting, gender-based targeting, device OS and Wi-Fi targeting.
And moving closer to your user is incredibly important, narrowing the funnel. We have the ability, you as a marketeer have the ability, to target up to 72 explicit different devices. Focusing on those handsets that offer your application best monetization already, and ensuring that you’re replicating that on Twitter. So for example, if you’re an ecommerce app, you want to reach premium users with disposable income, why not target Samsung S5 users? Why not target iOS users with the latest handset? If you’re a gaming application, Wi-Fi targeting is also very important, and that capability now exists on the platform.
Driving advocacy with your CPI is something that we wanted to focus on with this product release. We wanted to ensure that every impression, every click, every install was as ROI positive as it possibly could be. And to do that, we’ve introduced tailored audiences that enable you to focus on user acquisition through uploading device ID’s, as on ads.twitter.com, or on the inverse, focusing on those users who have best behaviors for your application, ensuring that they continue to have good lifetime value, and that they will remain loyal consumers.
Here’s a good illustration of that. You will be able to identify your total universe in the platform. In this example it’s gaming, and uploading device IDs, finding that cross-section, and ensuring you can omit those users to drive better advocacy with your cost per click, and drive better advocacy with the subsequent cost per install.
Creative is the second pillar. With creative, we wanted to afford marketeers more controls, more freedom, to showcase content rich applications, showcase the content that sits inside your app in a very, very compelling way. And what you’ll see here are two examples of creatives that we’ve released as part of this product suite. On your left hand side is the basic app card. On the right hand side is a large image app card. Large image app card is fully expanded in the user’s timeline. You’ll see large and prominent call to action, installs, social actions arrest prominence, but social actions are incredibly important for virility and for K factor for your application. Then we’ll speak on that in a moment.
Here is an example from mobile gaming developer LOTUM in Germany, also 4Pics, one word, is one of their titles, and LOVOO in Germany also. The iOS install notifications is a product feature that’s specific to their app right now, but something that we have seen to drive down your cost per install and ensure that conversions are registering more quickly than they would previously.
All right, charging model is a key piece as well. It’s the first time that we, as a business, have moved towards an objective based charging model. Previously, marketeers incurred costs on a cost-per-engagement basis. Brands love engagement, performance marketeers less so. Now you will only incur cost for any user action that results in a click to the app store. So any other actions, like retweets, favorites, replies, no marketeer will incur any cost. No business will incur any cost. However, those actions are still incredibly important, and if any of those actions occur, it’s all earned media. It’s all free media. It’s virility for your application.
Measurement is the third pillar, and through very, very strong partnerships with third party tracking providers, we’re able to provide you with real time conversion data for your teams and for marketing teams to optimize all of that performance in real time. This launch would not be made possible without these guys. I want to give them a quick shout out: Mobile App Tracking, Kochava, Ad-X, Fix You, Grab Analytics, and AppsFlyer.
Conversion tracking, we wanted to make this as seamless as possible for every marketeer in this room. And in the space of two minutes, you can get it set up, establish a secure link between your tracking dashboard and your Twitter ads accounts, in the self-serve flow, identify those conversion events which are most important to you. If you want to measure CPI, which is crucial, you’ll be able to measure that and have it on full display in your dashboard. If you want to set up custom events, more sophisticated metrics, like Day 1 Retention Rates, any kind of quantitative or qualitative custom events, you can set those up and have them fully visible inside the ads you want.
So what can you track? You’re able to track performance at every stage throughout the funnel, from clicks, to installs, through to downstream actions and deeper funnel events, custom events for export via CSV, inside ads.twitter.com, and also this will be fully visible in your ads dashboard. Being able to map all of that data back to user cohorts, for example, I as a marketeer may have a campaign live that’s targeting females interested in fashion, located in London, iOS, between the hours of 9:00 and 6:00. I’ll then be able to map all of that data back to device IDs, pull it into my own business intelligence system, presenting subsequent opportunities for reactivation in Twitter, and remarketing in Twitter, and showing that you can focus on those users with customized messaging.
The fourth pillar is campaign management, and in line with the objective based charging model that we’ve introduced, we want to introduce an objective-based, self-intuitive campaign flow, which is what you see here. So dependent upon your objective, if it’s app installs, or re-engagements, we’ll pop you Into a stream, prompts to build our campaigns, programmatic type campaign building facilities inside the ads you serve, being able to build multiple creatives, hundreds of creatives across both of those ad units that we discussed for A/B Testing, to understand true performance of your mobile ad span and focus on what’s working, and of course, conversions data is crucial to all of this. Campaign data will be visible across every single campaign, from what your CPC is to what your Cost Per Install is, to what your Lifetime Value is across all of those users too.
I want to show two cases of these to prove that this actually does work. So what you’ll see here is an example from GetTaxi, a business in the UK, and the US, Russia, Israel as well, international business. And there is a challenge, their business challenge. We’re presented with an opportunity to unlock the value of Twitter from a performance perspective. And looking at the key metrics, what they found is that not only can they unlock the value of Twitter as a CPI channel, as a hard stop CPI channel, achieving 30% lower cost per install.
They also found that those users have transactive behaviors inside the application, where as compared to any other channel GetTaxi were using, twice the number of bookings came from Twitter users, as compared to any other channel. This is illustrating the quality of Twitter users, and that those transactive behaviors do exist.
Similarly with LOVOO, a social discovery application with over 12 million users, their challenge was similar. It was to focus on Twitter from a performance perspective. And looking at their key success metrics from a CPI perspective, their CPI is 50% lower than any other channel that they were focusing on. Again, it’s illustrating the value of Twitter, and this goes hand in hand with scaling. CPIs are one thing, but if you’re not able to scale your performance and drive thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of installs on a daily, weekly, monthly basis, the value is not there. And we’ve seen all of our partners throughout their time working with us, and since we’ve launched publicly to achieve both CPI and scaling.
Other content there, folks, I want to summarize the most salient points of our discussion today for you guys to take away. The first is that mobile app promotion on Twitter is now a holistic solution, a fully baked, end-to-end solution with four pillars. We’ve evolved significantly beyond the text driven platform that Twitter was. It’s now a visually engaging medium.
Second take-away is to focus on that and leverage the visually engaging medium. Our users demand and expect that from marketeers in the platform. They want visually engaging content that’s relevant to them.
The third is to test, iterate and optimize. Insuring that you can optimize for performance in real time is crucial. And we’ve seen some advertisers scale from day one. We’ve seen some advertisers take up to ten days. But the opportunity is there.
And finally, a scale app performance. Once you’re able to achieve a CPI and protect your bottom line through measuring the lifetime value of those users, scale app performance for your business. And thanks so much, folks, and I hope that was really helpful. I’ll be around to chat to anybody who wants to speak at the networking sessions. Thanks.
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