Human Demand reports that targeted campaigns run through this platform boast a 300 percent higher retention rate when compared to traditional, untargeted ad campaigns and it manages this success without infringing on a user's privacy.
We caught up with Human Demand's CEO Howie Schwartz to get a little more detail on what this platform means for developers and the industry as a whole.
Pocket Gamer: Can you explain what re-engagement is and why it is so important?
Howie Schwartz: Mobile app re-engagement allows game developers to 're-market' to their previously acquired / installed users and increase repeat usage.
'Re-marketing' allows delivering custom creative (banners) when their users are in apps that monetise with in-app advertising.
This is important because mobile game developers are spending typically all of their time and resources on acquiring new users, but apps in general have an issue of poor retention, so the life-time value (LTV) of the users are diminished.
Re-engagement for mobile apps has a similar goal to 'retargeting' in desktop advertising, which commands a large percentage of desktop digital ad spend.
What challenges do you see developers facing when trying to focus their advertising and engagement campaigns?
Re-engagement is the next critical step as the app marketing industry matures. It is a straight forward process working with Human Demand on re-engagement campaigns.
The biggest challenge that we have seen is planning out custom creative (banners).
Typically developers have a limited set of creative assets they have used in the past. The most successful campaigns we have seen run on our platform use custom creative that leverage 'characters' in the game.
When re-marketing to more advanced players, especially ones who have made in-app purchase or have made it to a deeper level in the game, leveraging assets from those advanced levels or special characters that your player would have a connection to really gets their attention vs. a generic banner.
Can you explain how Human Demand's mobile campaign re-targeting is accomplished?
On the desktop web, re-targeting of ads based on a user's past activity leverages third party cookies.
Since we have no cookies in mobile apps we use device ids of the previously acquired users for both iOS and Android, and we bid across 10 exchanges, so that when we find that device id, we deliver the targeted ad.
Developers can easily and safely upload their device ids that they wish to re-engage with in a secure setting and the device ids are hashed so Human Demand doesn't retain any raw device id's, and they are assigned to the specific campaigns.
Privacy is - rightfully - becoming a primary concern of a lot of mobile users. How does Human Demand deliver targeted campaigns without infringing on a user's privacy?
Privacy is even more important on mobile then desktop advertising, as our devices are more personal.
Earlier this year, Human Demand announced its partnership with TRUSTe, the leading global privacy management solutions provider. Our re-engagement ads include the TRUSTed Mobile Ads icon, allowing users to opt-out of re-engagement directly from the ad unit.
Can developers select on which users their campaigns target? Specifically, can they include/exclude whales from campaigns aimed at general users?
Yes, this is some of the most interesting campaigns we are seeing.
Developers are initially re-engaging players from the past few weeks or month and then are executing more interesting / advanced segmentation.
Going after whales with custom creative is really strong in bringing those high value users back to the game, especially if they haven't opened the app in the past few weeks.
Developers can also segment their lists to exclude whales from more general re-marketing campaigns. We have seen some developers run with two segmented lists and some going more granular with custom creative tailored against 6+ lists.
You claim that Human Demand shows an engagement rate 300 percent higher than untargeted campaigns. Is this a figure that developers will see in both the App Store and Google Play?
Yes, we see similar lift on both app stores, but iOS has been slightly higher.
The more interesting creative yielded the biggest lift over untargeted campaigns. Since iOS has a larger focus on in-app purchases over Android, we have seen more granular segmentation with iOS campaigns, with developers running custom creative with users at different levels of in-app purchases, which further increase engagement.
Thanks to Howie for his time.
You can find out more about the services Human Demand offers via its website.
