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How to Run a Mobile App Install Offer (by FBQueen) (31)

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MARKET RESEARCH
When you have decided that you want to run mobile app installs on Facebook you want to start the whole project with a throughout research. We all know that every successful affiliate campaign starts with market research.

You are starting out in a very lucky time because several tools and softwares are there for you to eliminate the boring manual work. Not too long ago many marketers had to outsource this task, taking lots of precious time and causing so much headache.

Start your research by looking up the biggest players in the game. Find out who the biggest advertisers are – but you need to look beyond the cyber space. Check out TV ads and the techie newspapers too!

Okay, let’s be realistic here: you have three ways to go when finding the right offer to run.

1. Check out stats and top charts and pick an offer that is already high in demand: A great tool you can use is called App Annie: The tool allows you to find out what apps are trending and making the most money. It has a free version that is still providing so much useful information. Sign up to see insider stats so you can start digging deeper in the app installs field.

2. Ask your AM (Affiliate Manager) what works! It is simple as that. Just pick up your phone or hit him up on Skype and ASK. “Hey man, what are the top 5 best-converting mobile app install offers you have on the plate right now – can you please provide EPC reports so I can better decide which one to run?” Keep in mind that the EPC report is just an overall mix of all the traffic sources on the internet, so it will not give you an accurate number but it is still useful to decide which does well at the moment.

3. Search our spy tool! Just go to WhatAdsWork and click on the “New Ads” button. Once you’re there select the ad type you want to spy on and go thru the ads. Also take into consideration the "estimated CTR” metric because it will help you identify the ads that are most likely making profit for the advertiser. The ideology behind is that the longer you see an ad running AND the more often – the more money is spent on it thus it must be making profit for the advertiser.

PICKING THE OFFER
In this case study we are going to look for mobile app games. Mobile games are fun, easy to download and you can try them easily on your own mobile device.

Example: So I went on a call with my AM from one of the mobile CPA Networks and got a hint that I should try Game of War. Even though it’s capped out for 100 leads/day – it is still a perfect campaign to get your feet wet and run something on a lower daily budget.

Payout: $4/download (decent payout for a CPI offer)
Geo: INTL (lots of room for testing various countries)
Restrictions: iPhone and iPad traffic only (makes our life easier when it comes to testing)


Just look at the opportunity here – it is available in so many countries! You get paid $4 every time someone installs this game on his iPhone or iPad.

The next thing I looked at was the ranking on AppAnnie (see picture below). This app has been stable and in the top 100 on average. It is advised to take a look at long-term and short-term rankings as well.

Long-term stats will show stability while short-term stats will show demand. If the app is still high on demand it will be on the top of the chart

This app is heavily advertised on TV too! Check out their latest Super Bowl commercial featuring one of the hottest American model Kate Upton (sex sells):

Rule of Thumb: Once you have your offer Download And Play It! Test it to see for yourself how good or bad it is.

Next thing you need to check is the compatibility! In the iTunes store it says:

“Compatibility: Requires iOS 5.0 or later. Compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. This app is optimized for iPhone 5.”

Now that we know it’s optimized mainly for iPhone 5 – that’s what you mainly want to target in your ad campaigns.

SETTING UP CAMPAIGN
Things you need: Affiliate link, Tracking tool, Simple Landing Page, Facebook Ads Account, a Facebook Page and Creatives.

Step1: Pull your affiliate link from your network

Step2: Convert it into a tracking link (You can use Voluum, Thrive or CPVLab for tracking)

Step3: Set up a Stupid Simple Landing Page for your ad. (Since Facebook requires you to register your app on Facebook, you will need to set up a landing page where you can place your affiliate link.)

Step4: Create your angle – look up images that you will use in your ads. Since we have Kate Upton as the brand image for this game we can pull pretty appealing images from Google and put it into our ads.

We already have an idea that we’re most likely going to target men. Sex sells anyway!

Here comes the easy part! Step-by-Step do the following:

Login to your Facebook ads account, on the left hand side click on Power Editor and then once you’re in simply Download your ads account’s data.

Click on the “+” sign to create a new campaign and select your objective: WEBSITE CONVERSIONS. Name your campaign and click Create.

Next you need to create a new Ad Set. Name it as you wish.

Select your targeting. Here is where you can get really really creative. Don’t be afraid to go into the Audience Insights and look for competitive apps. You can also target facebook users who has played games in the past few weeks.

Here’s my targeting for this campaign:
When you select your target “Placements” – simply select Mobile News Feed and choose the most appropriate device – in this case it is iPhone5:
Your Ad Set should be optimized as “Bid For Clicks”. Don’t hesitate to bid 2-3x more than what your “Suggested bid” is. You are more likely to get better and more traffic than your competition, so I encourage you to test it!

Now that you have created your ad set, go to the next tab and create your ads. Keep in mind that you should create 3 duplicates of each ad variations. The reason it is important to do is because each ad will get a different placement and one usually outperforms the other two. So let’s say you have 3 ad variations – create 3 duplicates of each – 9 ads in total! First stage is testing images what really grabs attention. In this case Kate Upton is a true attention grabber! Once you’ve found your winning image test your ad copy. Don’t be lazy and try to test as many images as you just find!

WARNING: Before you duplicate your ads create a conversion-tracking pixel:

The conversion tracking pixel needs to be sent to your affiliate manager who should place it to the proper page. Once people download the app, your tracking link gonna trigger a report to your affiliate network and to Facebook. This way Facebook will know which ad placements generate the most downloads/installs and will auto-optimize your campaign for maximum outcome!

Go ahead, click on “Upload Changes” and wait for approval. Your ads should be approved in a matter of hours – it can take up to 12 hours or even a day – just be patient and wait. Once your ads are approved you can expect traffic in an hour or two.

Good luck and make data driven decisions!!

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Great run down Franco! Thanks for the post.

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Thank you very much! This is extremely informative!

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Sorry but can you explain Step 3:

"Step3: Set up a Stupid Simple Landing Page for your ad. (Since Facebook requires you to register your app on Facebook, you will need to set up a landing page where you can place your affiliate link.)"

Why can't you link directly to the app in the appstore for example?

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How do you separate your demo?

I would think

- gender
- age (blocks of 5 years)
- interest
- behavior
- carrier vs wifi (which btw.. is it even possible? i asked this here)

Is this an overkill?

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nice thought and going to try this method soon.
But honestly, i seriously doubt if this is profitable for $4 CPI for game of war.

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its profitable, we ran this and did well - all depends on how creative you can get with the angle.

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Hey iAmAttila. Love your posts..

Question.. I notice you mentioned in few posts that you no longer run some of these offers that you have found profitable. Is the reason why you no longer run them based on time investment vs. ROI objective? If they're relatively autopilot, why would you kill them especially since you have an outsourcing company (i.e. rel. cheap labor) to keep the campaigns going?

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Exact reason why charles ngo is giving away his small campaigns to people in his affcellerator program. Opportunity cost. My team is busy running bigger exclusive offers that yield higher roi.

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@ybyalik, in this case, you CANNOT directly link to the appstore ...or, how could you track your sales?

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Well even if you have it go to a landing page first, how would you truck sales ultimately anyway from a download?

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Your Affiliate Manager or yourself can place the tracking pixel for you in the CPA Network, so you will see conversion reports on FB!

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Just how you would for any other affiliate offer run through networks. With tracking. What specific event happens is not important. If it is digital it can be tracked.

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Zeno mentioned in his guide that you needed the landing page to get approved, but ultimately you could direct link the right visitors straight to the app. Is that correct?

Also, just to make things clear, if I had 3 banners, should i create a campaign and an ad set with 9 banners overall (3 per each)? Or should they be on different ad sets?

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As far as I know, cookies cannot be used for mobile app tracking, are you sure FB tracking pixel works for iOS App? I seriously doubt that.
Can you show a screenshot of tracked installs on FB with such method?

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I can't understand Step 3 .... Can't I use the Voluum tracking link directly?

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You can track app installs with Facebook conversion tracking, it's the primary method they offer to app developers...

The javascript tracking does not NEED cookies to the best of my knowledge, I presume Facebook can identify you through IP/device IDs/etc. rather than relying on cookie access through an app.

The challenge for affiliate marketers is not whether the tracking works, but being able to place a conversion script with the app developer, since they are often unlikely to let you use anything other than S2S tracking or if you're lucky place an image pixel.

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To get IP/UA, you use server side code, no client side javascript is needed. To get device ID, you need native app code, and javascript cannot help at all. That's why javascript tracking code is used for browsers only and it typically relies on cookies. FB developed mobile app tracking SDK, and why would they did it if the javascript is already working?

Send javascript code to affiliate network for mobile app tracking ... that's just not possible.

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Yes, I think for fb app install tracking ... you need SDK installed ....not javascript .... I'm wrong?

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for website conversion tracking... you can always put a postback tracking or javascript in your affiliate network dashboard

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Yes you're right, my mistake, I was confusing the SDK and the conversion tracking script.

I swear I have used it before and that the image pixel passed conversion data, but it may depend on the app and whether or not FB can get access to the required cookies/permissions/etc. to figure things out.

In the end you'll just use a tracking system anyway and the main disadvantage will be a lack of oCPM functionality.

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Thanks for clarifying Zeno!

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For app installs tracking only works if you own the app or are so close with the app owner you can integrate the sdk fb gives to fire back conversions.

It is not the same as running skin on fb where you can give the cpa network your javascript based pixel tracking code.

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Would it be effective to run something comparing Game Of War to Clash Of Clans or Samurai Siege on FB, or would a sex sells angle be more effective? I have a few landing pages like the following. http://imgur.com/fqHdtuT

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I don't think that I would put a picture of another game than I'm promoting on my landing page since it may cause confusion when they get to the app store but as everyone say here.... better to test than to make assumptions.

So guys what is the verdict regarding the app conversion and Affiliate Networks?

I sent the conversion pixel to my affiliate manager and he fired it up and the pixel didn't verified on Facebook.
Franco or FBQueen, how did you do it?

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Exactly what happened to me at first, my AM swore he placed the pixel right BUT then I did it myself and ofc it worked!! Unfortunately not all affiliate managers are capable of placing the pixel correctly... If you can't do it manually within the network request technical help from the network, make sure they cooperate with you until it's active... Sometimes it's a battle...

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Thank you for the post. It’s very interesting. But I have the problem with Facebook at the moment. I do everything quite similar like you post above. I set up my ads and use voluume for tracking. But stats at Facebook and at Voluum are dramatically different in my case! At voluume stats I see 60-70% less clicks than at Facebook stats. And, of cause, I have less apps installs etc. Could you comment it? What is the reason for it?

Thank you.

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Hi all,

my first post here haha.

I'm searching for FB mobile app install conversion tracking, and read a couple of post.

FBQueen, omrikos, are you guys referring to manually copy&paste FB's "Other website conversion" pixel code into your affiliate networks backend? My network is using CAKE, so I assume I can post the conversion pixel into the "Testing & Tracking" tab?

And pray there's a chance it will work since I wont be able to get my conversion tracking codes to the app developer?

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I'm following this guide but.... question: How to target just IPHONE 5 or ANDROID ... using WEBSITE CONVERSIONS ADS ??

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Look for the "Placement" option within Ad Sets.

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ohhh these options appeared after some hours... thanks fbqueen

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