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SDK App Installs - The Good, The Bad, The Ugly of $XX,XXX/day (9)

08-14-2017 02:26 PM #1 delfinoloco (Member)
SDK App Installs - The Good, The Bad, The Ugly of $XX,XXX/day

What's up everyone, long time lurker first time poster here.

*TLDR: I run a lot of app installs, but think I suck at app installs, send help.*

Here's the deal, I have SDK access to a casino app that is being run in a certain geo. It is a bit gray hat so accounts going down is an issue from time to time. I have 15 accounts on it at all times, each account responsible for a 3-year age gap starting at 20 and going up to 65 with each spending between $200 and $600/day. Since accounts still go down this seemed like the easiest way to keep things running like a well oiled machine at all times.

Every account has campaigns for iOS and Android, and there's lots of multivariate testing going on i.e. Lookalike audiences, source %'s, interests, creatives etc.

The Good: The good thing is that iOS and Android run at a profit of around 30% and 50% respectively.

The Bad: iOS and Android run at a profit of 30% and 50% respectively. Kidding. The bad is I feel like I'm almost certainly leaving ROI on the table. As someone who is relatively new to the App game I can say with confidence that my costs are high and my (shit?) creatives are probably responsible for it. $4~ Android CPI, $8+ iOS CPI.

The Ugly: I get paid on player deposits in the app...However for now (it will be updated soon) deposits don't post back to Facebook so I'm essentially running blind. I CAN however see signups, and have been in the casino vertical long enough to use that as a reliable indicator of deposits.


Does anyone here have any experience in running apps on Facebook? Looking to info swap, or just bounce to thoughts and stats off someone with experience. I have a ton of data and am willing to be very transparent. Shoot me a PM or feel free to ask questions/reply on thread.

08-15-2017 03:04 AM #2 vortex (Senior Moderator)

Moved to the Facebook section - and bumping the thread to get more attention.



Amy

08-15-2017 08:04 AM #3 stickupkid (Senior Moderator)

"The bad is I feel like I'm almost certainly leaving ROI on the table. "
Show some ad examples or stats from FB, so people might help you out to get the costs lower!

08-15-2017 01:15 PM #4 delfinoloco (Member)

Quote Originally Posted by stickupkid View Post
"The bad is I feel like I'm almost certainly leaving ROI on the table. "
Show some ad examples or stats from FB, so people might help you out to get the costs lower!
Will do. This is an adset I was running this week using "Layered interests" and segmenting by age. The interests start broad and then "narrow" down to more specific casino focused interests.
Click image for larger version.  Name: sample_adset.jpg  Views: 113  Size: 56.2 KB  ID: 16348
I didn't go over 60 because I can't imagine there's that many 60+ year olds out there downloading mobile casinos and playing them on the phones. I would imagine that the small text within the app makes it difficult to use.

This is a sample ad from within that adset. I was testing using "Twitch/YouTube live footage" with a custom thumbnail - it cleared the Text Overlay Tool. At first (first $75) the ad performed well, but as you can see from adset stats it settled at a low CTR high CPC.
Click image for larger version.  Name: sample_ad.png  Views: 176  Size: 85.9 KB  ID: 16349

I have since enlisted the services of several Ad Spy tools. Typically I hate using them as I feel they are a creative crutch but I decided in this situation it could be useful to compile a list of top performing images/texts and keyword pairs, tailor them to my needs, and split them against each other. The results this morning looked great, but on very little spend...
Click image for larger version.  Name: good sample.png  Views: 65  Size: 21.2 KB  ID: 16347
(sorry for potato quality images)

I will scale and see how the numbers hold

08-17-2017 02:27 PM #5 delfinoloco (Member)

A quick followup on that promising adset for those interested. I duplicated the exact ads/adsets onto 2 other accounts and segmented ages as to not overlap. The results were night and day (see below). I have found that is far to often the case in mobile app installs. Initial campaign launches usually result in promising stats. Within a day or two they almost always go to shit. There's no consistency to them and I can't wrap my head around why.
Original Promising Adset Ages 20-59
Click image for larger version.  Name: good sample.png  Views: 57  Size: 21.2 KB  ID: 16391
Duplicate 1 Ages 20-39
Click image for larger version.  Name: 20-39.png  Views: 40  Size: 16.6 KB  ID: 16392
Duplicate 2 Ages 40-59
Click image for larger version.  Name: 40-59.png  Views: 34  Size: 62.7 KB  ID: 16393

Duplicate 1 wasn't as bad as the latter, but still costs were up 2-3x from the original. The CPC's on both those adsets were reasonable. Usually when my costs shoot up it's due to monster CPC's, in this case it seems to be low click:install %. Anyways, just looking for some insight or advice in this frustrating vertical. Feel free to ask any questions here or PM.

08-18-2017 04:17 PM #6 delfinoloco (Member)

Quote Originally Posted by vortex View Post
Moved to the Facebook section - and bumping the thread to get more attention.



Amy
Any ideas on getting more exposure here? I would love nothing more than to find someone(s) on this forum who are well versed in App Installs I can dialogue with I have a ton more data and screenshots I can post...I suppose I could do a follow along but as it is there's not enough time in the day to get things done much less organize and host a follow along.

08-19-2017 04:50 PM #7 wiifmdude ()

I'm not running in this vertical so not too sure but your CTR looks very low (is that your CTR on a lower range, e.g. 1% lookalike audience ??), obviously CTR doesn't mean much but still.

What's your relevance score ?

08-19-2017 05:51 PM #8 vortex (Senior Moderator)

Quote Originally Posted by delfinoloco View Post
Any ideas on getting more exposure here? I would love nothing more than to find someone(s) on this forum who are well versed in App Installs I can dialogue with I have a ton more data and screenshots I can post...I suppose I could do a follow along but as it is there's not enough time in the day to get things done much less organize and host a follow along.
This thread can be considered to be a follow-along!

Please feel free to post some of your data right here.

I don't have a lot of experience with FB yet, and certainly not with SDKs on FB. But if you'll post some data, I'll try to bump your thread after every update to get more eyeballs on it.



Amy

08-30-2017 11:48 PM #9 storybird (Member)

PMed you, check your inbox

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