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The open internet conjures up images of a vast unregulated domain—an online wild west fraught with danger and uncertainty.
The truth is far more prosaic. Nopparat Yokubon, country lead, AUNZ/SEA of AI performance ad company Moloco prefers the term independent app ecosystem which refers to a collection of apps and websites that we find on our phones and computers that are not affiliated with tech giants such as Google and Meta. This ecosystem helps mobile phone users access a variety of services that are used every day: productivity tools, banking and finance, ride hailing, and food delivery, and of course entertainment with games and streaming video.
Irrespective of the name, the independent app ecosystem is growing in popularity among mobile users. To track its relevance to consumers and advertisers Moloco released the Performance Through Independence report in collaboration with SensorTower and Singular, and found that an average mobile phone user spends time across over 26 apps in a month in the independent app ecosystem, which comprises more than 3 million apps, reaches 2 billion people daily: larger than the daily users of TikTok and Instagram combined. For a mobile first market like Southeast Asia, these numbers trend even higher in some cases. In Indonesia, users spend time on over 50 apps every month.
Discussing the most important takeaways from the report, Yokubon said, “Everything needs to start from the user and how they spend their time. With the volume of apps used in markets across the world on the rise, social media app usage is facing a decline.” Users are instead spending time on a varied family of apps that serve different purposes or activities. The second critical finding according to Yokubon is that there are rewards to be reaped by marketers who diversify their media mix to meet changing user behaviour on the independent app ecosystem.
Yokubon illustrates this point with an example from Vietnam. Ecofriendly ride hailing service Xanh SM wanted to increase user retention and repeat purchases to secure loyalty. Yokubon said, “Realising that the users’ time spent on the internet looks quite different now, we partnered with them to help with their reengagement strategy.” Working with first party data from Xanh SM, and with mobile measurement partners, Moloco could segment users and arrive at a better understanding of lapsed consumers of the service. Moloco was thus able to deliver the right ad at the most appropriate time to a user currently on the independent app ecosystem. Yokubon admitted, “The results are quite astonishing. We have been able to help them double their repeat rides and beat the cost per target acquisition.”
Another example comes from ShopBack, an Asia Pacific based cashback and rewards platform. Against the backdrop of signal loss on iOS after Apple implemented new privacy measures, ShopBack was eager to expand into more markets and drive growth. Through the course of this expansion, the company was mindful of customer acquisition cost (CAC) and user quality as measured by iOS’s proprietary measurement framework SKAN. Yokubon said, “We partnered ShopBack to understand where they want to get more users from and the specific markets that they would like to expand to. We have helped them grow from three to eight markets and at the same time, grew their SKAN results by 15x, while keeping the costs constant.”
The automated nature of the process allows these solutions to be deployed without manual intervention to power outcome-based marketing.
With different developers and businesses creating new usage patterns and meeting consumer needs, the independent app ecosystem gives advertisers a wider than ever before canvas to adapt and tailor their marketing strategy. Machine learning and AI help deliver only the most relevant audiences to advertisers.
Yokubon said, “The independent app ecosystem needs technology partners who can help harvest the value. It depends on the technology partner being able to predict the right uses and bid for them at the right price.” The key is to walk the fine line between being relevant without overpaying and being able to serve ads across engaging formats. Beyond simple demographic targeting, placement targeting with AI solutions from technology partners like Moloco helps keep the focus on consumer and marketing objectives and translate them into the right prediction and bidding.
Explaining Moloco’s approach when it comes to using AI to highlight relevant opportunities, Yokubon said, “We see more than 660 billion ad opportunities daily, but we end up buying 1% only. The key message here is not about volume but getting the right fit. The 1% matters because it demonstrates how we filter out a lot of ad opportunities that are not the best option for advertisers, taking into consideration aspects such as the context of the ad and brand safety. We consider our advertiser’s KPI and what really matters to them to zoom in on and narrow down the right ad opportunity to ensure the best outcome.”
Although some apps are subscription based, there is a growing trend towards ad supported apps. Yokubon has also seen a sharp uptick in the usage of AI based tools and applications: a category that promises to be the next frontier for the independent app ecosystem.
To know more about why marketers should not over-index on walled gardens; clear popular misconceptions around ROI, audience segmentation, and ROAS on the open internet; and to discover how AI is being used to advertise better within independent app ecosystems, please watch the attached video.