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By Munira Rangwala

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Every marketing campaign starts out with the same goal - to make an audience aware of a product. Once that’s done, the next step is to move users down the sales and demand generation funnel. There are a number of ways in which this can be done. In this article we will look at data-focused performance marketing and high-level brand marketing. Fortunately, there are several tools that can help you measure how successful your marketing approach is and which route works best for you.

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Let’s start by looking at Performance Marketing

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Performance marketing is a form of advertising that focuses on specific outcomes that can be measured. This includes metrics such as Cost per Click, Return on Ad Spend, and Cost per Conversion. Because gaming is a deeply engaging and immersive activity, there is immense scope for carrying out targeted ads and indulging in other performance marketing activities. Moreover, because game playing is repetitive in nature, it is apt for concrete ROI-based performance marketing strategies.

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Now let’s take a look at Brand Marketing

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Brand Marketing is a high-level technique that highlights the values, strength, and emotions of a brand. The main aim of brand marketing is to increase awareness for a brand and the values it represents as well as to nurture a feeling of trust and warmth between a brand and its users. Brand marketing often doesn’t provide the same kind of feedback as its counterpart - data-rich performance marketing.

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To ensure there aren’t any blind spots in your overall UA strategy, we’ve put together a playbook of performance metrics spanning the entire user journey.

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PROFITABILITY

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Lifetime Value (LTV) can be defined as the revenue generated by a single user over the course of the entire time that they play a game. In mathematical terms, LTV is the sum of ‘average spend per day’ multiplied by ‘number of days of engagement’. 

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Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) is the determining metric for profitability. Today, gaming marketers have no choice but to spend large portions of their marketing budget on UA. ROAS can help you better evaluate the quality of users you acquire alongside the performance of your campaign. 

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Ad Revenue is the money your game will generate from in-app advertising. App ad revenue is calculated by multiplying eCPM (effective cost per mille) and ad impressions. For mobile games, ad revenue typically looks like ads such as rewarded video ads, offer walls, interstitials, and banner ads.

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IAP Revenue or In-App Purchase Revenue model can result in impressive returns when implemented correctly. In-app purchases allow users to pay real money for items or features they want to purchase while playing a mobile game. Depending on the game type, that can include extra lives, weapons, coins, unlocking levels, etc.

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Average Revenue Per Daily Active User (ARPDAU) tells you how much revenue your active users generate for your game every day. ARPDAU income is a combination of revenue from multiple sources like ads, in-app purchases (IAPs), and subscriptions. 

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Paid users are those who pay for the premium version of your game.  As a rule of thumb, the higher your paid users are, the higher your income and therefore the more successful your game.

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CAMPAIGN EFFECTIVENESS

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Cost Per Install or CPI is the cost of generating one new install or download. CPI is determined by a variety of variables such as platform, geography, and device. As compared to CTR, CPI targets audiences who install applications and tend to give a more in-depth analysis of the performance of your game. 

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Cost per 1,000 impressions better known as CPM is a metric that represents how much money advertisers are spending to show ads on YouTube. An ad impression is counted anytime an ad is displayed.

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CTR or Click Through Rate tests the amount of clicks your ad receives against your total traffic. To calculate the CTR, you simply divide your impressions by the number of clicks you received. CTR allows you to get a very early capture of your game’s potential marketability, with merely a short gameplay video or imagery.

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APP ENGAGEMENT

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RR or Retention Rate is a key metric that allows you to save your budget on new user acquisition and grow through repeat purchases. RR = ((Number of clients in the end of the period - Number of clients who came for the whole period) / Number of clients at the beginning of the period) * 100%

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Daily Active User (DAU) is the number of unique users who use the app at least once per day. DAU helps evaluate the game’s potential if you increase retention and engagement. It shows the proportion of the number of users who have installed the game and play it every day.

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Session length is a metric that shows the amount of time a user spends playing a mobile game. A session starts at the moment when a user opens an app and lasts until the user closes it or stops actively using it. Session length can be calculated by subtracting the time when the user became inactive from the time the game was opened. 

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App Stickiness can be simply defined as the number of days users visit your app in a span of 30 days. There is an easy formula for calculating stickiness. Divide DAU by MAU and multiply by 30. High stickiness is proof that users are interested in your game and visit it frequently.

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Abandonment rate is used to measure the time span in which a player abandons a game. Players can abandon game for a variety of reasons like if they are easily bored, interrupted by too many ads or when a game lags.

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Why it’s important to create a healthy mix of Brand and Performance Marketing

Brand marketing and performance marketing can go hand-in-hand, but how much to focus on each type depends on individual companies. Focusing on brand marketing alone is not just costly, but is also slow to yield results. Too much focus on performance marketing may yield immediate results, but you may be foregoing a chance to build brand loyalty and customer retention in the long run. Companies should therefore focus on inspiring consumers with a brand message and creating brand loyalty in the long run. However, if your product offering is unclear, brandishing your brand’s credentials won’t do you much good.

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"There are 34,000 advertisers on the App Store, whereas Android has triple that number!"
- Peter Fodor, Founder & CEO of AppAgent

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If you’re about to launch a new game, you need to make the most of the available marketing tools - both in performance as well as brand marketing. When it comes to metrics, you can’t just pick one and stick to it. Leading developer and publisher of digital games, SciPlay, ran creative optimization tests and the result was clear: brand improves performance. So it’s best to use different strategies that complement each other so your brand comes out on top while also driving immediate results. 

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