fiksu facebook report
TRANSCRIPT
InvestigationAudience Network
Value Beyond CPI
Labs Report
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To help marketers understand performance differences between Facebook’s Audience Network, traditional Facebook News Feed ads, and other display networks, Fiksu analyzed loyalty/ROI metrics across a set of apps running on all three segments. While performance varied, our analysis showed that overall, even though Audience Network ads had lower click-through rates and higher CPIs than other sources, user quality proved to be similar to News Feed. Additionally, those Audience Network ads drove an average revenue per user more 24 times that of display networks.
Summary
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Audience Network Introduces New Traffic – and New ChallengesFacebook’s Audience Network brings Facebook’s extensive targeting capabilities to “additional app-based mobile experiences.” Specifically, this means marketers can use Facebook’s powerful targeting capabilities to deliver ads that appear in third-party apps.
Since Facebook’s mobile ads have been nothing if not a runaway success on their own property, expanding their reach and the size of their potential audience would only seem to offer expanded user acquisition opportunities. Unfortunately, some app marketers have a misleading view of Audience Network performance.
One cause of this misconception is the inability to separate ‘traditional’ Facebook campaign results—what we’ll call “News Feed” results, which appear inside the Facebook app—from Audience Network results. Although marketers can get high-level performance stats like impressions, CPI, and CTR on each type of traffic separately, some loyalty data remains more difficult to discern: cost per purchasing user, loyalty rates, and the like.
As a result, app marketers can’t compare long-term value on News Feed-only campaigns to campaigns that combine News Feed and Audience Network traffic. Due to high-level metrics that often aren’t as strong in Audience Network, many have drawn the conclusion that supplementing Facebook News Feed campaigns with Audience Network traffic is detrimental to their overall user acquisition goals.
But in many cases, they’d be wrong. From the introduction of the Audience Network, Fiksu worked with Facebook to conduct testing, using reports that tracked key loyalty metrics of Facebook News Feed campaigns and Audience Network campaigns separately. How well Audience Networks work might surprise you.
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The Bigger PictureTo understand the impact of Facebook’s Audience Network in comparison to the app marketing industry as a whole, we examined aggregate data from eight Fiksu clients that ran campaigns in September on both Facebook traffic sources and other display networks.
Despite slightly higher CPIs and lower click through rates, Facebook’s Audience Network performed well in a number of ways:
1. High number of returning users The rate at which users reengaged with apps was nearly identical to that in Facebook News Feed campaigns, while being significantly higher than display networks. A large part of Facebook’s success is its ability to target high-quality returning users, and it appears that Facebook’s Audience Network continues that advantage.
Note: ARPU in this study is over a short time period, and ARPU being less than CPI is not indicative that overall results led to negative ROI.
CTR CVR CPI REGISTRATIONSRETURNING
USERS CPPU* ARPU**
1.16%NEWS FEED 16.61% $5.48 17.84% 65.16% $43.47 $1.63
0.34%AUDIENCE NETWORK
26.28% $6.49 7.43% 58.55% $70.04 $3.64
5.45%DISPLAY 0.93% $5.73 5.60% 33.44% $293.57 $0.15
* Cost per purchasing user** Average revenue per user
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4. Stellar conversion rate Though we expected Facebook’s targeting options to keep conversion rates on Audience Network higher than on other display networks, we did not expect the Audience Network conversion rate to be on par with the standard Facebook News Feed—but the data showed an even higher conversion rate. This was even more remarkable given the blend of banner and interstitial advertising prevalent on Facebook’s Audience Network versus the News Feed’s use of native ads, the impact of which was reflected in the lower click-through rate on Audience Network.
As Facebook’s Audience Network continues to be built out to encompass more third-party apps, the volume of available impressions will continue to grow. CPI may improve as well, but even if it doesn’t, that shouldn’t be the deciding factor when considering Facebook’s Audience Network.Instead, savvy marketers will put more emphasis on the significantly increased conversions, user retention, and bottom-line monetization.
2. Drastically lower CPPUs While higher than Facebook News Feed, the Audience Networks’ cost per purchasing user was approximately one fifth of the cost on display.
$0NEWS FEED AUDIENCE NETWORK DISPLAY
$50
$100
$150
$200
$250
$300
$350
COST PER PURCHASING USER
3. Increased revenue per purchasing user Facebook’s Audience Networks’ revenue per user was 20x greater than on display and more than twice that of the Facebook News Feed. This is a clear indication of Facebook’s Audience Network’s ability to attract loyal, high-quality users.
$0.00NEWS FEED AUDIENCE NETWORK DISPLAY
$0.50
$1.00
$1.50
$2.00
$2.50
$3.00
$3.50
$4.00
AVERAGE REVENUE PER USER
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A Closer LookWhile the cumulative results paint a broad picture of Facebook’s Audience Network’s capabilities, the following case studies offer deeper insights into individual apps’ performance.
Case Study 1: Retail AppSeeking to maximize their registration rate and revenue per user, one retail app ran campaigns on several sources, including Facebook News Feeds, Facebook’s Audience Network, and display, seeing the following results:
For this particular retail app, the biggest benefit of Facebook’s Audience Network was the dramatic increase in loyal user acquisition and retention. From their initial campaign, registrations ran at a staggering 80 percent (just 5 percentage points less than Facebook News Feed and more than 20 percentage points higher than display), while returning user percentage surpassed the results of any other network. The lower click-through rates, higher CPIs, and smaller number of impressions remained consistent with the overall results shown previously.
CTR CPI REGISTRATIONSRETURNING
USERS CPPU ARPU
0.76%NEWS FEED $3.59 85.47% 57.56% $6.82 $1.24
0.62%AUDIENCE NETWORK
$9.86 80% 68.57% $16.43 $2.64
1.11%DISPLAY $1.78 58.46% 38.98% $6.67 $0.59
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The average price of bringing in purchasing users was still greater on the Audience Network than any other traffic source, but the difference among them was smaller than the cumulative results. In addition, the average revenue per user was four times that of other display networks and more than twice that of Facebook News Feed traffic, so over time, the resulting ROI could work out in favor of the Audience Network despite the higher costs.
0%NEWS FEED
REGISTRATIONSRETURNING USERS
AUDIENCENETWORK
DISPLAY
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
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90%
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Case Study 2: GameLike the retail app, this puzzle game’s campaigns ran on Facebook News Feed, Facebook’s Audience Network, and multiple display networks.
The bottom-line for this particular game is monetization. While retail and brand apps’ primary concern is loyalty in the form of user registration and returning users, games are financially solvent when successfully encouraging in-app purchases. This puzzle game was the most successful in achieving that on Facebook’s Audience Network, having not only the lowest cost per purchasing user but the highest average revenue per user—by a significant margin.
CTR CVR CPIRETURNING
USERS CPPU ARPU
1.14%NEWS FEED 17.56% $5.57 47.43% $146.79 $1.32
0.29%AUDIENCE NETWORK
31.25% $6.55 48.79% $94.66 $3.80
8.09%DISPLAY 0.86% $2.74 30.64% $765.85 $0.15
$0NEWS FEED AUDIENCE NETWORK DISPLAY
$100
$200
$300
$400
$500
$600
$700
$800
$900
COST PER PURCHASING USER
$0.00NEWS FEED AUDIENCE NETWORK DISPLAY
$0.50
$1.00
$1.50
$2.00
$2.50
$3.00
$3.50
$4.00
AVERAGE REVENUE PER USER
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Also, it’s worth noting that while most apps had more impressions in the News Feed, the situation was reversed here, with the campaign generating about twice as many impressions on the Audience Network than the News Feed. In this example, Facebook’s Audience Network was particularly adept at delivering targeted in-game ads.
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RecommendationsAs a result of this data and our experience running thousands of campaigns across dozens of apps, we’ve developed a recommended sequence of steps to take to optimize your Facebook app marketing campaigns:
• Start with Lookalike Audiences on Facebook News Feed
• Tweak based on results (if need be) and add Lookalike Audiences on Facebook’s Audience Network
• Avoid saturation and continue momentum by adding interest targeting on Facebook News Feed
• Based on those results, add interest targeting to Facebook’s Audience Network
An extension of Facebook’s successful mobile app ads, Facebook’s Audience Network has proven to be an excellent source in acquiring loyal, high-value users for the majority of apps. Still, every app is unique. So, make sure to track your long-term loyalty results—before and after adding Audience Network traffic to your Facebook campaigns—to ensure efficient results.
Labs Report
Copyright © 2014 Fiksu. All rights reserved. Fiksu, the Fiksu logo, and FreeMyApps are registered trademarks of Fiksu, Inc. All other trademarks mentioned herein are the property of their respective holders.
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