Why Ads for Apps in Facebook Are Actually a Big Deal in the World of App Marketing
Users of the Facebook mobile app may have noticed that the app now features more ads prompting users to download certain apps. Whether they be ads in the news feed itself or placed on the sidebar, these ads are just a new little blip for Facebook users to contend with.
However, these little blips could be actually having a significant impact on the way that marketers try to sell apps to iOS users, according to a company called Fiksu that tracks app downloads and performance in the context of marketing.
What happened is that since Facebook launched these ads in May, there was an increase in the average number of daily downloads among the top 200 free apps (which are among the most-heavily marketed), from 5.61 million per day in April to 5.9 million per day. That might not sound like a lot, but think: plus an extra day in May, that's going from 168.3 million downloads to 182.9 million downloads. That's more potential customers to spend money on the in-app purchases that help make these games so profitable. There's a reason why there's so many free-to-play titles.
This has all come at a good cost to marketers, too. Despite the increase in downloads, the cost to get a loyal user, defined as someone who opens an app three or more times, dropped from $1.50 per user the month before to $1.33. If Facebook mobile ads and the increased inventory they offer are to thank for this, then expect more of them.