4 Key Trends Marketers Must Know About Mobile App Advertising

Marketers are facing a key challenge: AI-driven chat and search are changing how people discover products, making consumer behaviour harder to predict than ever. At the same time, technology has allowed organisations to operate with a more complete set of data about their users than ever before, creating a golden opportunity for marketers to lean into their first-party data and take personalisation to the next level.  

Going forward, mobile apps will be a marketer’s best friend – enabling them to grow revenues and drive long-term customer retention. 

The mobile app as the catalyst for growth 

The mobile app is the most personalised and powerful way for marketers to engage with consumers, short of showing up on their doorstep. After all, smartphones are almost always within their reach and mobile apps provide direct access to users, every day and everywhere.  

There are four key trends marketers must know about mobile app advertising that will help them build a loyal customer base and boost their profitability. 

1. Marketers will cast a wider net across digital spaces to find and engage new users 

For a long time, established brands considered the mobile app a ‘nice-to-have’, but this is all changing. Organisations have made strides in recent years to improve the performance and revenue-generating potential of their mobile apps – now, the evolution of advertising technology is enabling them to go one step further and drive growth from delivering highly-personalised ad experiences. 

Coupled with this, savvy marketers are increasingly exploring advertising outside of the confines of Google, Meta and Amazon. While marketers have traditionally leaned on these giants by default, today, creating their own advertising strategies is just as easy and can be significantly more profitable. Partnering with adtech companies can give them the same capabilities of big tech, with the added benefit of reaching more users via more channels. Using the vast networks of websites, apps and digital platforms, marketers can acquire high-value users for their apps who will drive strong engagement and increased revenue through in-app purchases or premium subscriptions.  

For example, when Burger King Korea turned to the independent app ecosystem for user acquisition, it was able to increase its app’s monthly install volume by 28 percent, which contributed to an increase of 4 percentage points in overall purchase volume. Expect to see more marketers choose this strategy for app growth in the future. 

2. AI will become more accessible to marketers 

Whereas previously, marketers simply couldn’t compete with the AI engines of big tech to find their high-value users, today, Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology is within their reach via adtech providers. The industry is at an inflection point and AI companies are now enabling brands to maximise the value of their properties in ways that match or eclipse the capabilities of Amazon and Google. 

With AI, marketers can uncover the unexpected – and monetise it. It’s far more effective to let AI do the data exploration and find new pockets of high-value users on the open internet than to impose pre-existing expectations on the market. The superpower of AI is that it can find commonalities and emerging patterns in vast amounts of real-time data and precisely target valuable users that might otherwise be overlooked. 

Marketers will increasingly take advantage of tech partnerships to leverage AI and acquire high-value users at a lower cost. 

3. Personalisation will make or break mobile ad experiences  

Today, consumers demand the highest levels of personalisation when they open mobile apps. This means that in-app advertising must prioritise the user experience and ensure that core principles – the richness of storytelling and relevance to the user – are never compromised. In fact, consumers will increasingly penalise brands that expect them to tolerate bad ads. 

Irrelevant or disruptive ads are destructive to brands and counteract monetisation. To achieve higher-quality ad experiences, brands must lean on their first-party data. This is where AI can once again deliver a major advantage. 

AI – and more specifically, operational Machine Learning –  can optimise ad experiences in real-time to always show the most tailored, contextually relevant ads to individual users. By relying on first-party data such as user preferences, behaviours and purchase patterns, brands can ensure that they deliver engaging experiences and maximise revenue, without compromising the user experience. 

4. The era of ‘optimising for install’ is over  

With the mobile app becoming a key business driver, CMOs will be increasingly seen as strategic advisors, entrusted with demonstrating tangible business growth from ad spend. This will require them to focus on acquiring high-value users who drive engagement and spend in the long term.  

More and more, marketers will be prioritising user loyalty over sheer app install numbers. They will have to focus on the full funnel of ROI and consider the entire customer journey, from install to engagement to monetisation.  

Technology can help them leverage first-party data to drive this mission, instead of relying on vanity metrics. In fact, CMOs who look at KPIs like Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) will be valued by their CEO and CFOs in a different way than traditional marketing leaders. 

Embracing a new age of data-driven marketing  

AI is unlocking new opportunities for marketers to find high-value users on the independent app ecosystem and engage with them through richer and more relevant ad experiences. But success depends on how well marketers can leverage their first-party data to fuel personalisation and tangible business growth. Marketers who get this right now will be rewarded with increased customer loyalty and a strengthened competitive edge.