When 81% of people have smartphones,
and one third are mobile-only, it’s safe to say that the audience for content
on the move and apps has grown. The data tells us that 86% of smartphone owners
are regular users: accessing mobile apps every day.
This behaviour heightens the
importance for content providers, app publishers, and advertisers to more
closely monitor consumer mobile usage patterns every day.
Many companies are finding that
traditional audience measurement services are grossly lacking for monitoring
mobile usage patterns. Many of these services were built in the desktop era and
simply measure device usage.
What’s needed is a framework for
measuring consumer-centric behaviors in which users move seamlessly between
content and screens, from hour to hour and day to day.
While companies do have access to
mountains of their own data and analytics, very few get insights on
competitors’ usage patterns or market trends as a whole. A new raft of consumer
behaviours requires a new standard of measurement.
Apps
Take the example of mobile apps. Cost
per install is a common metric that app publishers use to measure how
successful an app launch has been. But this metric isn’t actually an indicator
of long-term success.
Less than 40% of installed mobile
apps are used in any given month. If those are free apps, then where’s the
benefit? What ultimately matters for app developers, is monetisation.
In-app purchasing is becoming the
foremost means of creating revenue. However, only 5-15% of downloads lead to
active 30-day users. From those, only 10-20% are monetised over time via in-app
purchasing.
Companies need more granular
information, more often, in order to make impactful conclusions
In order to capitalise on loyal users
and grow these small percentages, publishers need to understand how usage
patterns lead to purchases. They need to get insights about how other
publishers are more or less successful. Getting more visibility into this path
to revenue is paramount to sustained success.
In this light, monthly usage numbers
are not the most enlightening statistic when trying to understand user
behaviour either.
They give an important sense of
scale, of course, but no intelligence on how well they could convert into
paying users. The more telling metrics are stickiness and time spent.
How often is the user returning to
the app on a daily and monthly basis? For example, Facebook’s user numbers
dwarf those of Snapchat, but Snapchat’s time spent per user is far higher –
showing greater stickiness.
Deep-dive data
Companies need more granular
information, more often, in order to make impactful conclusions. If you can
pinpoint that users log into the app for an hour on their way to work, you can
begin to promote in-app purchases at relevant times and with relevant
promotions.
Similarly, if you know that users
tend to come back into the app multiple times in one day, or how they use it
across multiple devices, then you can tailor your promotions accordingly.
The metrics that should be part of
every organisation’s analysis include: engagement, stickiness, daily usage,
cross-device behaviours as they relate to a specific demographic such as gender
or age. Packaged together, these give a deep level of insight into the people
that use an app, when, and how.
Companies that can use identify
valuable users and their behaviours will give themselves better opportunities
to monetise and grow.
Assessing the value of users is
important – you do that by focusing on the right measurements not just metrics
that are there to be collected, with little value. Once you know when and how
they’re acting online, you can structure everything around ROI.
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