With social media platforms growing increasingly numerous and diverse, advertisers have recognized that they can’t rely on achieving growth and success on just one platform when running a media ad campaign. Diversification is the key to reaching as many users as possible, especially on mobile.

Recent Roadblocks – Apple’s iOS 14.5 and Its Impact on Marketing 

Tracking users’ activity is essential for building a media strategy that works. Knowing which ads drew users in and where they came from can help set a guideline for future successful campaigns. Unfortunately, recent privacy overhauls in major companies make it harder than before to track users’ activities, particularly across multiple platforms.

Just over a year ago, in April 2021, Apple released their iOS 14.5 update, which included significant changes revolutionizing user privacy. One of the more significant changes made in the update was that now apps would need explicit permission from Apple users to track their activity across different apps installed on their phones. Unfortunately, few users were willing to waive their privacy and permit apps to track them. 

This development has made it almost impossible to track user registration or even downloads across applications, and the change has had severe ramifications across all platforms. The update has had a huge impact on Facebook, reducing the app’s ability to directly attribute ad spend and identify what ads work for which users.

What’s the Next Step for Media Strategy

Apple’s new privacy policy changes have made diversification in advertising campaigns more essential than ever. The inability to track users’ activity and not knowing which platform is responsible for bringing in the most users means advertisers need to treat every platform as their most important. Advertisers need to shift their focus to reaching as many users as possible without building too much reliance on any one platform.

The change has led to an evolution in user acquisition and forced app developers and advertisers to create campaigns for platforms that may have been previously out of their comfort zones. In addition, as the user acquisition process matures, advertisers are shaking up their media lineup and turning to less traditional social media sources such as TikTok and Snapchat and the traditional standbys such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google.  

While the transition to newer forms of social media is mostly a good one, new platforms also require advertisers to learn new strategies. The tried and tested campaigns that worked for Facebook and Google can’t simply be copy-pasted and applied to TikTok. Instead, advertisers must create new campaigns, and without metrics finding out what works and what doesn’t is complicated.

How to Know What Works 

Apple may prevent advertisers from tracking user activity and collecting metrics from applications, but platforms such as Zoomd’s SaaS still allow you to collect all the information you need from one screen. Keeping track of how your campaigns are going isn’t always easy, especially when you’re running a campaign on multiple channels simultaneously. Zoomd allows you to see how all your social channels are doing simultaneously, gathering all the information and presenting it on one easy-to-read dashboard. See which media strategies bring the best results and focus all your energies on the most efficient channels with Zoomd.

Rebuilding User Acquisition Panel – Managing Campaigns in a Post-iOS14+ World

User acquisition has seen some huge changes this year with the introduction of iOS 14, and the end of Apple’s IDFA.
This panel was hosted by Zoomd CMO, Omri Argaman, joined by a great team of mobile experts from Air Apps, Voodoo, Project A Ventures, Sparks Networks to find out how to effectively manage campaigns and channels in this new era, getting ready and planning 2022 media plans that will work.

Tune in to the interactive 2021 user acquisition panel with industry experts from across Europe and learn about what works and what doesn’t work for them in the media plan. Which channels drive more growth, and what to look out for.

The Meteoric Growth of On-Demand Delivery Apps (& How You Can Reap the Benefits)

When the pandemic locked people at home, their phones kept them connected to the world. On-demand delivery apps, like DostaVista, accelerated their user acquisition and grew exponentially. But what exactly happened in the industry – especially in its food delivery sector – and what are the nuances that made some markets grow while others were left behind? And just as importantly, how can your own mobile app reap the benefits of these global changes?

How On-Demand Delivery Apps Accelerated During the Pandemic

The ground was ready for on-demand delivery apps, especially food delivery mobile apps, to skyrocket during the pandemic since demand was already nurtured and rising beforehand.

However, we can’t help but notice the fast-paced growth of this vertical over the 18 months since COVID-19 burst into our lives, making this industry one of the lifelines for millions of people, as it enables safe shopping and adds more cheer and consistency to their lives.

And indeed, according to an Appetize survey, “over 74% of Americans used their phone to order and pay for food and merchandise at least once a week, with nearly 48% using their phones for purchases several times a week or more,” reports Fast Casual.

Simultaneously, restaurants, who were unable to operate their businesses as usual, had to start offering deliveries and prioritizing user acquisition for their mobile apps, or increasing the amount of on-demand delivery apps they partnered with, increasing supply.

Consequentially, “grocery apps saw the biggest growth last year, with a 40.9% rise in smartphone users,” reports eMarketer. Food delivery apps came in second, at a 32.7% growth, as people ordered food from restaurants and meal kit companies.

Source: eMarketer

Legislation and Regulation are Paying Attention – and Stepping Forward

Legislators have paid attention to the industry’s growth, and have stepped forward to ensure the vertical operates honestly and decently.

Multiple US cities are now limiting the commissions on-demand delivery apps can charge restaurants, to ensure they’re not taking advantage of the restaurants’ crisis during COVID-19, reports the Financial Times.

Some cities, like New York and San Francisco, aim to make these changes permanent, so restaurant protection can continue beyond the pandemic. The companies behind the delivery mobile apps, who stand to lose hundreds of millions of dollars, are taking legal action to fight this, adds the Financial Times, explaining that the legal battle’s result in these cities will likely impact whether such commission limitations will become permanent across the US.

But meanwhile, this industry is not slowing down.

Want to Generate Growth in Your Own On-Demand Delivery App? Here’s What Worked for DostaVista

We’ve been fortunate to help delivery mobile app DostaVista accelerate its user acquisition. In the process, we saw what worked and what didn’t. With DostaVista’s permission, we’re sharing it here, so you can skip the mistakes and head straight to growth.

Check Local Laws and Regulations

As we just covered, laws and regulations are changing in the industry as it sees this accelerated growth. This might and might not be true in the markets you serve, but it’s important to stay up to date, especially if you serve multiple markets.

DostaVista has a presence in 10 countries and was thankfully not required to make major changes to operate successfully.

Understand Your Market

DostaVista is a global crowdsourced delivery app. Its employees deliver food in 60 minutes every time, precisely on time. Therefore, it figured that it could add value and differentiate itself in markets that aren’t used to this type of convenience.

But turned out it was much harder to break into these markets. People weren’t looking for this type of service, or the need for that wasn’t clear enough for them, and the company’s efforts didn’t come into fruition there.

No matter how hardcore lockdown got, people kept using official courier services or waited for traditional fast-moving consumer goods providers to implement their own delivery solutions.

So instead, the company saw sharp growth elsewhere.

Give Your Market What it Wants

DostaVista’s sharp growth in user acquisition happened in countries that had two prerequisite conditions:

• They were deeply affected by lockdown policies during the pandemic.
• Their citizens were used to same-day food delivery apps.

The company learned that competition isn’t something to shy away from. Instead, thriving competitors indicated great and growing demand, that DostaVista was able to tap into.

It did that by communicating certainty in a time of complete uncertainty. Its communicated motto was “we’ll take care of things,” making people feel safe and that they’re well cared for. After the initial surge of user acquisition, word of mouth kept pushing traffic along.

Simultaneously, DostaVista took the same approach with couriers.

=> The company was able to serve the demand exactly because it operated in high-impact areas, where part of the uncertainty was that people lost their jobs and were looking to generate income.

=> Here, too, understanding the market and giving it what it needs became crucial. Courier recruitment was easiest and most scalable in countries with a big percentage of self employed people. This included full time small business owners, and folks who worked day jobs, but also had a side hustle.

Keep Your Focus on User Acquisition

While DostaVista experienced a lot of organic growth, such as via word of mouth, it stayed proactive about user acquisition on global scale in several markets- but customized it per market where it was possible.

For example:

=> In India, understanding the huge potential, it was important to not just deliver the brand with new app installs but to deliver quality users making transactions – First Time Buyer (FTB or FTD). Using our proprietary platform, we dug into the vast traffic available in the market locating the best sources that over time was able for us to reduce the overall CPA.

the company created several Facebook campaigns, which increased both brand awareness and user engagement.

=> In the Philippines, it collaborated with a local influencer, who prepared several TikTok and Facebook videos for the brand. The videos lowered CPA costs and increased the app’s popularity, thus achieving high-quality first-time users, that entered the brand loyalty program.

On-Demand Delivery Apps are Not Looking Back

User acquisition was accelerated beyond expectations during the pandemic, and that level of growth rate will likely slow down. New regulatory demand might challenge growth rates as well. But according to Deloitte, these mobile apps have been working so well for so many stakeholders, that “nearly a quarter of consumers (23%) say their more frequent use of takeout and delivery will be permanent.” Growth rate might slow down, but long-term thriving is bound to increase.

About Ayelet Kaplan:

Ayelet is a performance team leader at Zoomd with 10 years of experience in the online industry, client management proficiency, and a deep understanding of the mobile ecosystem.

Will you be better off with an advertising agency or an in-house team? What will drive greater app growth while optimizing operations?

Having provided user acquisition platforms for both agencies and advertisers – and having acted as a performance user acquisition agency for some of the largest brands in the world – we know there isn’t a right or wrong way. There’s just the way that’s best for you.

Here are 5 key aspects to consider, and how both advertising agencies and in-house teams can help your app succeed, depending on what matters to you most.

Changing Industry Requirements

Choose in-house if you have the resources for continuous employee training. With the advertising and app industries changing so frequently and so widely (remember the days we only had a couple of primary channels?), you’ve got to constantly keep your team on the cutting edge of knowledge and technology.

The benefit is that employees often see professional development as an employee differentiator, so you are likelier to attract and retain top talent.

Choose agency if you just need to get going or if you don’t have the resources to keep up with all the changes, then develop or find training for your team on an ongoing basis yourself. Some agencies do that for you – they continuously train their teams on new channels and strategies. Others go deep and specialize in certain aspects.

If you need access to effective influencers *and* you want to build your app’s own TikTok community, hire an agency that has already achieved proven results for each goal, and see results faster. One of the top reasons for that is that agencies tend to have much more operations volume in one channel (in comparison to a single advertiser), thus get direct account managers introduced by the platform or social network themselves. For example, as a certified marketing partner of TikTok, we received in-depth data, best practices and faster supports from the platform. To understand the real value of a technology agency, you can read in our latest article by Zoomd VP of media.

Broad and Deep Perspectives

Choose in-house if you want a greater cross-silo collaboration. When your marketing people collaborate with sales, customer success and product people, magical things can happen. They gain a deeper understanding, better data, and end up driving better results, because they understand your app’s customers better.

You can create intentional collaborations with agencies, but the advantage of in-house teams is that they interact informally with other teams, whether it’s at lunch or on the company’s happy hour Zoom call. The personal relationships could make collaboration simpler, and some ideas might pop up spontaneously in day-to-day conversations.

Choose agency if you want proven strategies that have worked for apps like yours – or if you want the benefit of cross-industry experience. Folks who work at agencies typically work with many more app companies than the in-house marketer that “only” changes companies every 2-3 years.

It’s a different type of experience. The in-house marketers go deeper into one brand, while the agency marketers get a broad perspective. They can see how app users in both your industry and in complementary industries have responded to certain marketing initiatives, and what works in other industries that your audience might not already be used to seeing, allowing you to differentiate your messaging further.

Hiring and Compatibility

Choose in-house if you want to decide who you work with. First, you might care about certain skills that your agency doesn’t. Maybe your agency hires very creative people who design stunning campaign assets (link to assets article once it’s published), but you need someone on your team who’ll prioritize diversity and inclusion, or empathy toward your app users.

Second, maybe your agency’s team members check all your professional checkboxes, but you want someone who’ll just be fun to work with. When you hire advertisers yourself, you have more control.

Choose agency if you want access to a pre-vetted pool of industry pros, who have experience taking apps and campaigns to the next level. The hiring process can be extensive and expensive, and partnering with an agency that’s already done the heavy lifting can make your life easier and save you money. Make sure you meet with the people who’ll be working on your campaigns, to ensure compatibility in personalities and work process preferences.

Work Velocity

Choose in-house if you want greater control over your schedule and over your team’s availability.

You can tell an employee you need a project ASAP – it’s your company and you decide what to prioritize – but if you need a deliverable within two days, and your agency is already fully booked with commitments to other clients, you’ll need to find an alternative solution for that deliverable.

Choose agency if you want to grow fast. Agencies already have team members, plus relationships and partnerships with freelancers. They can likely add people to your app’s campaign quickly.

Alternatively, hire 2-3 agencies at once. You make 2-3 hiring decisions and book entire teams instead of 2-3 people.

Customization to Your Needs

Choose in-house *and* agency for the best mix for your specific situation.

Have some in-house advertisers to ensure your app campaigns remain on-brand across partners, and to simplify cross-silo collaboration. Simultaneously, partner with agencies that specialize in areas that complement your team’s strengths, have broad experience to help you differentiate yourself from the noise, and have the ability to help you scale fast.

Here at Zoomd, we have performance marketing solutions to help you whichever way you choose. If you need an agency that specializes in meeting ambitious user acquisition goals, we’ve got your back. Prefer to do it yourself? We recently started providing access to our proprietary AI-based platform. You gain the benefit of 500,000,000 daily data points, leverage what works on one channel to inform campaigns on other channels and increase your app growth efficiency. See what’s possible here.