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Mobile Marketing Survey 2016 – Part 4 of 6 – Where Marketers are Spending Marketing Dollars

By John Koetsier September 29, 2016

In yesterday’s post about our mobile marketing survey, we discussed the growing importance of user quality in app marketing decisions. Today we’re going to zero in on how and where our app business leaders are spending – and plan to make their marketing investments.

Paid installs are increasing as a share of total installs, according to the latest data from comScore.

In short, brands that want to drive high install bases for mobile device apps are becoming increasingly committed to and reliant on paid installs as a growth channel.

Media buying for apps on mobile phones is certainly evolving. While a few years ago cost-per-install-based (CPI) display advertising was the dominant format for install media buying, a variety of payment models are now in use.

Part of the reason for this has been the ascendance of Facebook and Google as leading providers of media for app marketing. Typically, Facebook install media is purchased by the impression (CPM) and Google by the click (CPC)

Moving on to the types of media they are purchasing, app marketers say they continue to rely a great deal on classic mobile display (banner) ads, but they also report that they expect to spend more in several key areas in the next twelve months.

Specifically, large numbers of mobile app marketers expect to spend significantly more in the following areas:

  • Mobile Video
  • Paid Search
  • Content Marketing
  • App Store Optimization
  • Influencer Marketing

Marketer interest in video and paid search appears to be particularly high. In our mobile marketing survey, 57% say video is due to grow significantly in the next 12 months. And 62% say they are interested in the app store search results listings available from Google and soon to debut from Apple.

Total install advertising spend continues to spike. According to Business Insider, spending on install advertising will hit $5.5B this year in the US.

But our mobile device app marketers say they are spending these dollars with a relatively small number of vendors.

More than half of the mobile marketing survey respondent say they work with 5 or fewer vendors, though a plurality also say that that figure represents an increase over a year ago. We were a bit surprised by this, given that there are an estimated 1,000+mobile ad networks from which to choose.

Tomorrow: Concerns about App Fraud

Blog Post Links

2016 Mobile Marketing Survey Part 1: Mobile Marketing Teams and Challenges
2016 Mobile Marketing Survey Part 2: The Business Measures of App Marketing
2016 Mobile Marketing Survey Part 3: Passion for Quality Users
2016 Mobile Marketing Survey Part 4: App Marketing Media Trends
2016 Mobile Marketing Survey Part 5: Concerns About App Fraud
2016 Mobile Marketing Survey Part 6: 4 Key Takeaways

Download The Singular ROI Index to see the world’s first ranking of ad networks by app ROI.

 

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