Customer stories

Mobile user acquisition in India: How the most efficient advertisers grow faster

By John Koetsier April 26, 2019

The following is an in-depth overview of the growth strategies of a very well-respected and profitable online business in India. This is a Singular customer who runs a transaction-oriented business, and the data is used with permission.

In the last 15 months this advertiser has accrued approximately 13 million installs on both Android and iOS devices. What is impressive is that they have focused on checking fraud right from the get-go and only paying the partners on Cost Per Transaction (CPT).

Here are some key areas this advertiser focuses for user growth.

Focusing on Android for mobile user acquisition

It’s no brainer – Android is the winner in India market and therefore is this advertisers’ key focus area. iOS marketing efforts were light until this publisher accrued a respectable user base on Android.

Paid beats organic

Organic ranking is good; but paid marketing gets you there faster The advertiser has been very comfortable with a lower rate of organic installs.

When they started on this journey, they had approximately 35% organic installs on Android and 99% organic installs on iOS. Over the last 15 months, they have experimented with various sources and found the best ones for their vertical. After 15 months the advertiser finds they now have approximately 10% organic installs on Android and 60% organic installs on iOS.

Reducing the organic installs percentage can sometimes be perceived as cannibalization but given that the advertiser is focused on a cost per transaction, they ensure that these paid installs are coming with linked transactions which translates directly to revenue per user.

For mobile user acquisition, in experimentation you must trust

The advertiser started with 20 sources on Android and two sources on iOS. (For the purpose of this case study, a source is considered valid only if it delivered more than 100 installs in the calendar month.)

As the paid user acquisition program saw success the advertiser has scaled to 40 sources for Android and 15 sources on iOS.

On an average the advertiser tests configurations with over 180 sources. Once the tests have been successful, the advertiser goes live with the chosen few sources every month. This eye to detail and diligence in evaluating sources gives the advertiser an edge in optimizing spends and driving growth.


Scaling media sources is critical to growth. See how smart marketers pay 30% less and get 60% more.


Singular helps the customer test new sources with the following:

  1. Custom postbacks
    The ability to add additional information in postbacks enables advertisers to know what works and enables them to further segment acquired traffic.
  2. 1,600+ network integrations
    Singular is integrated with 1,600 plus networks. Chances are that a network the advertiser wants to evaluate is already integrated without any custom work, which boosts speed of execution.
  3. Dedicated support
    Singular has a dedicated customer success and support team that helps with configuration. This team is governed by an SLA, meaning that the customer is not alone in this never-ending effort. Having Singular’s team available to action changes makes the UA manager a winner.

The following is a cumulative growth graph of the app installs that the advertiser has driven in the last 15 months.

Detailed logs and their usage

Singular’s platform enables the customer to extract detailed Click, Install, Postback, and Fraud logs via the interface, API, and firehose methods.

These logs are used for log validation in case of discrepancies. The API and firehose methods are used to have a complete repository of the data. This repository is processed in the customer’s internal BI system to manage the payouts and make goods with the advertising partners.

Singular has world-class fraud protection, but if they wish, customers can also work with a third party install fraud detection service by using the attribution logs. This gives them complete control of how advertising spend decisions are made.

Take these tools for a test drive?

Interesting in experimenting with Singular’s marketing intelligence platform to see you you can drive similar results?

Talk to a Singular representative in your market for more details on how you can build a solid user base and drive transaction volumes and not just installs. Or get a demo now.

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