How are the top-grossing app developers growing and acquiring high-quality users at scale? What channels and formats are the best fit? And how do you net 700 million downloads like Ketchapp? Join our latest VB Live event for insight into the metrics and strategies the major developers recommend.
When asked what his top metric is, Christian Calderon quickly answers, “For me, it’s always been LTV.”
Calderon is CRO at Ketchapp, the world’s fourth largest mobile game publisher in terms of downloads. That amounts to over 700 million downloads across the Ketchapp portfolio, an average of 23 million new downloads per month.
“LTV is what’s marrying the product through the marketing,” says Calderon, “and the LTV metric is really what it comes down to when you’re comparing your cost to it, or when you’re comparing product performance to it. Being able to relate everything to LTV is extremely important.”
LTV is also one of the biggest challenges he thinks companies have, and mistakes can even lead to brand damage.
“Not having a unified vision around LTV, which is the key metric, is a common mistake that I’ve seen at a lot of studios, and it’s unfortunate because this can create issues outside of just marketing,” explains Calderon. “It can create issues around how to build the product and how to market it. You could have two completely different points of view. It could create incentives that are not aligned with each other, which can hurt an organization.”
Because LTV is the connective tissue between the product and the marketing strategies, if you have a unified vision around it, teams can move more quickly, and make strong decisions that not only benefit the product but also benefit the marketing of the product. “I’ve seen when studios have a unified vision around LTVs, it can have really powerful effects and benefits,” he adds. It needs to be not just a priority, but foundational to a game’s development.
The other major foundation companies can’t afford to treat as a nice-to-have is sophisticated data and measurement.
“Just not investing in measurement and data, that’s a pretty common mistake — a very expensive common mistake,” Calderon says. “Soon this won’t give advertisers a major competitive advantage. It’s just going to be a requirement for advertising sustainably.”
It’s what powers the granular targeting that is increasingly essential for reaching the most valuable users with the biggest LTV at the lowest costs.
“Lookalike audiences or being able to target at the IDFA level is extremely important, as is being able to identify affinities for your product at the user level — not just targeting a cohort of users,” he explains. “Advertisers have to continue to get smarter in order to keep pricing down, especially as demand increases and spend increases.”
“Literally in econometrics and user acquisition, we use a lot of curves,” Calderon adds. “Stay ahead of the curve. It’s really utilizing the power of data science, understanding what’s going on in the marketplace, which channels are working, which formats are working, which strategies are working, what your competitors are doing. Try to stay ahead of the curve.”
For more on dynamic pricing, how data has to impact your strategy, and how to be smarter than your competitors, join our free VB Live event where Calderon will be joined by PocketGems’ David Rose and Kevin Teng from AdColony.
Don’t miss out!
The VB Live event will cover:
- Most effective app install formats and key KPIs of top advertisers
- Top 5 campaign trends and drivers of app install scale and quality
- The targeting methods that work
- What’s changed in mobile apps and what’s trending for 2017
Speakers include:
- Christian Calderon, CRO, Ketchapp
- David Rose, Director of Performance Marketing, PocketGems
- Kevin Teng, Sr. Director, User Acquisition, AdColony
Moderator:
- Wendy Schuchart, Moderator, VentureBeat
This VB Live event is sponsored by AdColony.