“Advertisers will have to recalibrate ways to monetise content & collect data”

While most of the people are familiar with Nykaa, Cred, Hotstar, Paytm, Dream11, Meesho, and other similar players, they may not be aware of how these companies have grown over a period of time and why they make for India’s dominant success stories. AppsFlyer, a global leader in mobile attribution and marketing analytics, has powered these companies’ growth and continues to help other small and large players to thrive in their respective industries in India’s growing mobile ecosystem.

With the dynamicity of Indian mobile industry, marketing attribution and analytics have become crucial aspects for companies to grow business and build resiliency. However, the shift towards user privacy – last year by Apple and recently by Google – has made measurement more complex, giving users greater control over the use of the data they generate online. This has led to an emerging need to approach measurement a little bit differently – what worked a couple of years ago, will not work today, or in the future.

Further, a recent report by AppsFlyer reveals exponential spike of app usage in New Bharat signifying the next big growth opportunity in India’s rural and semi-urban markets. Marketers thereby need to formulate a well thought strategy specific to their brand and category to drive growth.

Being a young maverick in the martech sector, Aditya Maheshwari has grown AppsFlyer’s CSM function by 4X since 2017 and some of the most complex customer accounts by 10x.

In conversation with Adgully, Aditya Maheshwari, Director of Customer Success, AppsFlyer INSEA/ANZ, shares insights on the current technology architecture involved in the martech space, trends and recommendations for new-age marketers to navigate the new world.

What are the key trends in the mobile marketing and attribution space?

There are massive changes taking place in the app marketing space in terms of privacy and measurement. The entire mobile marketing ecosystem needs to approach measurement a little differently. Over the last couple of years, the focus has primarily been on privacy-centric measurement. As app marketers continue to navigate a privacy first world, here are the key mobile app marketing trends to look out for:

• Privacy-centric measurement: Increased regulations on consumer privacy have significantly disrupted the mobile marketing ecosystem, compelling marketers to turn to more sophisticated models for measurement. A mix of top-down approaches, including incrementality measurement and bottom-up methods such as predictive analytics are being increasingly adopted by marketers. Expected changes by Google have opened a window of opportunity for businesses to gain advantage by innovating privacy-preserving technologies faster than their competitors. To adapt to the post-privacy state of play, marketers will continue to invest in developing measurement solutions that not only enhance end-user experience, but also preserve their privacy.
• Cost-effective strategies amidst rising ad spends:As per AppsFlyer’s ‘State of the App Marketing in India 2022’ Report, ad spending ramped up 68% year over year, from $994 million in 2020 to $1.6 billion in 2021. Further, a recent report from Dentsu projects India’s ad spend to grow at 15.2% in 2023 and 15.7% in 2024, the highest for any market in the world. While ad spend continues to grow amidst exploding competition, marketers are increasingly turning to cost-effective strategies to drive user growth and revenue. Combating frauds and devising a regional strategy are a few fool-proof ways of safeguarding advertising budgets. 
• Web-to-app opportunity vis-à-vis marketing: In the modern scenario, web engagement has been an underutilised tool vis-à-vis marketing. Amidst the increasing privacy-led challenges, marketers are exploring new ways to engage with their users. Connecting the dots with web campaign-to-app is now one of the sought-after methods to acquire loyal app users. From a privacy perspective, web marketing enables enhanced capabilities for measurement and attribution with the help of first-party data.

How has AppsFlyer empowered companies in India’s growing mobile ecosystem?

Mobile app consumers in India are constantly growing, and its ad market’s trajectory shows no downfall, with a prediction of a 16% growth rate in 2022 and a 15.2% increase in ad spend rate in 2023. However, the changing regulations towards privacy and measurement have posed various challenges for brands to make the most of it. With its customer-centric and privacy-compliant approach to measuring accurately, AppsFlyer empowers companies of all sizes and across every industry to drive marketing success while preserving end users’ privacy. AppsFlyer leads the market and helps define it as it innovates quickly to match pace with the rapid ecosystem flux. The company is the attribution platform for the world’s leading brands like Cred, Dream11, Disney+ Hotstar, ALTBalaji, Paytm, Nykaa, Swiggy, BYJU’S, Big Basket, and PhonePe to name a few.

India’s media streaming giant, Hotstar, wanted to reach out to users who had previously interacted with their platform, but since then, had gone dormant. AppsFlyer’s data provided insight into rich in-app events. The audience segmentation solution delivered a very effective and advanced solution, creating audiences dynamically and automating the sync to partner networks. The overall result was an impressive 27% increase in Hotstar’s reactivation rate.

How has been the evolution of the mobile and martech industry over the last decade? 

Over the last decade, smartphone adoption has witnessed meteoric growth. The pandemic has further accelerated this adoption as people rely heavily on mobile apps for everyday needs. Additionally, app usage gained traction in the New Bharat, creating a massive opportunity for marketers to tap the new audience in Tier 2 and 3 markets. On the other hand, competition also exploded as newer players began to emerge in different app categories. India is now the fastest growing app market globally, with a prediction of 1 billion smartphone users by 2026. Applications of marketing technology increased as more and more users moved online. The measurement and attribution industry grew exponentially with the thriving app economy.

Conversations around user-level data privacy became prevalent when Apple first announced a new privacy feature that required all apps to ask for explicit permission to track. This update turned the measurement and attribution industry upside down by limiting granular data measurement. As consumers get greater control of their data with more regulatory changes anticipated on this front, the way forward for the mobile and martech industry is to take a privacy-first, innovation-centric approach to navigate the new world.

What are the trends and potential in the Indian app market?

This year’s ‘State of App Marketing in India’ report by AppsFlyer has highlighted the meteoric growth, challenges, and opportunities of the Indian mobile market in 2021 as new users from semi-urban and rural India significantly contributed to the rise in the app economy. Below are a few key trends as observed in the study:

• Lower tiers to be the game-changers: Rural India demonstrates a promising opportunity for app marketers (particularly in Finance, Gaming, News, Shopping, Utilities, and Entertainment) with the surge in rural mobile-first users while overall share of NOI of India’s largest metropolitan cities dipped. These metropolitan cities accounted for 12% of all organic installs whereas almost half of all non-organic installs were found to be from 6 states including Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra (with almost 12%, ranked 2nd in NOI), Gujarat, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal. A well calibrated semi-urban and rural strategy will help marketers to expand their user base further.
• Contrasting trends in Android and iOS: Categories like Travel (4.65%) and Food & Drink (2.51%) are more popular on iOS, while Finance, Health & Fitness, and Shopping also have higher-than-average usage among iOS users. The retention rate in iOS and Android has demonstrated substantial variations vis-à-vis last year. Remaining constant (2.5% in last two years), iOS retention rate became twice that of Android (dropping from 2.5% in 2019 to 1.23% in 2021). While Android should continue to be a 2022 focus area owing to the country’s appetite for Android and rising Chinese OEMs, the great overall lifetime value, better retention rates and higher share of paying users (more than twice of Android) that iOS offers would be a sufficient ground for marketers to target premium segments in popular iOS verticals.
• Mobile ad fraud seeps into non-finance categories: Due to its hyper-growth, the Food & Drink sector suffered heavily from mobile ad fraud with a 37.43% fraud rate followed by Travel, Entertainment and Finance. Utilities, Health & Fitness, and Education sector (for once, Finance did not report the highest fraud rate). The trend highlighted that larger apps (by app install volume) tend to have a higher proportion of app installs attributed to fraud. Also, Android apps were more impacted by fraud than iOS apps, although iOS apps were comparatively more vulnerable to click flooding. Click flooding was seen to be a major concern for Gaming, where almost two-thirds of fraudulent installs were linked to that fraud activity.

What are the growth opportunities for budding brands vis-à-vis martech? 

The current scenario demands a constant change in the marketing mix. Besides an exceptional product and overall experience, brands must focus on the below fundamentals to have a solid value proposition to drive growth:

• Engagement and retention: Growing competition has created a scenario where increasing mobile-first users are spoilt for choice. This has made user engagement & retention a challenge for brands. Brands now have an opportunity to try different means to engage and retain users. They should take advantage of owned media sources, like push notifications, email, and SMS campaigns. With the prospect of limited data in the future, marketers will need to rely on aggregated rather than user-level data, so putting measurement frameworks such as incrementality, predictive, and cohort analysis in place will help them plan, execute and optimize their re-engagement strategies.
• Content-first strategy: Localisation of apps, products and services is incomplete without localised communication. As per research, 88% of Indian language internet users are more likely to respond to an ad in their local language as compared to English. Messages in local languages have clearly become the key drivers of brands’ relevance. Giving a localized transformation to your brand communications will go a long way in creating genuine connections with your users. This has emerged to be one of the vital strategies for businesses aiming to tap into a new user base.
• Optimising app performance for better user experience: App performance is an essential component of app development with end users seeking a seamless and easy-to-navigate experience on apps. Mobile app performance is more than what is experienced in the front-end. It is also about functionality, speed, and response to user interactions. To stand out in today’s crowded app market, app developers need to consciously work towards adding value (new features, design, content, etc.) to their apps, while enabling users to achieve what they want quickly and efficiently. Brands should look at intuitive and user-friendly app design to drive retention and user acquisition. 

How has been the impact of ATT on app marketers in the past 12 months? Can you provide deeper ecosystem insights and the way forward?

Apple’s ATT has overturned the mobile marketing industry since April 2021. Looking at the past 14 months, the adoption has been widespread, with 80% of apps implementing the ATT prompt (showing it to their users). In addition, opt-in rates also grew, where month after month AppsFlyer data has shown that nearly one in every two instances resulted in a user tapping on the ‘Allow’ button among those who had been shown the prompt. While mobile marketers were initially worried over the user experience risk of the prompt, it is evident that the benefits of showing the prompt far outweigh the benefits of not showing it. While ATT provides users greater privacy and control, it also provides marketers an opportunity to utilize data-driven collaboration and insights that are privacy-centric.

Overall, Finance and Utilities categories witnessed the highest consent rate (53%) by category and Education category showed the lowest consent rate (41%). Entertainment category showed a consent rate of 46% while the Food & Drink category showed a consent rate of 47%. Further, it was observed that sensitivity and awareness to data privacy and security is significantly higher in developed markets, which is why the developing world shows much higher consent rates, especially in Southeast Asia. India showed a consent rate of 50% in the gaming category - which is higher than the global average (46%).

As business models, which rely on the sharing of personal information face challenges, companies are expected to look at technology and innovations to achieve business goals. Marketers should focus on honing their measurement methodologies through a mix of top-down approaches, including incrementality measurement and bottom-up methods such as predictive analytics. Privacy-compliant solutions like Data Clean rooms will gain relevance and help mobile app marketers utilise the power of their data while respecting current privacy regulations.

Looking ahead, publishers and advertisers will have to recalibrate the ways in which they monetise their content and collect data. It is expected that the consumers’ demand for data privacy practices will only increase in the future, which is why it is important for marketers to be cognizant of how they access data-driven customer insights.