Firstly hello everyone. New member here, been a lurker for awhile so decided it is time to join.
I am currently testing out different marketing methods, one being AppBrain.
I chose them because I have read a number of positive reviews about them, one mainly being very cost effective.
So I deposited the min $100 yesterday, set out on a new campaign targeting various countries (Tier 2), set my cpi between 0.20 - 0.50. So far I have reached an amazing 5 installs (sarcasm). Apparently my promotion is not effective and I should increase to $1.20 to get an amazing 33 downloads.
Now perhaps I am doing something wrong here, targeting the wrong countries? Maybe someone can with more experience can give me some pointers because Facebook is certainly much cheaper than this in my opinion.
What are the countries your are targeting? Are they large countries or small ones?
From my experience, it takes about 2-3 days until Appbrain campaigns settle and reach their peak. So you will get a lower number of impressions in the beginning but after a couple of days you should get a lot more.
If I recall it was one of your posts that confirmed my choice to use AppBrain.
I am targeting smaller countries, I think the biggest country is India that I have targeted. I suppose I will have to be patient. It is just strange because I did a similar campaign with Facebook and got pretty decent results in only a few hours.
For India I don’t recommend using appbrain because you’ll pay at least $0.20 per install but you can get better results with facebook. I managed to get installs at as low as $0.10 with Facebook in India.
Perhaps things have changed with Appbrain over the last few months and they are giving less impressions, I haven’t used them in a while.
One very important thing I noticed with Appbrain: with all the jigsaw puzzle games I promoted with them, I got a very good number of impressions from top countries like USA, UK, Australia, etc at a price of around $0.25. However, when I promoted other games, I was getting a much lower number of impressions even though I was setting a higher price. My conclusion was that, with the jigsaw puzzle games, where the title was very intuitive and people would know exactly what the game was about, the install ratio was much higher compared to the other type of games (where the title was not so intuitive). Perhaps Appbrain’s algorithm was noticing that and decided to show more of my jigsaw puzzle ads because of the high conversion rate. And maybe other ad networks work the same.
“So far I have reached an amazing 5 installs (sarcasm)” Thanks for making me laugh. On a serious note, I am also looking to invest money into using AppBrain or Facebook ads, keep me posted on how you get on, thanks.
Yeah I will let you know how the campaign goes.
For now though, it is pretty slow. I have now reached over 200 clicks with zero installs. Compared to Facebook, 109 clicks with 8 installs in a period of 2 hours.
Fun times!
How much is CPI for 109 clicks with 8 installs? Can you share if you set CPC for facebook ads (charged when clicked), or just set budget and let facebook handle (charged every time your ad is shown)?
I have not set a price, I just set it so that it is works best for clicks. It is however CPC, I believe you need to install the Facebook SDK to get CPI, I could be wrong though.
I can say though, Appbrain has picked up today. Got 85 installs, but it suddenly stopped again.
I have SDK installed but still don’t get CPI, if I choose optimize for install, they charge me by CPM (and really high). If I choose manual bidding is a lot better but sometimes they stop showing my ad altogether.
You should be able to see your effective CPI though, you mentioned you got 109 clicks with 8 installs. How much did you pay in total for those 109 clicks and 8 installs? Even if you manage to get a low CPC of 0.10, those 8 installs are effectively ~US$1.3 way higher than appbrain isn’t it?
