tapjoy

anyone who has used tapjoy to acquire users care to share your experience?

what is the minimum budget to try/start a campaign? do we need to integrate their SDK? is it CPI or CPC?

I would like you know the same thing?

I think the minimum budget is $100 per day but it’s recommended to have a daily budget of at least $500 because they can deliver some serious volumes.

Integration of SDK is required and they’re using the CPI model. Lowest price is $0.10 for normal incentivized install and minimum $1 for a premium incentivized install (users are required to complete a level/a mission/something inside your game to get the reward).

Do you have to integrate and implement their offers for coins? Or is just integrating and maybe a call to the sdk to let them know the desired level is completed, enough?

Not sure I understand your question.

You have to integrate their SDK. I haven’t tried the premium incentivized install but I guess you have to call a function with their sdk once the objective has been reached so they can reward the user.

For normal incentivized install it is enough to init their sdk.

I was under the impression you didn’t need to have Tapjoy SDK integrated or initialized etc. in your app (that you want to promote via Tapjoy pay-to-install campaigns).

However the apps I promoted DID have Tapjoy integrated in those apps also.

I had tried AppBrain first - and then Tapjoy.

AppBrain gives you good user quality - i.e. don’t get many bad ratings - and retention is good also.

For Tapjoy I just ran the simple “pay to install” - and not the more complicated “pay to complete first level” or something like that (for THAT I am guessing it would surely require Tapjoy SDK integration).

My opinion about Tapjoy was that you would get many bad reviews - and retention would be very bad (since users would presumably be interested in just earning the Tapjoy coins and not really interested in your app). This is the experience posted here before by others - and this made me not consider Tapjoy.

However in practice I found the Tapjoy experience no worse than AppBrain. And I suspect the difference may be that I did not promote the app heavily on Tapjoy i.e. I kept the bid price at the lowest $0.10 per app install (which would I think keep the app low down in the Tapjoy App Wall - and thus anyone downloading your app may be those who are ACTUALLY looking for good apps - rather than just earning money). Offering a very low Tapjoy bid price i.e. the lowest of $0.10 was (I thought) possibly another reason - since your app would be giving them VERY LOW Tapjoy coins - there is almost no incentive to download your app - thus the app-install (if it happens) would be more or less “non-incentivized”.

Another factor may be that if you have a really good app then the bad 1-star ratings may actually be less also with Tapjoy paid-installs. The app I was promoting was something I cared about and had worked on for a bit - and was reasonably devoid of bugs etc. - and was getting good ratings on Google Play - so it is possible those Tapjoy users who downloaded my app may have actually found it to be good. It IS possible that if the app is crap - then Tapjoy users MAY pounce on it a bit more than usual.

Anyway this is what I rationalized it with. Because the retention seemed to be ok - and the ratings were not bad either. Though I did get some (more than expected) 1-star ratings - which MAY have been from Tapjoy. But it could just have been a random occurrence - because I did not see a persistent and crushing 1-star onslaught as I was expecting.

I also looked at my app’s “session length” in Google Analytics Developer Console - and I did not see any hugely correlated decline in the session length (which would suggest newer users are just installing the app and then uninstalling giving a very low session length). But I did not detect any pattern in this - it did fall for a period - but then was higher - so it could be unrelated to the tapjoy installs.

With Tapjoy I did notice one thing - and it was that I got more Tapjoy revenue in my apps in general while I was running Tapjoy paid-install campaign for the new app. It was not a big difference but more than average - and it made me consider the possibility that the users who actually have a tendency to earn Tapjoy coins - when they install your new app - they may also install your other apps - and may be MORE likely to want to earn Tapjoy coins (or to spend Tapjoy coins earned) in your other apps. Or something like that.

It could also be that Tapjoy may reward you by giving you better app walls or something for your other app - to “reward” you in some way or something. Though that is not something tapjoy mentions. So it may not be that perhaps.

One thing I did notice - and this is mentioned by other users - that when I mentioned or tried to promote the new app on reddit - by making posts about the app - which may have made it sound like promotion. There was a greater tendency to get 1-star ratings - so it is possible that if you piss off reddit users - they may give you 1-stars - or maybe more critical. Not sure - since those 1-star spurts may have happened due to reddit posts - or to AppBrain / Tapjoy paid install campaigns. So not sure about that.

Hope this helps.

For anyone wanting high number of downloads per day however - the findings maybe different though.

For example if you are wanting to spend more than $100-200 - for example if you are running campaigns to generate massive downloads and have a huge budget like $1000-2000 per day - then it is possible you may get very different results with Tapjoy (or even AppBrain).

Because then your app would be promoted so it is more visible to everyone in the AppBrain/Tapjoy appwall. And may thus not attract the user who is actually browsing the appwall for obscure apps - but may instead get the “dumb” users who just click on the first app in the appwall. Which may be good or bad (?) for your ratings etc.

For AppBrain - as I reported before - if you spend even $100 in a day - it just flows like water. That is you can get large number of downloads easily.

With Tapjoy - you would probably have to increase the bid price (from the lowest $0.10 - to something close to the AppBrain minimum of $0.20 - or higher - as happens with AppBrain also) i.e. if you want to guarantee thousands of downloads a day - you may have to pay considerably more bid price.

But those who are spending $1000-2000 per day probably don’t need the advice being given here - because they would have run those tests already. Most people asking about paid campaigns etc. are those who want to spend maybe $10 to $20 per day for 10-20 days and maybe spend $500 to $1000 in total for a new app they have made.

All in all I have seen that for those with small pockets - I wonder if running a paid campaign via AppBrain/Tapjoy really helps the small developer in the long run or not.

There may be a risk-minimizing value in doing paid campaigns - because it ensures you don’t get stuck in the rut and not get discovered - i.e. it gives you a running start.

I would not have run a paid campaign - except for the new app I mentioned - I had worked on it for a bit and had wanted to make it a quality app - and for that I considered my effort worth more than $1000 - and so thought I should at least spend a bit to ensure the app is not “lost” - i.e. give it a running start.

For apps which take very little time to make - I would guess that people would NOT want to do paid installs. But for a game or a well crafted app that has taken them a few months - then it seems reasonable that you would want to spend some money to give the app a running start. This is because sometimes the app may not have the right keywords (i.e. may have nothing to do with Justin Bieber etc.) - yet you may think that if the idea gets exposure it may catch on or maybe liked by people. This is also the problem for “new” type of apps which don’t fit any keywords or such stuff (discoverability will be bad for apps which are truly novel - though there social media may have value if it gets mentioned via people-to-people grapevine/social-media).

However, with paid install campaign - it is still not clear if it helps the app in the long run.

After the AppBrain campaign I found the app immediately dropping in downloads (nearly back to earlier levels) - and suddenly (usually next day etc.) - the Google Play rankings or country rankings start dropping directly - which suggests these are linked to the daily new user downloads (or perhaps maybe retention rate of new users - though I don’t have data to gauge or measure that). But new user downloads every day certainly do have a DIRECT impact on Google rankings/country rankings etc.

So as soon as the AppBrain campaign ran out of money - immediately the app dropped back to earlier. And with Tapjoy the same thing happened as well.

Which makes one think whether if one had just stayed with the organic installs (i.e. not done the AppBrain/Tapjoy paid install campaigns) whether the organic installs would just have been good … and rising steadily etc.

Because I wonder what the impact is when your paid campaigns run out of money - because new installs suddenly drop. And you installed base churn rate still makes you lose users every day - so your new user installs vs. uninstalls rate may go down a lot. And I wonder if this hurts your rankings somehow later (i.e. Google classifying the app as a crap app or something). Though new installs vs. uninstalls per day rate may NOT impact - since this ratio goes down ANYWAY for mature apps. BUT if you stop getting new installs - then the new installs vs. daily active users (DAU) may go down a lot.

One thing I have noticed with many apps is that the DAU is about DOUBLE what the new user installs per day are … I wonder if this is something which is constant across apps ? Or are long session length and high-retention apps (i.e. much loved apps) - do those have a different ratio ?

So I wonder if Google actually moves apps in rankings etc. in such a way that you get new users that are automatically about half what your DAU is or something ?

This would suggest that if you have a good retention - i.e. users keep coming back to your app - then Google may move you up in rankings until you start getting the requisite amount of new users. That is - it is possible Google essentially “gives” you more new installs if it sees that your app has high retention. I am not sure.