By now, if you’re living in the world of ecommerce and haven’t heard of AppLovin, you may be living under a rock.
And no, we’re not talking about McLovin from Superbad… Although we get the confusion.
Did one of you drop this?
Looks pretty legit. pic.twitter.com/9AslIDNvMq— tim peckover (@timothypeckover) November 25, 2024
Lucky for you, whether you have or have not heard of AppLovin, we’re here to help break down the true impact of AppLovin with real KnoCommerce brand data.
AppLovin is a new marketing channel within mobile games that many advertisers claim to be “like the Facebook days of 2015” with new customers and low CPAs.
After monitoring over 13 million questions a month within KnoCommerce, we’re here to give you the inside scoop on how AppLovin is really working within some of our top brands.
Overall AppLovin trends: Responses, clicks, and more
Since Sean Frank was the modern Paul Revere and said “AppLovin is coming, AppLovin is coming,” we’ve seen a quick increase in AppLovin responses.
We conducted a survey, and two main questions helped track how customers find and buy from brands.
- “How did you first hear about us?” is focused on discovery-driven by AppLovin
- “Where did you see our ad?” focused on conversions driven by AppLovin (when they selected Ad as the reason for their purchase today)
Filtered responses containing “app” or “game” (excluding things like WhatsApp, shop app, and brand apps)
As you can see in the charts below, up until September, Mobile Game Ad Responses were less than a percent, and in a span of two short months, it climbed to nearly 4%.
We found that Discovery has risen from a baseline of about 0.1% 6 months ago to 0.6% in November (through Nov 10th). This is massive, rapid growth, but still tiny in the context of discovery-driving channels.
We’ll need continued growth in discovery to make sure the trend lasts. However, as a last source channel, it’s absolutely crushing. Starting at a baseline of 0.2% 6 months ago to now, 3.7% so far in November.
Our main takeaway is that these ads are showing promise to drive conversions and at the very least, customers are noticing them.
The interesting thing about the nearly 5,500 customers that have said that they purchased from a Mobile Game Ad (AppLovin) is that over 96% of them are ages 45+.
For more about how AppLovin is performing across the DTC ecosystem, check out our work with the DTC Index.
Why is AppLovin working?
We’re going to pull in an answer from our friend Jonathan Snow from the Snow Agency, because he summed this up perfectly on X:
1. AppLovin has a 100% thumb stop rate.
On Meta, a solid thumb stop rate is 25%. Nearly all of the remaining 75% that scroll past an ad on Meta had no idea what the ad was even for. They just knew it was an ad & scrolled past it.
AppLovin gives you an automatic 100% thumb stop rate. It doesn’t allow users to skip an ad for at least a few seconds. It drops a 100% captive audience right on your lap.
APP users are on their phone when served an ad, so they won’t be able to preoccupy those few seconds with other phone activity. A few seconds also isn’t enough time to turn on the TV or do something else to occupy those “dead” seconds.
This means that AppLovin is getting 4x captive eyeballs on each ad that it shows relative to Meta. Of the 75% who would have scrolled past the ad on Meta, there is undoubtedly a faction of that group who would end up clicking through the ad and purchasing, like they now are going to do via AppLovin. Meta can’t get away with unskippable ads b/c it would interrupt the UX too much. APP can get away with this. If you want to go to the next level of Candy Crush, you’re sitting through that damn ad.
Simple math: just imagine you all of a sudden had 100% thumb stop rate on your Meta ads… your performance would obviously improve. This is one of my suspicions on why APP is performing so well out the gate.
- Novelty Factor.
APP users have been seeing mobile game ads for eternity.
NOW, some of those dead seconds in between Candy Crush levels is being filled with engaging full screen UGC that’s showing them an interesting beauty product.
That novelty factor alone is likely boosting CTR of these ecom ads. Who knows how ad fatigue will set in once users get hit with enough ecom ads over time.”
Okay… so AppLovin seems to be working. But will it work for YOUR brand? Let’s discuss how to measure that.
How to measure AppLovin attribution for your brand
Like any new marketing channel, it’s going to be hard to measure the true incrementality and have any sense of accurate in-platform attribution. That’s where the trusty post-purchase survey comes into play.
To make it easier, we built a template for tracking the impact of AppLovin. Test the Demo.
If you’re already using KnoCommerce, here’s how to set this template up. If you’re not on the KNO platform yet, you can sign up for a 7-day free trial here.
Now… Let’s talk about how to assess the data you collect on AppLovin.
With KnoCommerce, there are five key ways to set up your account to make sure that you’re filtering through AppLovin insights properly to understand its true impact and growth potential for your brand:
1. AppLovin as a discovery channel
The most fundamental question any brand should ask in their post-purchase survey is: “Before you go… how did you first hear about us?”
Here at KnoCommerce, we believe that asking how they FIRST heard about you can help understand and separate first click from last click from your customer surveys.
With new channels, many brands will first try to use the platform name vs the customer language. For example, with AppLovin, your customers don’t know what that is. So instead, always create the option based on what type of advertising it is AKA: Mobile Game Ad.
We can also follow up if a customer selects “Mobile Game Ad” by asking, “What game was it?” to better understand individual game impacts as you look to scale and learn this new marketing channel.
Lastly, once campaigns are running and responses are coming through make sure to go to audiences and set up your Discovery = AppLovin audience as a filter over the rest of your broader data.
This can help you better understand if customers came directly from the AppLovin ad, if they saw the ad and then converted via another channel, or help you understand other insights about your AppLovin customers.
Here’s how setting up this audience in Knocommerce works to understand AppLovin’s first-click attribution:
2. AppLovin halo effect
While asking how’d you first hear about us is important, often times with new channels like AppLovin, your customers have seen you elsewhere before.
So for any new channel, many brands like setting up a logic-based question where if “Mobile Game App” was NOT selected, then customers get asked: “Have you seen our ads on any mobile games?”
If the customer selects yes, then make sure to go to KnoCommerce’s audience builder and extract the “yes” from the question, and use it as a “Halo Effect = AppLovin” Audience to understand more about your customers.
3. AppLovin last touch
Now that we covered the top of the funnel, here’s how to measure the bottom-of-the-funnel effects of AppLovin.
There are 2 core ways to do this:
- By asking “What brought you to our site today?” This is going to be two of the three questions you should be asking to better understand your whole customer journey.
Should a customer select “I saw an ad”, then make sure “Mobile Game Ad” is an option.
Similar to the steps above, make sure you’re building out an audience to be able to inverse the responses to understand the top-of-funnel impacts.
2. Pull the “Last Click” data from your store. While no one claims its complete accuracy, it’s another touchpoint to learn more about your customers.
To accomplish this, instead of setting up your audience based on “Survey Question Answered”, find “Last Click” and input AppLovin into the text box.
4. AppLovin UTM
Another data point KnoCommerce will pull from your order information is your UTM Source + Medium. With this, any UTM parameters set up for landing pages from your AppLovin ads can be used within KnoCommerce audience reporting.
This approach should be more accurate and helpful than Last Click data as it’s pulling straight from the landing page.
To set this up, simply find the UTM Source option in KnoCommerce Audience builder and make sure you spell out AppLovin or whatever you and your team used as the source name.
5. AppLovin time to conversion
The last part of our three-piece attribution set is asking customers, “How long did you know about us before making your first purchase?”.
With this question, you can then overlay the Discovery Audience (Step 1 above) to understand how quickly customers are converting.
Should there be a longer consideration window, many brands will then create an adjusted ROAS based on the inputs from your surveys.
Other AppLovin insights you can gain with KnoCommerce
While measuring AppLovin is the reason you’re reading this, it’s important to note that attribution is just the tip of the iceberg, especially when the channel is so new for your business.
Time and time again, we see brands have completely different customer segments based on the channels they advertise on. That’s where it’s important to ask other qualitative questions to learn more about your AppLovin customers.
Questions like:
- Who are you purchasing for today?
- What interested you the most about X Brand?
- What other social channels do you spend time on?
- Did you evaluate any of our competitors before purchasing?
We created a template in the KnoCommerce dashboard for AppLovin, so you can set an attribution survey live in minutes and start tracking how AppLovin is contributing to your revenue. (Get started here.)
What we’re seeing in real brands data
Below, we’ve compiled examples based on anonymized data from one brand’s experience, focusing on how AppLovin is driving discovery and revenue.
Get a quick revenue impact view
The fastest way to get some sense of revenue impact is to use the Order Attribution report in the “Advanced Reports” tab.
If you toggle the “Estimate 100%” toggle, you’ll see the impact. You can also enable the “New Customers template” and “Returning Customers Template” audiences in the Audiences section of your KNO account to view this data by new customers only.
Here you can see this brand has driven an estimated $199,804 in NEW customer revenue from AppLovin discovery.
If the goal is new customer acquisition, with 100% incremental purchases, this is a great view to get you started.
Analyze the discovery trend
The first thing we’re looking for is if there’s a rise in discovery after launching ads on AppLovin.
Ideally, the rise in discovery should make sense in the context of your ad spend, but do note that there is often a lag between when you start showing ads and when you’ll see the impact (more on that in a moment).
Analyze the click source
With your newly created UTM audience for AppLovin clicks you can break down where your customers said they found you compared to where the click indicates they found you.
For this brand, 47% of people with an AppLovin first click report finding the brand via mobile game. 15% via Facebook.
Measure mid to bottom funnel impact
If you add either the “What brought you to our site today?” or “Where else have you seen us?” question, it will help you get a better idea of how AppLovin is driving impact outside of discovery.
In this example, we’re going to track the trend in “Other” responses, as people began typing in “game ad”, “ad in game”, etc. in response to “where else have you heard about us?”
You can see the baseline response to other was about 4% until AppLovin spend started. It’s risen to an average of almost 7%. In other words, AppLovin is helping people purchase who found you in other places.
You can also track the overlap of other channels in driving AppLovin conversions.
To do this, filter these responses with your AppLovin discovery audience (people who said they discovered the brand via AppLovin.
Here you can see about half indicate “other” or “game ad” which means they’re essentially just AppLovin users.
However, 14% of people who found this brand on AppLovin report seeing them on Facebook. 6% on Instagram, 3% on TikTok, and 9% on YouTube.
This tells you there’s likely some cross-channel activity happening in these channels. AppLovin/Meta overlap is particularly strong.
Track the impact over time
One of the things we’re looking for when launching a new channel – do customers report a faster time to purchase. They SHOULD.
What we’re really looking for here is potential impact over time. If you believe AppLovin behaves similarly to Facebook, then you can expect the shape of your time to purchase data could shift over time to look more like Meta.
In this example you can see 80% of people who report finding this brand on AppLovin said they knew about the brand for less than a month before placing their first purchase.
Conversely, only 42% of those who report finding this brand on Facebook purchased in the first month. This is likely because this brand has been running ads on Facebook for much longer. What this tells us, however, is that the likely long term impact of AppLovin is higher than what’s being tracked in the first 1, 7, or even 30 days.
Found brand via AppLovin
Found brand via Facebook
The takeaway on AppLovin
While AppLovin’s novelty and high engagement rates are certainly exciting, success hinges on how well you measure and adapt.
So, whether you’re just testing the waters or ready to dive in, AppLovin’s potential is hard to ignore. We want you to be equipped to uncover actionable insights to assess the true impact of AppLovin campaigns, from initial discovery to long-term customer value.
Our CEO created a video showing you how to set up the AppLovin post-purchase survey template below. You can get started with it by creating your account with KnoCommerce here.
We’ve partnered with Applovin to give you a 10k ad credit – terms apply.