Mobile marketing measurement company Adjust has just released a dashboard allowing mobile marketers to compare their Key Performance Indicators to other similar apps. Simply select your app category, your geo, mobile acquisition type (paid vs. organic), mobile operating system....and voila! Based on a sample of 7,000 apps and over 4 billion installs (from 01/01/2018 to 03/31/2018), the dashboard will give you averages for retention, sessions, post install events, fraudulent installs and much more. Check it out!

According to a new report by Forrester, mobile video ads will account for 84% of in-app ad spend in 2023 (from already 78% in 2018). Mobile video ad networks have been around for a while but because of bandwith limitations (even in the US) and limited pricing options offered to performance marketers, it took the industry quite a while to adopt video as a viable ad format. Again it is Facebook via its newsfeed who led the way and showed marketers how efficient video ads could be (see Facebook's latest move on video ads). Today mobile video ad networks are the largest distribution channels for mobile marketers. However CPIs keep creeping up, and not all publishers can afford video ad campaigns. It's all based on the CPIs that marketers (and their  LTVs) can afford. As an example, in the US a free app will requires $2 to $4 CPIs. A very high converting app may allow CPIs slightly below $2. Based on our experience marketing different types of apps, games hog most of the inventory, followed by (paid) services app such as Uber, then shopping apps (Wish, etc). Utility apps (alarm clocks, calculators, etc) do not generate LTVs allowing to buy on mobile video ad networks. For more info, the largest mobile video ad networks include Applovin, Vungle, and AdColony. As always contact us to learn more.

Social media influencers are in Unilever's crosshairs. Marketing chief Keith Weed asked influencers to clean up their act and warned that the CPG behemoth would cancel partnerships with social media influencers who buy followers. Points North Group estimates that medium-level influencers (50K to 100k followers) have more than 20% of fake followers. For more info, read the WSJ article.

Are you familiar with Coffeyville KS (pop:9k)? You're not? Well you should definitely learn more about it because a quick look in your Google Analytics logs will reveal that a not so small share of incoming traffic is coming from there. Surprised? We were too! Here's the explanation: 37.0373N, 95.6164W. Still don't get it? Learn more here or there.... and remember we can help you drive high quality traffic, check us out.

Stefano Loukakos (Head of Messenger Business for Facebook) confirmed that autoplay (!) video ads started to run on June 18. It's certainly more real estate to monetize for Facebook, it also a great opportunity for Facebook marketers ... but at what cost? We don't see how the user experience would not suffer. Hopefully a flash in the pan. If not then Whatsapp will be the next on the list. For more info click here.

Snapchat's spectacular rise over the last 18 months did not go unnoticed. Yet many performance marketers -- we're not talking PR, social media, and branding people here ;-) -- got burned trying to make sense of the platform. We ourselves saw great results with some products while other products completely failed. In all cases the lack of tracking and targeting features for a platform in its infancy (after all their self serve program launched only recently in June 2017) did not help marketers feel more comfortable spending hundreds of thousands a month on Snap. The company is still playing catch up with some more mature platforms such as Facebook. However some beg to differ: Snapchat ads are as effective as Facebook ads says Andy Pang, Snap's Head of Research and Development. Check out this 3 minute read here.

Great interview by eMarketer to understand in 15 minutes the fundamentals of app marketing. From App Store Optimization (ASO) to the importance of mobile video ads. Listen and learn here. As always, contact us if you need help making your apps stand out.

Today Google Play confirmed the release of a number of improvements presented a month ago during the latest Google I/O (whatch the video here). Google Play is also announcing the launch of a subscriptions center for publishers to help them manage their subscribers more easily. The changes will be welcomed by android developers: compared to the iOS ecosytem android subscriptions are still the exception, and while subscribers grew 80% YoY, the two competing app stores are still playing in different leagues. Don't hesitate to contact us if you need help with your subscription strategy for android.