Question: Ad spend for my UA campaigns dropped significantly, and I just cannot scale it up. What should I do now?
If you are having trouble running user acquisition campaigns for your mobile games or apps, here are some strategies for 3 common use cases to help improve UA performance.
Before you get going, start asking yourself:
What is the goal of the UA campaign, how did you come up with this goal?
What is the actual performance of the campaign? How big is the difference with the campaign settings?
Has anything changed recently with the creatives?
Has anything changed recently with product and monetisation?
Some metrics we have to look at to isolate the issue:
LTV movement
CPI movement
Any significant change on the campaign level (leverage campaign Center)
Any significant change on the siteID level (leverage SiteID center)
Any significant change on the creative level (leverage Creative level)
3 Common Use Cases
To accurately diagnose the UA issues, ensure you are analyzing the data at the Campaign and/or Geo level.
Case 1: CPI increase, LTV flat: UA issue
Fig 1 shows that LTVD3/D7/D14 is stagnant while Att-eCPI has increased over the last week upon showing the mini-chart in Fig 2.
Fig 1.
Fig 2.
Cause: Creative Fatigue
Performance signal: Decrease in IPM
Action: Switch out low-impression creatives and monitor the campaign performance.
⭐ Features to use: Campaign Center, Creative Center
Cause: New audience exploration from ad network:
Performance signal: SiteID changeAction: If bidding on CPI, reduce target bidding for specific Site IDs. If bidding on ROAS, change the overall target ROAS of the campaign
⭐ Features to use: Campaign Center, Site ID Center
Cause: Bidding competition from market/competitor:
Performance signal: Increase in CPM
Action: You cannot do much. But try matching with Monetisation side
⭐ Feature to use: Campaign Center
Case 2: CPI flat, LTV decrease
Fig 3 below shows that LTV D3 has decreased over the last week.
Fig 3.
Questions to further analyse the cause of performance:
UA: Was there any significant change in the media mix?
Creative: Did you run any fake ads that bring a different audience?
Product: Was there any new feature released?
Monetisation: Was there any drop in eCPM, or ad monetisation that impacts user value?
Case 3: CPI decrease, LTV decreased further
Analyse with mini charts for CPI and LTV to monitor the decreasing trends (Fig 4).
Fig 4
Questions to further analyse the cause of performance:
Creative: Did you run any fake ads that bring a different audience?
Product & Monetisation: Check change log