If we analyze user personalities and actions, we are not all the same. We behave and consume differently. So it seems pretty obvious that we should be impacted differently with advertising campaigns, right?

The idea of segmentation has been on every Advertiser’s mind since the beginning of digital campaigns becoming the focus of many brands lately. The ad customization based on audience segmentation can be very fruitful and generate a huge impact on digital marketing campaigns.

The question is: Does this segmentation benefit my user acquisition performance and app growth?

It’s very common once Advertisers start running programmatic UA (user acquisition) and they analyze campaign traffic, to have the idea of restraining some of its audience. Blocking apps that are not bringing high-quality users makes total sense on this type of Advertiser’s mind. Why should we keep printing ads on apps that are not bringing good results or any result at all?

The answer seems to be pretty clear, right?

Actually, it doesn’t.

Programmatic has evolved a lot in terms of technology in the past few years. And the recommendation I would like to share Advertisers today is to let the technology do its job.

Programmatic Learning Phase:

Don’t rush your decisions, it might take a while until your programmatic performance campaign starts showing some good trends and results. That’s called the learning phase, it takes time and enough user data for the algorithm to build your ideal potential customer. So when the opportunity comes the technology can be sure to buy the correct ads and impact those users that are more likely to install your app or make key events.

Actually, Programmatic Learning is getting so advanced with AI & Machine Learning, that not only algorithms are calculating the potential users downloading your app, in some cases, they can even predict the potential revenue that the user can generate before making the ad bid. Setting up a campaign that will automatically optimize and seek for those users bringing the best ROI (Return on Investment) is already a reality on programmatic.

It’s important to remind you that while your campaign is active, the learning never stops. Every day the campaign keeps running, the algorithm keeps gathering more data to be more accurate on building your perfect user. Therefore, it gets more efficient on media buying which leads to a continuous learning improvement of your results.

So that’s why most of the programmatic media companies do not encourage or recommend segmentation or do any restriction of an audience. Sooner or later the algorithm will understand where it shouldn’t buy impressions based on the places that are not bringing good results. Blacklisting manually those potential impressions prematurely might affect negatively the development of the learning of the campaign.

Then, what should you be focusing on instead of trying to manually optimize the performance of my UA programmatic campaigns?

1- Look at the right Metrics:

Understand most of your app’s metrics by heart to easily understand your user’s behavior and see if you having any problems at your user funnel. Defining an NSM (North Star Metric) is also crucial for your app growth. A north star metric is the key measure of success that best captures the core value that your product delivers to your customers. For example, the NSM for Airbnb is the nights booked, for Facebook, the number of Daily Active Users (DAU).

2- Re-engagement:

Analyze and understand the behavior of your clients. A great way to segment your marketing efforts is by running re-engagement campaigns on certain types of clients: those who didn’t use your app for a long time, those who uninstall it, those who got stuck on a certain stage of the funnel, etc… This is a crucial step for your mobile app growth.

3- Focus on the visuals:

A perfect potential target means nothing if you can’t communicate properly. Put your efforts into a meaningful and clear creative strategy. If you don’t know where to start from, check this post about creatives hacks. You’ll find the basis to make the most out of your campaign visuals and impact your potential users in the right way.

So basically, as an Advertiser, you don’t need to segment the traffic that you are buying for your UA. If you really want to be effective on your programmatic user acquisition strategy, partner up with media that have powerful technology so they can create and put into action the best strategies on your ad buying. Feel free to ask them several questions on how much will the campaign learning phase take, since it can vary depending on your goal, so you can set estimative dates for the results evolution. Always keep a close eye on the right metrics to be on top of the results that the media is providing you. Work side by side with your partners by giving them your constant feedback on your perception of the campaign and the quality of the users that you are acquiring. This is very positive so both sides can be aligned and make the best of the user acquisition strategy.

Also, don’t forget to work on an effective creative communication plan and on a re-engagement campaign along with your acquisition strategy. Those are the key elements for you to constantly show the users your app value.

If you like to learn more about how you can empower your UA strategy with Programmatic, feel free to contact one of our growth experts.