Getting Started with User Acquisition

Suppose I've got a mobile game (ios/android) that's doing pretty good metrics - LTV, ARPDAU, etc, and I want to start doing UA for it.

The game:
- Is fairly casual.
- Has a video that sells it well in the first few seconds.
- Has good conversion metrics in the stores.
- Is profitable with Apple Search Ads, but the volume of installs on that seems to be quite limited.

I'd like to start doing some UA. We have install attribution set up (I think.) I know what we can afford to spend to turn profit. I know how to track performance of cohorts.

But there seems to be very little info on where you go (facebook?) once you're ready to actually put money into UA for something, and how to get started designing and testing creatives, and bidding (ideally not on a CPI basis, I'm assuming the major players all bid CPV and manage making sure their creatives work well and convert.)

Are there any useful groups/forums/blogs about this out there?

 

Apparently not.

 

If you are talking about Unity Ads or Unity Analytics then this is the wrong forum section to post as both of them have their own dedicated sections.

 

I wasn't, hence why the question is in "General". "UA" above means "User Acquisition."

 

Good to know because nothing in the original post suggested that possibility to me and that's most likely the reason why no one has responded till today.

We've had discussions in this section of the forums before but they're few and far between.

 

Yeah, if you're going to use acronyms that are uncommon for developers, it might help to define them if you're actually looking for a response. This forum is filled with coders and artists, but few marketing professionals.

 

I didn't expand "UA" because the people who are able to answer the question will expand that as "User Acquisition", and people who don't probably don't do UA at significant scale as part of their business, which is totally fine but they're not the people I'm targeting the question to.

I'm pretty much only looking for answers from people who have done UA at at-least-mid-five-figure (USD) scale, so I'm deliberately not trying to solicit other answers by explaining the question further and asking "has anyone got experience buying users for their game via ads." I don't want to know about experiences of spending a $100 credit on Apple Search Ads basic.

But it didn't work, so let's just expand the first sentence in fun ways instead.

Suppose I've got a mobile game (ios/android) that's doing pretty good metrics - Lesser Timid Vultures, Amortized Rotation Per Duplicate Anisotropic Unicorn...

 

Yeah, if you're going to use acronyms that are uncommon for developers, it might help to define them if you're actually looking for a response. This forum is filled with coders and artists, but few marketing professionals.
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Very true, and I'm a coder, although I've been "indie" for a living since 2012, so I've picked up enough business and marketing to survive. But my assumption (apparently false), is that at least in the mobile space, none of us are running our independent businesses in quite the same way as we did in 2012 and relying on PressKit, organics and Apple/Google features to sustain our livelihood. I personally have seen that world come and go. If I've come to the conclusion that I won't last another 2 years in mobile without doing some UA, I was assuming that some smart developers have come to it well ahead of me, and might be able to help.

Let me ask, if I said "ASO", would I need to define that for mobile developers in 2018? If so, that's scary to me on some level, although comforting on another...

 

Unity has a service called Unity Answers. It is commonly shortened to UA, so there's one problem. On top of that, if you look up UA on wikipedia, user acquisition isn't even mentioned. In fact, if I load up Acronym Finder, "user acquisition" is like 33% down the list.

Most people just say "user acquisition." No acronym.

 

OK, so if we agree that nobody ever says "UA" for User Acquisition, does anyone have any User Acquisition experience, or paid app user growth experience, that they can share?

 

If you read the OP then I think its fairly clear hes taking about "User Acquisition" and if you haven't picked up on that then perhaps this post is not for you.

@ferretnt I've also looked for similar information in the past but as you have pointed out its fairly thin on the ground.
Have you had a look at what some of the more success publishers do such as Ketchapp & Voodoo?

I found a few posts a while ago on various sites but this is the only one I can find now which seemed to indicate that Voodoo use Instagram as a marketing tool.

From an indie standpoint, the people I talk to dont seem to spend much if anything on UA and instead just use the usual social media channels and mailing lists etc and have generated a following over time.

Please keep us updated on anything you manage to find and how you get on with your own UA.

 

Two people isn't a very conclusive sample size. Using an acronym for the sake of an acronym clearly wasn't the best strategy for forum post acquisition.

Asking Google for "mobile user acquisition" results from Gamasutra came up with the following article. I don't have time at the moment to check out the article but maybe it'll have some use.

https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/Vir...eating_A_Mobile_User_Acquisition_Strategy.php

 

I recommend starting with facebook ads for both platforms. Try it, experiment and then SLOWLY increase ad budget if it’s successful. If you change a facebook campaign budget by too much it resets all the learning data and it effectively starts a new campaign.

I tried both search ads and google ads but neither were profitable for me. Other devs I’ve spoken too say the same. Facebook ad network on facebook and instagram seems to be the best performer. At least for smaller campaigns.

I should also mention facebook ads allows you to optimise by conversion (IAP) and i found that was way more effective at getting valuable users than optimising for installs or impressions even though install costs were higher for conversion optimised users.

 

Voodoo uses Apple's search ads as well.
https://searchads.apple.com