New iOS App Store page requirements: Privacy labels, and under the hood of Among Us

Growth loops, nutrition labels, ad creatives and the future of mobile platforms. Our ASO Food for Thought from Nov 12, 2020.

Now that the election dust has settled (or almost settled) it’s time to get back to becoming the best people we can. Inside and outside our work-lives. 

Becoming a great mobile marketer/ASOer,/UA manager (or an anything-er of any craft), usually involves two main parts. Firstly, learning how to become better at the craft itself, and secondly, staying on top of what’s happening around us so we can strategize and develop our skills accordingly. 

This is the point of this newsletter, so let’s dive in:

Growth loops to boost your strategy

In the last bi-weekly note we mentioned how the success story of the mobile-focused, cross-platform game “Among Us” could lead to actionable learnings for any mobile marketing and growth person. 

We spent some time analyzing what it was exactly which led to Among Us’s incredible success; what made it the most downloaded game in the world, and how it reached revenue run-rates that resemble those of AAA games published by the world’s top studios, all with a team of 3-4 people and no user acquisition spend. It’s mind-blowing, really.

Read the full analysis for main takeaways, where we identified the growth loops that contributed to the game’s success including a brand growth loop, a Twitch-driven loop, and a strong user-invite loop. 

I found that one of the most interesting growth loops in play for Among Us was Twitch, showing that by publishing cross-platform, they were able to tap into a Twitch-driven growth loop that allowed them to become the #1 game in the world today.

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These are all replicable growth loops that you can leverage for your own growth, so pick a loop and dive in.

App Store page privacy nutrition labels 

First announced in WWDC 2020 back in June, Apple’s app privacy labels are going to be mandatory by December 8th. You won’t be able to submit any game or app (new or update) without including details on the data you collect from users. 

These labels will appear on each app store product page. Based on the little info provided by Apple they’ll most likely appear beneath the app’s reviews widget. Based on data we analyzed from hundreds of millions of user sessions on app store pages, we know that about 15%-25% of users will scroll to the bottom of an app store page. That said, for privacy-conscious users, this new information might affect their decision to install or not, depending on the type of data your app collects. 

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We will start analyzing privacy labels’ impacts on install conversion rates soon, and will report back our findings here. In the meantime, you should start preparing the data you need to provide to Apple through App Store Connect so your December updates will remain uninterrupted.

Ad creative report

Bidalgo released a really interesting analysis of the state of mobile app ad creatives. Read more here.

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According to Bidalgo’s analysis, almost 40% of ad spend goes to underperforming ad creatives. About 61% of ad assets have below-average CTRs. 

These findings show the importance of getting to know your users and which creatives and messages drive them to install. An ad creative is only the first part of the user journey, before they are exposed to your app store page creatives. 

Running thoughtful experiments and finding the messaging that’ll maximize conversion rates could methodically solve this prevalent problem of almost 40% of ad spend going to underperforming creatives that create significant leaks in most teams’ UA budgets.

The future of mobile platforms

On our reading recommendations for this week, we have Mobile Dev Memo’s thought-provoking piece about the future of platforms. 

I urge you to keep up with the current trends and shifts in our industry, as more and more parties (Epic Games, Facebook Gaming, Microsoft, Google Stadia, and more) are calling for a more open platform landscape with less gatekeepers. This trend could even lead in the next few years to a redefining of what an app is and how content can be consumed on mobile devices.

Diversifying distribution of a mobile product is pointed out as something that each and every mobile marketer should think of in the next 3-5 years. This connects to the first point about how Among Us’s success would not be possible without being a cross-platform, Steam-available, Twitchable game. 

must-read if you want to stay on top of your mobile marketing game.

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    Jonathan Fishman
    About Jonathan Fishman
    Jonathan is Storemaven's VP of Marketing and Growth. Before joining Storemaven he spent ten years commanding tanks, working on Wall St., consulting high-growth companies, and exploring Black Rock City. In his spare time, he likes building things from wood, listening to Frank Zappa, and spending time with his daughter.

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