- Apr 8, 2016
- 280
- 207
I've been debating about this one for awhile, I haven't seen this information anywhere so I wondered if it was some kind of secret. If you google how to get cheap app installs you'll get some kind of blog saying that the average app install costs like 1.50$ or something crazy. Bullshit!
Now if they're talking installs including US installs or tier 1 countries then this will be closer, but still... we want the cheapest installs possible which aren't incentivized or botted. These will both likely hurt our app, so we need real cheap installs. It's actually simple: Target third world countries.
This is an example of how low your cost per install can get when you set up an advertising campaign correctly
Yes, in cost per conversion all the way to the right it says .03$. That's about 33 downloads for a dollar! Even incentivized installs are above 10 cents. Now there's two sites I use Adwords and Appbrain (i'm sure you've heard of the former). I'll start with appbrain since it's the easiest to use. (I don't use appbrain anymore but I thought i'd mention it since it's the second cheapest place i've found) It's slightly more expensive per download but less chance of going haywire and spending a crazy budget in the first day.
So on appbrain, First make an account.Set up your app, it's all straight forward. In campaign settings, go down to "Edit country selection"
Then you're going to choose third world countries and de select any expensive countries(anything above 18 cents). Lower the bid optimizer as low as you can. There's a setting to enable appbrain to automatically optimize your ads, enable that. That's it! Give it some time and after the ads optimize your cost per install should be down to 15 cents or so, remove countries higher than 12 cents if you want the cost to go even lower but this will take longer to get downloads and you might not get more than a 100 a day.
I wish I could take some more screenshots to make this process clearer but i'm on my mobile, so i'll have to explain it. For adwords were essentially doing the same thing. When we set up a mobile install campaign in adwords we set the intitial budget to about 15 dollars daily and we set the bid per install at about 30 to 40 cents. This is just to get the ball rolling as we actually want that bid to go down and our daily to be around 3 dollars (or whatever you want).
Note: If you set the daily amount too low or your bid too low adwords won't run the campaign , i've waited several days before because my bids were too low and the campaign never ran. To be safe when I start a new campaign my defaults are 20 daily and .40 cents bids. The campaign usually starts quick like this. The key is to pay attention and keep checking it because sometimes the campaign will run quickly past the budget up to 40 dollars at a .40 cent budget and will eat that up quick without giving too many installs. Pause it before this happens if you can.
Now that the campaign has started running you'll have some data as to where your ad impressions are being shown. Once again sorry I'm not on my computer to make this clearer. After a day or maybe two you can now go into the targeting section in adwords, set it to the third world countries like before and exclude tier 1 countries.
Now in adwords what's cool is you can see some third world countries don't convert, maybe this is based on your app or os who knows. You go through the campaign> locations and see where your ads are being shown and set up a cost per conversion row so that you can see if a country is costing you .30 cents an install then just remove it.
For noobs it may seem complex but I figured this out pretty quickly and tinkering around will give you good results shortly too. During the second day the cost per install should already be the lowest you could get with appbrain, 12 to 15 cents.
By the third day my last 4 campains I started were down to 8 cents. After about a week it gets to 5 cents.
Bonus: When you set up the campaign initially you'll have the opportunity to add more ad units and text ideas. Add as many as you can don't be lazy to make your graphics for every size they accept, it should be around 20 or something. You can play with these later and see which ad units are performing better. Also, keep lowering the bid from 40 cents down to 15 cents.
Here's some downloads for my latest app, as you can see it was a shit app because it got many uninstalls but the point being is damn near 17,000 of those downloads were paid for i havent even started advertising it through other means, and I most definitely didn't pay 8 grand, or even a quarter of that.
I hope this helped some people out and apologize if i let the cat out of the bag for others. I love this forum, it was time to make my contribution.
Now if they're talking installs including US installs or tier 1 countries then this will be closer, but still... we want the cheapest installs possible which aren't incentivized or botted. These will both likely hurt our app, so we need real cheap installs. It's actually simple: Target third world countries.
This is an example of how low your cost per install can get when you set up an advertising campaign correctly
Yes, in cost per conversion all the way to the right it says .03$. That's about 33 downloads for a dollar! Even incentivized installs are above 10 cents. Now there's two sites I use Adwords and Appbrain (i'm sure you've heard of the former). I'll start with appbrain since it's the easiest to use. (I don't use appbrain anymore but I thought i'd mention it since it's the second cheapest place i've found) It's slightly more expensive per download but less chance of going haywire and spending a crazy budget in the first day.
So on appbrain, First make an account.Set up your app, it's all straight forward. In campaign settings, go down to "Edit country selection"
Then you're going to choose third world countries and de select any expensive countries(anything above 18 cents). Lower the bid optimizer as low as you can. There's a setting to enable appbrain to automatically optimize your ads, enable that. That's it! Give it some time and after the ads optimize your cost per install should be down to 15 cents or so, remove countries higher than 12 cents if you want the cost to go even lower but this will take longer to get downloads and you might not get more than a 100 a day.
I wish I could take some more screenshots to make this process clearer but i'm on my mobile, so i'll have to explain it. For adwords were essentially doing the same thing. When we set up a mobile install campaign in adwords we set the intitial budget to about 15 dollars daily and we set the bid per install at about 30 to 40 cents. This is just to get the ball rolling as we actually want that bid to go down and our daily to be around 3 dollars (or whatever you want).
Note: If you set the daily amount too low or your bid too low adwords won't run the campaign , i've waited several days before because my bids were too low and the campaign never ran. To be safe when I start a new campaign my defaults are 20 daily and .40 cents bids. The campaign usually starts quick like this. The key is to pay attention and keep checking it because sometimes the campaign will run quickly past the budget up to 40 dollars at a .40 cent budget and will eat that up quick without giving too many installs. Pause it before this happens if you can.
Now that the campaign has started running you'll have some data as to where your ad impressions are being shown. Once again sorry I'm not on my computer to make this clearer. After a day or maybe two you can now go into the targeting section in adwords, set it to the third world countries like before and exclude tier 1 countries.
Now in adwords what's cool is you can see some third world countries don't convert, maybe this is based on your app or os who knows. You go through the campaign> locations and see where your ads are being shown and set up a cost per conversion row so that you can see if a country is costing you .30 cents an install then just remove it.
For noobs it may seem complex but I figured this out pretty quickly and tinkering around will give you good results shortly too. During the second day the cost per install should already be the lowest you could get with appbrain, 12 to 15 cents.
By the third day my last 4 campains I started were down to 8 cents. After about a week it gets to 5 cents.
Bonus: When you set up the campaign initially you'll have the opportunity to add more ad units and text ideas. Add as many as you can don't be lazy to make your graphics for every size they accept, it should be around 20 or something. You can play with these later and see which ad units are performing better. Also, keep lowering the bid from 40 cents down to 15 cents.
Here's some downloads for my latest app, as you can see it was a shit app because it got many uninstalls but the point being is damn near 17,000 of those downloads were paid for i havent even started advertising it through other means, and I most definitely didn't pay 8 grand, or even a quarter of that.
I hope this helped some people out and apologize if i let the cat out of the bag for others. I love this forum, it was time to make my contribution.
