SINGAPORE, July 1, 2020 — AppsFlyer, the global attribution leader, has released its first retargeting report; The State of App Retargeting 2020 Edition. The report showed that Asia Pacific’s marketers have utilised retargeting most effectively, with the region having the highest rate of retargeting conversions across all verticals, compared with all other regions.
“As app stores become increasingly crowded and app marketers find it more difficult to gain the attention of users and drive conversions, retargeting has proven to be a reliable engagement tactic, surpassing even user-acquisition in growth. APAC is leading the way to this adoption with a 36.4% average share in the global pie of retargeting conversions, followed closely by the Middle East & Africa’s 35.3% and North America trailing last with 29.5%. Without a doubt, retargeting has proven to be an effective tool for marketers that enjoy the benefits of further driving retention, while taking advantage of the opportunity for sustained growth.” said Beverly Chen, Marketing Director, APAC, AppsFlyer
In Asia Pacific, over 1.6 billion retargeting conversions were analysed alongside 2.5 billion non-organic app installs across 22,000 apps from 2018 to 2020.
Lifestyle verticals utilising retargeting
The report highlighted that shopping is not only the vertical with the highest share of retargeting, it has also rapidly grown by 27% in Asia Pacific, followed by hardcore gaming (strategy and role playing games), which has grown by 32%. Asia Pacific’s mobile market is very focused on shopping, and a large investment in that vertical is undertaken because of it being a less expensive option of owned media.
In Indonesia itself, Shopping vertical grew from 39.8% in 2018 to 66.1% in 2020. The reason for this is retargeting is a natural fit for this vertical; direct response campaigns encourage action, which drive purchases of products users expressed interest in. Vietnam also saw a large growth in the shopping vertical, from 61.4% in 2018 to 73.9% in 2020.
In Indonesia, Entertainment apps showed the largest growth amongst other retargeting led the way with a nearly 40% increase in retargeting adoption between 2019 (25.6%) and 2020 (35.5%). Adoption of retargeting in APAC among non-gaming apps is widespread. The rate in Shopping and Food & Drink is so high that there is not much room for additional growth. In Asia Pacific, entertainment apps grew from 24% in 2018 to 30% in 2020. However, Thailand’s retargeting adoption rate in Entertainment outranks that in Indonesia, however, with an increase in the same period of time of 140% from 21.6% in 2019 to 51.7% in 2020.
Based on results from this report the change in the share of retargeting conversations in Asia Pacific amongst the same apps, show that marketers in almost all verticals increased their budgets in 2020 to re-engage valuable existing users. Lifestyle-related apps (Lifestyle (85%), Social (65%) and Photography (67%)) dominate the trend followed by Education, Finance, Entertainment, Shopping and gaming apps.
The Coronavirus Effect
In order to account for the impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, the State of App Retargeting: 2020 report looked at two different time frames: a year-over-year comparison of January and February 2018-2020 prior to the outbreak and lockdown, and pre-COVID-19 data from the end of February through April 2020. As lockdowns took place in many countries, marketers in the Finance and Gaming verticals used it as an opportunity for growth.
Finance apps showed to grow by 30% year on year, reflecting the increasing popularity of this vertical in Asia Pacific by both entrepreneurs and developers. In Indonesia itself, retargeting conversions increased 400% in two weeks (from the week of February 24th 2020 to the week of March 3rd 2020) and then plunged in the following weeks.
In Indonesia, the finance vertical is known for the diversity of solutions and high adoption rate by users. Marketers turned to owned media to ramp up their marketing with paid media to increase their emphasis on retargeting through owned channels like email, push notifications and SMS.
With more people spending time at home, the high volume of activity in the mobile gaming industry was reflected. Marketers in the gaming industry also preferred using owned channels, with the report highlighting an increase from 8.9% retargeting conversion in the end of February to 14% in Week 9, a 67% increase. This is a significant increase from paid media figures of 2%-4% during the same period.
For more information on the impact Coronavirus is having on the app market, visit AppsFlyer’s regularly-updated report: The Coronavirus Impact on App Installs and Marketing Budgets.
The State of App Retargeting: 2020 Report is available at https://www.appsflyer.com/resources/mobile-app-retargeting-report/.
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