Digital Turbine and Apptopia Assess Correlation Between Awareness and Mobile Installs
One of digital marketing’s biggest challenges is quantifying brand awareness and connecting it to lower-funnel conversions. In the mobile space, Digital Turbine and Apptopia believe they’ve found a way to do just that.
Using online surveys of mobile phone users by Digital Turbine and mobile performance data covering app installs and usage by Apptopia, the firms quantified mobile users’ awareness of apps in various industries and then identified the correlation between awareness and installs later in the same quarter. Together, the figures should provide some understanding of the efficacy of mobile install marketing.
The companies calls this calculation of install volume strength relative to awareness the Brand-Relative App Growth, or BRAG, Index.
“The BRAG Index compares an app’s end-of-quarter install volume against its category peers with a comparable Brand Funnel at the beginning of the quarter,” the report states. “If an app had installs that were equal to others with a similar Brand Funnel, the app’s BRAG Index would be around 1. Apps with scores higher than 1 outpaced their competition, while apps with scores lower than 1 delivered fewer installs than their peers.”
The top performers in each of the five categories the report monitored were Cash App (finance), McDonald’s (QSR), News Break (news), Shein (shopping), and tubi (streaming video).
“Top BRAG-gers don’t necessarily have the strongest brand awareness or the highest install volume — these apps have BRAG-ging rights because of their install success relative to their brand strength,” the report continues.
The big picture: mobile awareness and conversions
Privacy changes by Apple and, to a lesser extent, Google are making it harder for mobile developers to track users across apps and quantify the impact of marketing campaigns. Following a single user across their digital journey is becoming difficult, if not impossible. As a result, marketers need more indirect ways to capture upper-funnel impact and especially to connect that impact to conversions.
This is the context in which Digital Turbine and Apptopia developed the BRAG Index.
“The BRAG Index was created because we don’t believe mobile growth exists in a vacuum,” according to the report. “Certainly, ‘brand’ impacts the ability to grow, but brand impacts much more than potential install growth.”
Indeed, Digital Turbine and Apptopia don’t just set out to connect awareness to installs. They also aim to capture the specific dynamics driving mobile marketing success in each vertical.
For example, the firms note that, in finance, “The battle to be a Financial Super App will be impacted by brand strength and regular engagement and is being won [by] leading P2P Payment Apps and creative social engagements.”
Different tactics are driving success in other industries. You can find out more by checking out the report.
