CPE Campaigns dominate CPI, and Rival Organic says nativeX
To determine the quality of users from various ad types, nativeX set-up a test to measure the retention rate for a 7 Day Cost per Install (CPI) campaign and Cost per Engagement (CPE) campaign to a segmented audience. The campaigns ran consecutively. The difference between a CPI campaign and a CPE campaign is that with CPI an advertiser pays per every user install, whereas an advertiser on a CPE campaign only pays when the user installs and completes a specific action. In this case, nativeX’s CPE campaign required the user to install and complete a testimonial.
To prove their hypothesis of CPE campaigns attracting and retaining users better than CPI campaigns, nativeX ran a test on a popular freemium Android RPG called Little Dragons. The campaign was setup with half as CPI and the other half with a segmented CPE campaign where the user was required to install the game and complete the tutorial. The testwas geo-targeted to users in the US, UK, and Canada. Prior to the test, organic traffic was the main user acquisition source for Little Dragons, largely in part from being featured on Google Play.
The results were..
CPI: 12.7% (Considered Healthy for an RPG)
Organic: 15.8% (Out-performed CPI by 24.4%)
CPE Segmented: 19.2% (Out-performed CPI by 51.2% and Out-performed Organic by 21.5%)
In summation, Segmented CPE campaigns prove to drive better quality users than CPI campaigns. Additionally, CPE campaigns appear to rival organic installs at attracting and retaining quality users.
It is worth noting however that performance results on Google Play vs iOS will vary especially when taking into account the variable of ‘Organic Installs’ that are a result of ASO (App Store Optimization). Because the way each platform ranks their apps in the search results it cannot be said that the %’s from this example can be taken as reference to how a similar campaign might perform on iOS.
SEE ALSO: Fiksu’s Findings on CPI Campaigns
Kevin is an Online and Mobile Marketing Strategist who has worked with companies of all sizes over the last 6 years. You can follow Kevin on any of the social platforms below.
