Now that MAU 2022 is over, here’s what you missed.

 

In a big return post-covid, after 3 years, 2500+ leaders from top mobile brands gathering in Las Vegas for Mobile Apps Unlocked - two days of learning and sharing mobile trends, strategies, and tips. Connecting apps to people were at the forefront of conversations as mobile elite mingled amongst the MGM casino, restaurants, conference center and pool cabana’s to connect and meet after such a long awaited hiatus.

Here are the big takeaways from MAU 2022.

 

IDFA, still a big deal. 

IDFA remained the big topic on everyone’s mind, specifically around the ways in which mobile marketers now promote on iOS apps. The general sentiment around MAU was that user opt-in rates were surprisingly decent.  But in some categories, such as with casual gaming and fintech, opt-in rates remain stubbornly low, even more than had been anticipated at the onset of Apple’s IDFA decision.

One of the more popular coping strategies companies are now employing to work within the new ecosystem is web-onboarding.  Web-onboarding is process through which companies onboard new users via the web to get to higher opt-in rates from their app subscribers.

At YouAppi, we've been able to get high match-rates (upwards of 90%!) by using our contextual signals with our retargeting platform. It’s our version of list targeting.  We deploy this tactic with many of our retargeting campaigns on iOS.  We’ve had a lot of success with it. But significantly, we’re also seeing internally high opt-in rates.  So, overall, we’re still seeing success on iOS and having strong iOS campaigns.

 

The New Data Players

There was a lot of talk about first party data and how certain platforms where primed to take advantage of it in the coming months and years.  Shopify, in particular, is positioned to be a huge first-party data platform by virtue of the many direct-to-consumer shops that have set up on the Shopify platform.

Alex Merutka, CEO and founder of creative ad tech platform, Craftsman+, spoke about the upside of Shopify — despite its shares slumping nearly 70 per cent from its peak last year.  He noted that Shopify is sitting on a pile of data sought-after by ad companies and pointed to the opportunity for Shopify to team up with Meta or TikTok to grow the social commerce space in a major way as one of the reasons he remained so bullish on them.

 

Cord Cutters 

Programmatic is still king but CTV has definitely arrived. With more people at home than ever, coupled with the increased prevalence of streaming and cord cutting, CTB/OTT advertising has surged over the last three years. There are now upwards of 195 million CTV and OTT users in the U.S. alone, according to eMarketer. So, it was no surprise that CTV was very much top of mind with numerous speakers at MAU Las Vegas, including a great panel with Vibe.co CEO, Arthur Querou and Adjust’s Director of Partnerships, Reggie SIngh.  Some interesting data from the panel:

  • 37% higher revenue from users generated via CTV as compared to organic users
  • 100% higher revenue from users compared to Google ads.
  • 3x more attention than display
  • $8.9 average ROI

The growth of the CTV sector is undeniable, and it continues to be one of the most scalable channels out there. That’s why marketers and advertisers — now more than ever — are focused on building strategies to measure CTV with precise targeting and attribution.

 

The 800 LB Gorilla 

One thing that was surprisingly not mentioned much: the economy.  It is clearly lingering in the back of everyone’s mind, however. The unanswered question is just how the larger macro-economic forces impacting the globe will ultimately impact the mobile ecosystem.

There's little doubt we're in bear market territory right now. Inflation is at a generational high. There’s a quiet sense that mobile companies must now buckle down and begin to grapple with how a pending recession will impact all of us. That said, advertisers are still spending and there's still an appetite for retargeting, because of the cut back on new user acquisition strategies.  Clearly, though, these larger economic forces are fluid and bear close scrutiny…no pun intended.