In-depth analysis of Apple's bidding advertising (ASM) in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan

This sharing is divided into the following 4 parts:

1. What is an ASM traffic funnel?

2. How to improve product weight

3. Word selection affects the effect of ASM delivery

4. Material optimization improves ASM delivery effect

At the end of March, Apple Search Ads opened 46 new regions, including some countries and regions that everyone has been paying attention to, such as Southeast Asia, India, the Middle East, Africa, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan.

Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan are especially important to many developers than other regions. Because users in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan are very similar to mainland users in terms of culture and language habits, most mainland apps are open to Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, and the cost-effectiveness is also very high. The acceptance (conversion rate) of simplified Chinese by users in Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan is also significantly higher than that of other users; even if an App needs to be localized in Traditional Chinese, the cost is very low.

Moreover, if you want to test the ASM channel and become familiar with the delivery logic, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan are also very good choices.

So today we would like to share with you some of our experiences in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan over the past two months. We have previously published an article about advertising data in Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, which you can check at the end of the article.

1. What is an ASM traffic funnel?

Like most advertising channels, ASM has a path from ad display to user behavior (download, payment, etc.). Each link is influenced by different factors. We also need to have a certain understanding of this before launching.

1. Display

In ASM, impression refers to the number of times an App appears in an ad space after an iOS user searches for a keyword. With other conditions remaining unchanged, the more impressions we get, the more we earn from ASM.

The main factors that affect the display volume are: product weight, word selection and bidding, and user portrait.

2. Click

After the ad is displayed to the user, the user's next action is to click (click on the ad slot or click the "Get" button).

Whether users click on ads depends mainly on "whether users need it" and "whether the ad space attracts users." The former depends on the accuracy of word selection. If a game product uses words related to takeout, the click-through rate will definitely be low. The latter depends on the materials of the ad space, including titles, subtitles, copywriting materials, visual materials, ratings, etc.

3. Installation

Whether users choose to download/install the product after clicking on the details page (i.e. the installation rate) is similar to the click-through rate and is also mainly affected by the material, but there are more influencing factors. For example, promotional text/description, update notes, package size, comment content and pinned comments, etc.

4. ROI

When it comes to buying traffic, installation is definitely not the ultimate goal. Therefore, we need to evaluate the subsequent behavior of users of a channel, such as payment. Calculate channel ROI through payment. For example, the CPA of keyword A is $0.5, and the CPA of keyword B is $1.5, but the latter has a higher ROI, so it is acceptable for its bid and CPA to be higher.

Developers can access Apple's native Attribution API to count the subsequent behaviors of users brought by the ASM channel (such as activation, registration, retention, payment, ROI, etc.), or they can access third-party attribution tools to count users' in-app events, such as AppsFlyer, Adjust, Kochava, etc.

In addition to the choice of words on the delivery side, what actually affects ROI or other subsequent behaviors is the product itself.

Among all the factors in the traffic funnel, we choose the most important product weights, word selection and materials for explanation.

2. How to improve product weight

In ASM delivery, product weight is a very important factor. Many developers find that no matter how high their bids are, they still don’t get many impressions when placing advertisements. This is most likely because the product itself does not have enough weight - Apple is very stingy with low-weight apps.

Product weight has some influencing factors:

1. Organic Downloads

• This is the most important factor affecting product weight. Apple believes that the more natural downloads a product has, the more popular it is among users, so it will distribute more traffic to the products that these users like.
• The product ranking is an important dimension for judging the natural download volume and weight. Products with higher rankings will receive more ASM.
• In addition, we found that when a product is launched in ASM, it will also achieve better results if it is launched together with other advertisements. This is because the volume from other channels increases the weight of the product.

2. Metadata relevance

• That is, the correlation between the "keywords placed" and the "App". The algorithms of ASO and ASM are actually the same, so the natural ranking of a product under a keyword is an important dimension for judging relevance.
• Therefore, to improve the relevance of metadata, we need to fill in and optimize the keywords we place in the title, subtitle, and keyword fields, which can also increase the weight.
• Moreover, the difference in metadata relevance has a relatively obvious "80/20 distribution" phenomenon, with most of the weight concentrated in the top few - if a keyword is promoted from 100th to 50th, the weight increase will not be as good as that from 20th to the top 10th.

3. Advertising conversion data

• After the advertisement begins running, Apple will adjust the product weight in real time based on the conversion data generated by the advertisement. Apple believes that ads with higher conversion rates are more popular with users, so it will increase their weight.
• Conversion data includes the click-through rate (TTR) from ad display to click and the installation rate (CR) from click to installation.
• Factors that affect conversion rate include the product’s copywriting materials (title, subtitle, description, etc.), visual materials (icon, screenshots, videos, etc.), review ratings, and other factors (such as package size, whether the word choice is accurate, etc.).
• Let me share a case: Qimai once did advertising for a board game App, and the CR had been stable at around 25%, but one day it dropped to 17%. We found that it was because a user gave a 1-point bad review and it was pinned at the top of the App Store details page. As CR decreases, the display volume in the following days also decreases (weight decreases). Afterwards, we used some methods to make the 5-point positive reviews become the top ones again, and the CR and display volume also recovered.

4. Subsequent behavior of advertising users

• In addition to conversion data at the advertising level, users' behavior after downloading the product will also affect the product weight, such as payment, usage time, retention, etc. The more paid and active the advertisement is, the higher its weight will be.

5. Apple Penalties

• Qimai has also invested in some products that were cleared from Apple’s rankings and keywords, and these products were also allocated traffic.
• The number of selected words and bids are easy to understand. Under the condition that the more product weights, the more words you choose, the more displays you will get. The higher the bid, the more displays you will get.
• User portrait: Some products are not suitable for all users, and certain restrictions need to be placed on the users. For example, an app that monitors women’s menstrual periods should limit its users to young and middle-aged women, and male users are not its main target users. Therefore, its display volume cannot be compared with that of apps targeting all users.

3. Word selection affects the effect of ASM delivery

ASM is a keyword bidding advertisement, so word selection is a very important matter. There are two parts to word selection:

• Keyword placement
• Basic ASO optimization also requires good word selection, including titles, subtitles, keyword domains, etc.

1. Source of word selection

ASM is different from ASO. Uncovered keywords can also be placed, so the range of word selection will be wider. Qimai summarizes 4 main sources of word selection:

• Words related to its own products, functions, and industries, such as live streaming, game live streaming, Yingke live streaming, etc.
• Competitor keywords, in addition to competitor brand words and keywords covered by competitors, also include keywords that competitors are investing in.
• Crowd word. If the users of certain other industries have a high degree of overlap with the target users of our products, we can also use keywords from these industries. For example, "Auto Chess" is a game that became popular through live streaming, so the game live streaming app can also use words such as "Auto Chess" and "Auto Chess mobile game".
• Real-time hot words, such as Tencent’s recently released game “Peace Elite” and the popular online drama “All Is Well” some time ago.

2. Localization

Because the Chinese App Store is not yet open to bidding ads, but most of our products are in simplified Chinese. When we want to enter other markets, even in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, localization is a very important thing.

We believe that in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, the priority of ASO optimization and ASM keyword submission is: Traditional Chinese > English > Simplified Chinese. We have counted the top 100 most popular keywords in the three regions. English accounts for the largest proportion, followed by Traditional Chinese, and Simplified Chinese accounts for the least. The English content mainly includes some overseas brand words, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other products that are not accessible in mainland China or have a low market share.

4. Material optimization improves ASM delivery effect

In ASM delivery, material is also a very important link. It affects the click-through rate and installation rate of the advertisement, and can continue to affect the App weight.

Although users in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan have similar habits and preferences to those in mainland China, they still have different concerns about some products. Let’s take news products as an example:

First, here are the first three screenshots of three Hong Kong news apps:

Next are the first three screenshots of four mainland news apps:

We can find an obvious difference: the product feature delivered to users by news products in the mainland is "intelligent recommendation", while the product feature delivered to users by news products in Hong Kong is "news timeliness". This is not just a product difference, it also reflects the differences in regional attributes between the two places:

• The mainland has a large population but great differences, and there are many segmented user groups. For example, first-tier cities and fourth- and fifth-tier cities have different concerns about news;
• Hong Kong has a small population with little diversity, and the pace of life is faster than in most parts of the mainland. Their demand for news is: just tell me what hot events have happened recently. There are users in niche areas but the base is too small.

Therefore, if you want to place ads in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, using mainland materials and simply converting the text into traditional Chinese may not necessarily produce a good conversion effect.

So how can we find out what users in Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan or other regions are concerned about without accumulating data?

We can find 10-50 competing products in the area, and put their icons, screenshots, titles, descriptions and other materials in a folder or document. Then observe and organize these materials from as many dimensions as possible. For example, in the screenshots: background color, displayed content and order, how to highlight key content, what fonts to use for the copy, commonalities of character models, whether cross-screen images are used, etc. Although this method is troublesome, it is very effective.

The above is the relevant content about Apple Bidding Advertising (ASM).

Author: Zhen Shian

Source: Qimai Research Institute