10 Ways Ad Networks Use 42matters App Data to Improve Ad Performance

Advertising is a critical source of revenue for mobile app publishers. Indeed, businesses built on mobile apps often live and die by the quality of the advertisements their apps serve up. Consequently, ad networks that compete to provide these ads are equally concerned with generating the best possible ad experiences.

By leveraging 42matters’ app data – such as app insights, IAB app classification, audience data, and more – ad networks can bolster the quality of their offerings.

In this article, we will go over ten ways ad networks can use the mobile data provided by 42matters to tailor ad campaigns to the specific needs of their customers.

1. Gain Insights Into your App Inventory

In order for ad networks to run effective ad campaigns for their customers, they must first develop a good understanding of the apps available in their own network. The 42matters “Lookup API” offers a convenient solution for this.

By using the API to query an app in question, ad networks are able to determine its publish status (e.g. published or unpublished), content rating, category, average rating, number of downloads, quality and more.

In order for ad networks to conduct these queries, only the app’s identifier is needed. Depending on the platform, this could be a bundle ID, a track ID, or a package name.

2. Extract App Icon and Creatives for Banners

The “Lookup API” also offers ad networks a way to get the app’s name, description, tag line, app icon, screenshots, featured graphics, average rating, number of ratings, and more. This data can be used to quickly and programatically assemble ad banners with up to date information.

3. Improve Targeting with App Classification

Accurate app classification – whether by category, genre, IAB category, or otherwise – is essential for ad networks’ ability to optimize their offerings to their customers’ unique ad requirements.

It’s simple. Precisely classified apps means better ad targeting. Better ad targeting means increased ad revenue for app publishers. Increased ad revenue means improved customer loyalty.

This is why, at 42matters, we offer ad networks a variety of tools to improve app classification. These are as follows:

• The “Lookup API” provides category and genre information for apps published in the Google Play and Apple App Stores respectively. It also returns data on an app’s content rating. That is, whether it’s suitable for all audiences, or only more mature audiences.

• The “Lookup API” can also be used to return data on similar apps. This means ad networks can find similar apps related to an advertised app quickly.

• To improve the specificity of an app’s category classification, 42matters provides a suite of IAB APIs (here and here). These APIs support both v1 and v2 of the IAB taxonomy standard. To give you an idea of how these work, while an app like “Tinder” might be classified by the developer as a “Lifestyle” app, our IAB APIs can tell you that it is, more specifically, a “Dating” app (this is inferred by our advanced machine learning algorithms).

• Finally, we have the “App Audience API,” which offers more insights into users’ behavior and the context of an app. For example, the “App Audience API” makes it possible to find out which other apps have been installed by users of a specific app. It can also be used to identify the typical gender of users of an app, thus to further define audience tendencies. Ad networks can use these insights to improve ad targeting when user-level targeting is not possible.
  
  

5. Improve Targeting with Device Audience Data

42matters has sampled data of 200+ million users and their installed apps that can help ad networks to improve their targeting capabilities. Ad network can combine this data with their own audience data and thus obtain many new unique data points for targeting. Our data is used by all kinds of advertisers already with our self-service tool Audience Finder or via leading DMPs.

6. Improve Brand Safety

All the previously mentioned app classification tools in this article can be used as well to build up whitelists of apps to improve brand safety for advertisers. This might range from using the “Lookup API” to get the Google Play category or App Store genres of an app, to using our advanced IAB classification. E.g. a brand might require the ad network to avoid showing its ads in apps related to dating.

7. Estimate Downloads to Reach Specific Chart Positions

42matters offers also download estimates, that provide insights about how many downloads an app needs in order to reach a specific position in the Top Charts of a specific country. This additional data allows ad networks to consult advertisers with the planning and budgeting of ad campaigns.

8. Access App Charts and Rankings to Measure Campaign Impact

Many of the solutions that we at 42matters offer are proactive ones. That is, we provide insights into everything from app types to audience data in order to help networks identify the best advertising strategy. This helps them guarantee that their services will have an immediate impact on their customers’ revenue.

Nevertheless, sometimes reactive solutions are necessary for self-evaluation and course correction.

For this reason, we provide the “Google Play App Rank History API” and the “Google Play Top Charts API”. These APIs enable ad networks to track the current and historical performance of their customers’ apps in the top chart rankings. In turn, they are able to assess whether their ads are improving app rankings as planned.

9. Country Availability

Another critical piece of information for ad networks is where their customers’ apps are available.

Of course, while some apps are fairly global, others are far more limited to specific regions. Twitter and Facebook, for instance, are far more broadly available than Deliveroo and Doordash. In any case, to effectively allocate ads it is relevant for ad networks to determine which countries an app has a potential user base and where it can be downloaded or not at all. Moreover, it allows them to verify if the inventory of their app is correct.

The 42matters “Country Availability API” tells ad networks where apps are and are not available. By leveraging this API, networks are better positioned to optimize the potential revenue derived from their service by tailoring the ads that they serve to the regional interests of an app.

10. Acquire the Complete 42matters Dataset and Build Your Own APIs

42matters’ app data can be harnessed in a number of ways. To make things simple for businesses that are already overburdened with day-to-day operations, we’ve built a number of handy, plug-and-play APIs like the “Lookup API” and the “Country Availability API.”

That said, we do provide alternative options for ad networks that are looking for more tailored solutions.

Indeed, if ad networks want to leverage the data collected by 42matters in their own analysis or APIs, they can do so. We at 42matters will furnish them with our full dataset. This will give ad networks complete control over their offering so that they can approach the market on their own terms. The only real limitation is imagination!

See also our other articles “12 Ways Ad Networks Use 42matters App Data to Improve App Publisher Onboarding” or schedule an appointment to see how our products can help grow your business.