1. © 2013 Quantcast Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
November 2013Quantcast Measure Whitepaper
Hello world.
audience
5 Tips for a
More Successful
App Using
Audience Insights
Maryam Motamedi
Product Marketing Manager,
Measure

2. November 2013Quantcast Measure Whitepaper 2
It is an understatement to say that the app space is crowded.
Most developers spend the majority of their time building and
not enough time on the research and marketing that are just
as critical for success. Luckily, investing just a little time in
understanding your audience can take you a long way. In this
guide, we discuss five tips for applying audience insights
to acquire better users, retain them longer and maximize
your monetization.
Tip 1: Tune Your App During Your Soft Launch
Take a lesson from the largest developers and “soft launch” your app to gather insights. A common
technique is to release your app in a secondary market with similar characteristics (such as
Canada for US-bound apps) as your primary market. By arming your app with audience and event
measurement for a soft launch, you’ll get critical feedback to improve your app.
1. Going through a soft launch allows you to take advantage of the potential press and “featured
app” promotions that only come with new app introductions—twice! Success in a secondary
market can also help you build buzz when it comes time for the big launch.
2. Test and fine-tune your app by tracking key events in your app. Beyond looking for errors, your
soft launch is an opportunity to see how people use your app. What features are they using?
Are they staying engaged? If you have a game, is it too difficult? If you have an in-game currency,
does the economy work? Event tracking helps you answer all these questions by providing
quantitative feedback into what your users are doing.
Hello Audience: 5 Tips for a More Successful App
• By the end of 2013 it is estimated that there will be 1.82 billion
active smartphones in use globally.1
This means there will be
about one smartphone for about every four living humans existing
today — including babies.
• 39,000 Android and iOS apps are being created monthly.2
• The average person has 41apps on their smartphone in 2013.1
This is up from 32 in 2012.
“Test and fine-
tune your app
by tracking
key events in
your app.”

3. November 2013Hello Audience: 5 Tips for a More Successful App 3
Step 2: Get Acquainted With Your Most Valuable Users
Employing a soft launch enables you to discover one more thing that can make your app successful:
your most valuable users. Who are your most valuable users? Depending on your app, they might
be the users who make the most in-app purchases, or they might be the heaviest users or most
prolific promoters. Use your audience-measurement tool to build segments of these users, then
examine their demographic profiles. Discovering your most valuable users will make all your product
development and marketing activities more effective.
Tip 3: Talk Like a Native
What makes your app unique? How do you communicate it most effectively? Once you know your
high-value audience, you can tailor all your marketing messaging to the users you want to attract.
Not planning on doing much marketing? At a bare minimum, you’re going to have to tackle the
following marketing assets:
• App name
• App description
• App keywords
• App logo
• App promotional screenshots and video
After the launch, you may also want to create advertising, promotions and other vehicles to market
your app. Whether your app is targeting businesses or consumers, you must know your audience to
communicate with them memorably and effectively.
“Discovering your
most valuable
users will make
all your product
development
and marketing
activities more
effective.”
Quantcast Measure Whitepaper

4. November 2013Hello Audience: 5 Tips for a More Successful App 4
Tip 4: Acquire Higher-Value Users
Use your high-value audience profiles to select acquisition partners and channels. There are
hundreds of paid and earned promotional opportunities for your app, including many that can deliver
large numbers of users very quickly; be selective and prioritize the opportunities that can deliver
high-value users. One hundred one-time users are seldom worth one loyal user, and those
100 users are typically far more expensive to acquire.
Ad swaps are one of the most effective techniques to acquire new users on a limited budget.
Approach partners with similar audiences as yours for your ad swap to be effective. For instance,
if your app helps frequent travelers manage their frequent flier miles, you might look for partner
apps that cater to high-income professionals and sales executives. Partnering with the right apps
can help you increase your marketing reach exponentially.
Knowing your audience can also help you get more from your ad spend. When working with
promotional channels like Facebook, ad networks or exchanges, target the ads to your audience
and demographics for a higher return on your investment.
Pop Quiz:
Which message will resonate more with the highly female, higher-income
cooking app audience below?
A. Put some hair on your chest with these hefty recipes.
B. Sophisticated recipes for a night in or for the perfect dinner party.
If you said B, you are already on your way to communicating more effectively with your audience.
“One hundred
one-time users
are seldom
worth one
loyal user.”
Quantcast Measure Whitepaper

5. 5Hello Audience: 5 Tips for a More Successful App November 2013
Tip 5: Get Commitment
User retention is one of the most important metrics to gauge the success of your app.
Your audience analytics can show you what percentage of your users were retained over time
and compare that to the average.
You can benchmark your user retention against similar apps to evaluate your
performance, but keep in mind that many factors influence user retention.
1. Type of app. Different
categories of apps have
significantly different average
retention rates. A to-do list
app will have far higher user
retention than a “joke” app.
2. Use of push notifications
and social integration.
Aggressive use of push
notifications can increase
engagement with an app, but
at a possible cost of annoying
the user. Effective social
integration is also a proven
way to increase engagement
but isn’t applicable to all types
of apps.
3. Acquisition efforts.
Acquisition efforts can
significantly influence user
retention, especially when
the effort prioritizes user quantity over quality. Measure retention for a cohort of users
acquired through an acquisition effort to evaluate that effort’s effectiveness. Most of the
time, a large influx of users from an untargeted acquisition effort will yield poor retention.
Conclusion
Most developers who’ve successfully created their own apps did not undergo extensive
training in the arts of marketing and sales. They simply used a logical, reasoned
approach to understanding their audience and applied that knowledge to build better
apps and communicate more effectively to their users. With these five steps, you now
have the foundation to do the same. Just as “Hello World” showed you the potential
of programming, we hope that “Hello Audience” has shown you the potential of
understanding your audience.
“Most of the time,
a large influx
of users from
an untargeted
acquisition
effort will yield
poor retention.”
Quantcast Measure Whitepaper

6. 6November 2013Hello Audience: 5 Tips for a More Successful App
Sources
1. Daily News, “How smartphones are on the verge of taking over the world. Last modified 3/22/2013. Last accessed 11/2013.
http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/smartphones-world-article-1.1295927
2. App Brain, Number of Available Android Applications. Last Accessed 11/2013, http://www.appbrain.com/stats/number-of-android-
apps. ReadWrite “Apple iOS App Store Adding 20,000 Apps A Month, Hits 40 Billion Downloads”. Last Accessed 11/2013,
http://readwrite.com/2013/01/07/apple-app-store-growing-by.
About Quantcast:
Quantcast is a digital measurement and advertising company that provides audience and
demographic data for over 100 million web and mobile destinations including websites, video,
widgets, blogs, advertising campaigns and mobile apps. Quantcast Measure for Apps is free
to use and available for iOS and Android.
Go to Quantcast.com/apps to learn more about Measure for Apps.
Got questions?
Email us at Measure@quantcast.com
Quantcast Measure Whitepaper