Facebook Mobile is combining its lucrative app install ads with linking to location, conversation, and movement, so a specific “in-app purchase page” opens as an app download, according to a review by TechCrunch. The result is an extremely powerful tool for direct marketers to increase monetization of products and services on mobile.
Direct marketers are most successful on the web when users can see an ad for a specific product and quickly open it in a new browser tab to make a purchase. But on mobile, a merchant is burdened with the tough sell of convincing a user to spend up to a minute downloading their app and then navigate the app for the purchase opportunity. Unfortunately for the merchant, mobile customers often “wander away” during the download delay. If the merchant holds the customer’s attention through the download, the customer will also have to click in the app to find and purchase the advertised product.
Facebook has developed “deep-linking” to automate the loading of the app and presentation of the appropriate purchase ad in the same cycle. In tech speak, Facebook allows mobile-only apps to publish their “tags” via the App Links Hosting API.
TechCrunch agrees that ad conversion rates from “in-app purchase install ads could help Facebook blow past the $3.32 billion in ad revenue it earned last quarter.”
A company like HotelTonight, in the past, would try to entice app installs with click bait such as, “Get a hotel room tonight in New York City.” But in the past, once the user clicked through and downloaded the ad in hopes of quickly hooking up a room at the incentive prices, they’d have to then search for New York City once the app installs.
The minute for a mobile app download is a killer for the type of people making impulse purchases or willing to deal with a new vendor for a better price. If the user gets distracted or bored and doesn’t keep clicking in the app, HotelTonight may have paid Facebook to get an app install, but never generated any cash from transactions.
Businesses are getting tired of generating metrics for monthly active users of their site. HotelTonight wants to monetize their download traffic with purchases of rooms that actually earn commissions.
Facebook mobile’s deep-linking can direct ads for hotel rooms to people who are currently in Las Vegas, but live in Los Angeles. This gives HotelTonight the best chance of catching a user on an impromptu trip that needs a last minute room.
The goal of Facebook is to speed the user experience closer to the purchase conversion. They already sell “app re-engagment ads” that drive people to specific pages inside apps they’ve already downloaded. These are often used to catalyze purchases in an app someone might not remember they even have on their device.
Facebook Mobile claims they have merged the concepts of deep-linking and instant gratification to spawn high conversion rates from app install ads. By generating an immediate call to action for direct marketing ads, Facebook believes it has a game changer in mobile.
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