Blog Conversion Hub’s Smart setup: Your path ...

Conversion Hub’s Smart setup: Your path to iOS success

Tiahn Wetzler, Director, Content & Insights, Adjust, Feb 15, 2023.

Earlier this week, we completed our full rollout of Conversion Hub, Adjust’s all-in-one solution for smart, easy, and effective conversion value mapping. We’ve already taken a deep dive into Advanced setup. Today, it’s all eyes on Smart setup, which provides effortless, tailored-to-app, vertical-focused conversion value mapping.

Finding a solution that fits the needs of your individual business model and empowers measurement growth and success on iOS and SKAdNetwork (SKAN) has become essential, which is why we’ve built our SKAN Solution Suite. We understand that for many mobile marketers, setting up and getting a conversion value strategy off the ground can be an intimidating process. That’s exactly why we’ve built Smart setup as part of Conversion Hub, to empower you to execute strategically mapped conversion values while honing your SKAN skills. So, let’s take a look.

Solving the technical and tactical needs of the everyday mobile marketer

When mobile marketers on iOS start working with SKAN, the number of questions that arise is often overwhelming, and without the necessary context, making decisions can be complex. From whether it’s necessary to map all of the available 63 conversion values to key events to understanding the concept of mapping events to 6 available bits rather than approaching the system from a ‘conversion value’ point of view, there’s a core question to answer: Which concept makes the most sense for each app—conversion values (value mapping) or mapping to bits (bit mapping)?

Smart setup allows marketers to tackle these questions head-on by providing tailored-to-app, machine-learning generated conversion values with minimal input. Concurrently, it empowers teams to improve their SKAN expertise and to continually refine and boost their strategic approach to iOS.

When determining the conversion values that will make the most sense for each individual client, Smart setup answers the question we outlined above: Should bit mapping (popular for its transparency and simplicity) or value mapping (more flexibility) be applied? To determine the answer, three factors are taken into consideration:

The app category/vertical
Whether the app monetizes users within the first 24-hours post-install
How the app’s monetization and revenue model works

The category plays an incredibly important role in the recommendation Smart setup makes. If you take two apps from different categories and verticals, both of which monetize via in-app-purchases (IAP) and both of which can generate revenue within the first 24-hours, it cannot be assumed that both apps will be effectively served by mapping revenue ranges. In short, Smart setup recommends a conversion mapping mode that suits their app category to measure key events or revenue ranges. Let’s take a look at an example, where two apps both generate revenue in the first 24-hours and both monetize via IAP, but receive different recommendations.

Smart setup use case: Gaming app Hyper Combat vs. food delivery app Amazing Groceries

The marketing managers from Adjust demo apps Hyper Combat and Amazing Groceries are both looking for technical and tactical guidance to create a conversion value setup from the ground up. They want to grow their SKAN expertise without compromising on their iOS strategy. They are looking for a way to map an intricate conversion value setup that can be optimized to gather SKAN insights that reflect their key app metrics and events as precisely as possible. Will it be value mapping or bit mapping?

Hyper Combat’s strategy focuses most predominantly on ad spend, in-app events, fraud, and ad revenue. Their vertical campaigns cover additional levels launched, a gameplay mock-up campaign, and a remove ads campaign, and the in-app engagement events they track include social media share, invite a friend, level 1 completed, level 10 completed, and more. The revenue and subscription events they focus on are ‘purchase 1000 coins’ and other coin purchase bundles, gadget purchases, and pay to remove ads.

Amazing Groceries’ strategy, while also running on an IAP revenue model (purchase completed), focuses on different strategic concepts, like campaign granularity, user acquisition, and cross platform/network tracking. As one is a gaming app and one is an e-commerce app, their in-app engagement events are also extremely different, with Amazing Groceries focusing on events like search product, view product, first sale, checkout, etc.

To receive a ready-to-use recommendation via Smart setup, both Hyper Combat and Amazing Groceries’ marketing managers only had to take a few simple steps, which we outline below:

They first answer two simple questions to input data that allows Smart setup to make an assessment on whether they are most suited for value mapping (revenue) or bit mapping (behavior). As we can see, both have stated that they usually generate revenue within the first 24-hours post install and both monetize via IAP.

Based on their app vertical/category, they are given different recommendations. Hyper Combat is presented with revenue mapping, while Amazing Groceries is recommended behavior mapping. This is because we’re able to determine—via our predictive LTV analytics—that purchase amounts in the first hours post-install for gaming apps are closely tied to the long-term purchasing behavior of the user. In this case, mapping revenue ranges to all 63 conversion values, mapping from lower ranges to higher ranges, is a great way to understand the users a campaign is bringing. A campaign that results in a high count of postbacks, where the conversion values are in the lower range, suggests that the users are not likely to generate a lot of revenue, whereas a campaign resulting in a high count of postbacks with conversion values in the higher range indicates that these are high LTV users who will generate a lot of revenue.

For food delivery apps, however, the analysis did not confirm a strict correlation between early purchase behavior and long-term purchase behavior. Imagine a user installing a food delivery app and ordering from a fast-food chain—the value of the purchase order is relatively low, and thus the revenue generated in the first 24 hours will be in the lower ranges, but this doesn’t mean that the user won’t order more expensive meals in the future. The same can be said for a user that orders something expensive on day 1—they might never order something again, or might opt for a fast food meal later in the week. While the LTV of a gaming app user can be predicted based on revenue in the first 24-hours, for food delivery apps, other key events happening in the first 24-hours are much more indicative of later user behavior, e.g. the number of sessions in the first hours, number of searches made, and number of restaurants viewed. With this in mind, the Smart setup wizard determines that behavior mapping/bit mapping is much more effective.

In the next step, we see what revenue ranges mapped to conversion values look like for Hyper Combat and what bits mapped to events look like for Amazing Groceries. Hyper Combat has revenue ranges mapped to each of the 63 conversion values, with each range providing different LTV indicators. Amazing Groceries selects six key events mapped to six bits, where each is also an indicator of the user’s long term behavior or LTV.

Working with and making the most of SKAN is non-negotiable in 2023 for any mobile marketer who wants to build successful, measurable campaigns and drive growth on iOS. Conversion Hub makes this possible for everyone by providing automated conversion values tailored to your app, your vertical, and your method of monetization.

For more information on Adjust’s next-generation iOS & SKAN Solution Suite, Conversion Hub, or how you can leverage Smart setup—or Advanced setup—to take your iOS campaigns to the next level, get in touch today!