What is OEM advertising?

OEM is the abbreviation for Original Equipment Manufacturer. In the mobile app industry, OEMs are advertiser platforms built by device manufacturers, mobile carriers, and retailers. This leads us to OEM advertising, which is, at its core, on-device advertising, whereby the user sees a pre-installed app on their phone or an in-device recommendation for an app, further detailed below.

OEM ads can be divided into two groups:

1. Pre-installed apps like the Weather app or app stores.

2. Recommendations shown to users when they use apps or trigger an event in their user journey of a mobile device.

OEM advertising platforms are most common in Asian countries, particularly in China, where the Google Play Store is unavailable. Note that currently, OEM advertising is only possible on Android smartphones.

There are three categories of platforms that offer different OEM technical constructions:

1. Original technical solutions from manufacturers like Huawei, which produces Android devices, offer a direct connection.
2. Ecosystems integrated via an Android Package (APK), act as a direct intermediary between manufacturers and advertisers. E.g. IronSource Aura.
3. Advertising platforms, such as Xoom or Bikiko, integrate purchased traffic from manufacturers with a supply-side platform (SSP).

Each of the OEM platform categories has its own optimization process, attribution analytics, and attribution time windows. As such, testing OEM ad campaigns may take several months to get actionable results for optimization.

The performance of OEM ads is comparable to organic traffic. The ads feel authentic to users as they appear as native, trusted recommendations. Recently, the Business of Apps noted that the conversion rate of installation of OEM sources is between 10-40%, sometimes 85%.

Additionally, OEM attribution data is better protected from fraud than the average app because the OEM channel is either an APK solution, a direct channel, or an SSP that brings traffic straight from a manufacturer to a user.

Key advantages of OEM digital marketing:

• OEM advertising is a user-friendly method of app promotion.
• The traffic provided by OEM is highly predictable.
• OEM source technology provides high transparency of OEM traffic.

Adjust’s mobile analytics platform allows advertisers to accurately attribute pre-installs from their OEM partners.

Our pre-install tracking allows you, as an app marketer or developer, to determine:

• How many users opened your app.
• The performance of your pre-install partners for comparative analysis.
• Which partners are bringing in the greatest number of high-value users.

You can also utilize Adjust to track an app that is distributed from a third-party Android store, such as those in non-Google Play Store markets.

In addition to pre-install tracking, Adjust offers a variety of measurement analytics such as subscription measurement, Connected TV (CTV) to mobile and CTV to CTV measurement with CTV AdVision, and iOS campaign analytics. The best part? We allow our clients to unify all of their marketing data—from OEM app campaigns to CTV campaigns—in one place with Datascape for efficient marketing. Request your demo now to see firsthand how Adjust can help maximize your OEM marketing insights.