What’s Keeping The Click And Install Apart - Part 2

In our previous blog we discussed how the delay between a user clicking an ad and being taken to the app store might result in lower installs for your app. We also saw how synchronous tracker redirections, one of the major reasons for these post click latencies, may lead to about 20% click loss for your app install campaigns.

But that is only half the story. Another reason for click loss is the time taken for the app store to load after the user has clicked on the ad unit. Before we understand the latencies involved, let’s take a look at the ways in which a user might be taken to the app store.

By redirecting the user to the App Store

Typically, if a user clicks on the ad, he is taken out of the publisher’s app context and into the Play Store/App Store app, where he may choose to download the advertiser’s app. This journey generally includes a visit to the redirection page and a certain delay resulting from the time the app store takes to load.This is clearly not a desirable experience for either the publisher or the advertiser.The publisher is essentially sending the user out of his app and risks losing user engagement, while the advertiser may lose a potential user for his app due to click latencies.

By invoking the SK Store within the Publisher’s app

On iOS, there exists an alternative. The SK Store (or Inline App Store) function allows the App Store to be invoked from within the publisher’s app, and allows the user to download the advertised app. The download runs in the background while the user is taken back to the publisher’s app.

Advantages of using SK Store include seamless transition for better user experience and the ability to get information about the user’s appstore activity (clicks on the ‘close’ button denoting the number of users who reached the app store but chose not to download.) Since the idea is to keep the user inside the publisher’s app, it becomes necessary to implement asynchronous tracker calls, for any implementation of the SK Store.

But implementing the SK Store does not eliminate the latency associated with loading the App Store.

The transition is seamless but SK Store still takes some time to load, which is dependent on the speed of the user’s internet connection. This is beyond an ad network or tracker’s control.

The possible solution is pre-caching the SK Store i.e loading the SK store when the ad unit is displayed, so it opens instantaneously when the user clicks on the ad. While drop-offs can be minimized by this, care must be taken as to when the app store can be pre-cached. For banner ads, where the possibility of the user clicking on the ad is very less, pre-caching for every ad unit may be heavy on users’ data usage. But for ads with high click probability, like video ads, it might be wise to implement pre-caching.

You spend a lot of money and time trying to get a user to click on your ad, and it takes just a moment for them to leave. Make sure your tracking partner and ad network solve for these post-click latencies, so you can get the most out of your user acquisition campaigns!