In the first blog of this series, we saw how it is important to get your paid advertising strategy right to ensure that the organic downloads keep flowing in. I also suggested the Top 5 essentials to keep in mind while planning your advertising campaign. Let's take a deeper look into the second of the five Ad Content. The ad unit is the users first exposure to your app and hence needs to make an impact on the user. It needs to perk the users interest in a way that the user would want to click on the ad and finally download and use your application. The big difference between how a brand advertiser and app advertiser creates the ad content lies in the intent of the advertiser i.e. a brand advertiser wants the user to engage with the ad and have brand recall, whereas, an app advertiser requires the user to actually download and install the application. Here are some suggestions that could help increase the chances of a user clicking on your ad and finally installing your application
- Tile image A tile image is by default associated with a mobile application by most users. In situations where you do not have the budget for a fancy ad unit and would like to keep the banner ad simple and minimalistic, it helps to add the tile image of your application in the ad. You are simply using this tile to help users realize that you are promoting an app download and leveraging the creative aspect of the tile image to populate the ad.
- App Rating The rating of your app is a powerful influencer and users tend to download apps that have a high rating. Getting a good rating from existing users also goes a long way in increasing your app ranking on the app store. Ensure that you get your current users to rate your application and then show this rating on your ad unit to influence new users to install your app.
- App Details If you have additional space such as in an interstitial or expandable ad, provide more information about the ad such as category, size and the description of the ad. This is again a simple way to create interstitial and expandable ads with the right amount of information but without investing heavily in an expensive Rich Media ad unit. However, if you do have the budget for a Rich Media creative, you should leverage that space to have your users engage with the ad creative and give them an experience of the actual application
- Call to Action It is important to provide a clear Call To Action for users so they expect the next step when they click on the ad. A user would like to know that the ad is asking them to download an application from an app store. Ads that do not have this clearly, tend to have high drop off rates since you are giving the user an unexpected behavior. For example, take a look at the below two sample ads and what you would infer in you saw these ads
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- Free vs Paid App: If you have sufficient space, it might be a good idea for you to mention if the app is free or paid. If it is free, then users tend to click on the ad and indeed download the application and give it a shot. If it is paid, then you will be saving valuable advertising money by only inviting users who are genuinely interested in paying and using your app. Paid apps that do not mention this in the ad unit, tend to get users who click on the ad but drop off at the app store when they realize that it is a paid app. You would have to pay for the click of this ad, but you do not necessarily get the user and hence would be wasting advertising budgets.
Below is a sample ad of a well-known app to showcase the above points. You could use the points as guidelines for creating ad units while still maintaining the individuality of your application and the creative genius of your designers. 
Click here to read previous blog of this series.
