School of promotion: what is CPI?
What lies behind the popular abbreviation CPI, what are the pros and cons of this advertising format, as well as what is important to know when working with it, – says Ilya Seregin, FeedWise project Manager at Mobio.
Ilya Seregin, FeedWise Project Manager at Mobio
CPI is probably the most well–known format of work in mobile marketing.
Despite the fact that there are more and more offers with the CPA model now, CPI still occupies a large percentage of all offers on the market.
What is CPI?
CPI stands for “Cost per install”. This means that the payment to the partner is made for the fact that the user downloaded, installed and opened the application.
In fact, installing and opening an application are also actions, so we can say that CPI is one of the types of CPA. However, for the convenience of perception, it is important to separate them.
By choosing a CPI, the advertiser can attract traffic from the largest number of sources, since they are usually adapted to work with this format.
Hence the main disadvantage – you can get into fraudulent traffic, since it is much easier to attract a motive or configure a bot to install and open an application than to perform a specific action in the application.
In addition to fraud, which can be successfully filtered out by using a third-party anti-fraud system (for example, FraudScore), it is also possible to get traffic that is simply unsuitable for the application. For example, if a partner attracts older users to an application with products for young people, then the advertiser should not wait for a large number of purchases. This means that the campaign will not reach its goal, despite the costs already committed.
However, a competent approach to business will allow the advertiser to attract large volumes and different types of traffic, and to maintain quality. Usually, a certain KPI is set, which the partner must fulfill in order to receive full payment for the attracted installations. If it is not fulfilled, the advertiser may lower the payment for the installation or not pay any funds to the partner at all (the lack of payment in case of non-fulfillment of the KPI is called Hard KPI).
What is important when working with the CPI model?
Understanding the set KPIsIt is better to immediately discuss which KPI we are talking about – Hard or Soft (when even the traffic that did not pass the KPI will still be paid for).
It all depends on the advertiser. Many try to save money by setting a Hard KPI to avoid risks. But this may lead to the fact that a partner with potentially high-quality traffic, without receiving payment for the test, will refuse to continue working with this offer.
Diversification and transfer of source dataYou can’t put all your eggs in one basket.
The optimal strategy would be to distribute the caps between several sources, marking them in the appropriate parameter. Then it will be possible to understand which source fits the specified KPIs, and which one would be better to disable or optimize. On the client’s side, it is important to get information about sources and evaluate them separately, rather than mixing all the traffic into one pile.
Caution and testsUnfortunately, there are agencies on the market (most often this applies to resell advertisers) who, in order to get short-term benefits, deliberately hide information about KPIs, their nature or evaluate all traffic in its entirety, without breaking it down by source.
In this case, an inexperienced partner can happily pour a lot of traffic, and then discover that he did not pass the Hard KPI and will not receive payment. I recommend that for the first time working with a new advertiser, pour small amounts and look at how often quality reports come in, whether the final payments correspond to those initially stated.
If the advertiser shows himself on the bad side, it is better to stop working with him, having lost a minimum of money. But it’s not worth being paranoid either. It may happen that the advertiser himself is framed by the one who goes after him. In such situations, it is considered adequate to cover about 50% of the promised funds. But if there are too many such cases, then I advise you to stop cooperating with the advertiser.
Payment evaluationIn continuation of the previous paragraph.
Another way of deliberate deception is the issuance of a CPA offer for a CPI. This can often be determined by the vertical of the offer and the payout. If a gambling offer is worth paying $10, then you can be sure that they are trying to give you a CPA offer. The calculation is that the action will be registration on the main page or something similar: what the advertiser’s logic, the user will do one way or another. But predicting user behavior is not easy, so this logic is wrong. Don’t chase crazy payouts and be careful.
Despite the fact that many offers are now switching from the CPI model to CPA, I personally think that the CPI format has a long time to live. So, if you have the desire to work with this particular model, you may well earn well. The main thing: take into account the features described in this article, and scrupulously approach the process.
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