Unilead: today it is more profitable to pay for installations than for clicks

Dmitry Semenov, CEO of Unilead, said App2Top.ru what his company does and also why it is more profitable to pay for installations today than for clicks.

Hi, let's start with a basic, introductory question so that it becomes immediately clear to readers who and what we are going to talk about: who are Unilead, what do you do?

Unilead is a project that combines all the advertising areas of the mobile market: User Acquisition, PR, analytics, its configuration and localization. We plan to develop our publishing in the near future.

Our structure already has a mobile advertising agency and an affiliate network, and by the end of this year, an advertising self-service platform and our own DSP system using the OPEN RTB protocol will be launched.

Today, many Russian developers and partners know us as the Unilead Network (ex-Unicume) partner network.

What can you offer mobile game developers?

Mobile game developers are our main customers.

We know that they need a paying and socially active audience, we know how they calculate their expenses and budgets, consider efficiency and ROI.

By the way, today game developers are less likely to resort to the strategy of "buy a lot of cheap motivated traffic and take the top". If some of them buy more of it, it's mostly for swapping.

If in concrete figures, how many thousands of installations of motivated/unmotivated traffic are you ready to offer?

The Unilead Network partner network is capable of generating up to 10,000 unmotivated installations per day, twice as many motivated installations per client (application). But these volumes depend on various factors: the application itself, categories, geo, installation cost and the customer's budget.

For how much and in which regions?

Russian traffic is the main one. Its share in the network is about 70%. The installation cost is from $0.50 and above, but the weighted average price in our system is $1.5 (iOS) and $1.3 (Android). The remaining 30% of traffic is from English-speaking countries: USA, UK, Canada, Australia. The cost is one and a half times higher there. We are actively developing the Western and Asian directions, the share of the latter is growing quite rapidly.

Where do you get traffic from (who are your publishers, do you over-buy)?

The main publishers are owners of mobile applications, mobile websites and advertising networks. The fact that we pay partners, including for actions (installations), is in terms of clicks (for example, the cost of installation is $1, with a conversion of 10% we buy a click from the site for $0.10, when the average prices in Admob are from $0.05 to $0.08) it often turns out more profitable than sell your traffic to Google.

Does it mean that motivated traffic is now becoming more expensive than unmotivated traffic?

No, of course not. It's just that actions may not always be motivated. In this case, we have a standard CPA system – our partners take the risks of turning impressions and clicks into installations. The system itself recalculates the cost of 1 installation.

The fact that today it is sometimes more profitable to pay for installations than for clicks is the reason why arbitration accounts for a significant amount of traffic.

What is arbitration?

Arbitration is when a user (webmaster) buys advertising for clicks, sells it for installations, taking all the risks on himself. The difference in the funds spent on clicks and the revenue earned from the installation is its profit.

Who do you usually sell traffic to, who do you have affiliate programs with?

In addition to the mentioned games, any B2C mobile application (meaning intended for a wide range of users) released anywhere in the world can become our client. Quite a few of our clients (including Kaspersky, Abbyy) turn to us for agency services. For example, promotion via the mobile network Facebook, Google, TargetMail. We work with developers directly or through agencies.

Let's imagine a hypothetical situation: an independent developer comes to you with a casual/midcore game, what should he prepare for in terms of marketing (for what amounts, for what period)?

If we are talking about an indie developer full of ambitious goals to make money on his product, then we are preparing him for the fact that this is quite a difficult task. First, it must calculate ARPU or ARPD correctly.

And for how long?

The term will already depend on the approach, usually I consider weekly, monthly and LTV.

We most often take a month as a basis.

During the first month, as a rule, it becomes clear whether the game will live, as well as what and how it needs to be changed.

Depending on what share of ARPU or ARPD is occupied by inaps, what kind of advertising, you need to choose a suitable promotion strategy for yourself: retaining TOP categories with the purchase of motivated traffic or holding the current position by buying exclusively unmotivated traffic.

If the developer has several applications, then special attention should be paid to traffic exchange and timely paging of a particular application. As a positive example, I would like to cite the company Anix LLC. The guys have developed a traffic exchange system between their applications. By pumping traffic in a timely manner to maintain high positions, I get an organic increase in traffic and manage to earn good money from advertising.

Depending on the turnover of money, the marketing budget is built. Unilead Network customers typically spend more than $3,000 per month. The duration of the advertising campaign depends on the chosen strategy. It can range from one week to several months. As for the developers who cannot afford such an "entrance ticket" right away, in the near future we will please them with a very cool and FREE tool, wait…

Since we have touched on the client topic, what do customers most often expect from you, what do they ask (if we are talking about game developers)?

Most often, they ask for a lot of cheap and high-quality traffic.

What do they most often dislike?

And I don't like the realization that high-quality traffic is expensive and there is little of it.

How does the advertising market work today, what problems do you face most often?

In our opinion, the problems of today's market are that the United States and Western countries have run far ahead of Europe, Asia and Russia in their products and approach to customer service. In order to successfully compete with American and British companies, it is necessary to constantly jump above your head and keep your finger on the pulse. Lack of professional staff, market volatility, overestimation of some tools and underestimation of others – these are the main problems of the mobile market in Russia today.

I also can't help but ask about the hottest topic of recent topics: the reluctance to work with Supercell c Appia: what happened there, in your opinion?

To be honest, I don't really follow the situation with Appia. Judging by the scraps of information, I dare say there is nothing strange about the situation. Apparently, the guys were inattentively reading the terms of the contract with Supercell. We have never worked with Appia and do not know about their capabilities. Therefore, we cannot say anything about their future fate.

However, if we talk about the resale of traffic, then today this is a common phenomenon. Since Unilead is an affiliate network, our publisher can be any advertising network that sells its inventory to us. If we are talking about Unilead as an agency, then we have a fairly large list of advertising networks that we include in our clients' media plans. As for the Unilead Network partner network, among our partners there are quite large advertising networks that sell their traffic to us on a residual basis.