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Avow, a global app-growth company, has unveiled its Avow Intelligence, a platform that simplifies buying media for mobile original equipment manufacturers.
The platform aims to transform mobile OEM advertising by streamlining media inventory management across various premium mobile OEMs. With this tool, Avow empowers clients to gain a competitive edge while running user acquisition campaigns on alternative app stores.
Through partnerships with premium mobile OEMs — and their alternative app stores — and Avow Intelligence, the company provides its clients access to over 1.5 billion daily active users (DAUs) and over 10 million monthly downloads.
Berlin and San Francisco-based Avow specializes in acquiring new users for app developers and brands. It has partnerships with global mobile OEMs such as Xiaomi, Huawei, Vivo, and Oppo.
Mobile OEMs have become prominent players in the industry, not only in terms of smartphones but also through the creation of software and service ecosystems. Avow’s mobile OEM partners command an impressive 54% share of the global mobile market. In 2022 alone, revenues from alternative app stores reached a staggering $39 billion, Avow said.
Media buying in mobile OEM advertising involves securing ad placements, which necessitates careful consideration to optimize return on ad spend (ROAS) and achieve marketing objectives such as precise targeting, cost-effectiveness, performance monitoring, and optimization.
But, marketers have faced challenges when purchasing advertising inventory individually from different OEMs, leading to fragmented views of campaign performance and the inability to consolidate campaigns across multiple platforms.
Avow Intelligence
Avow Intelligence addresses the major challenges. By processing extensive data from multiple OEMs and mobile measurement partners (MMPs), Avow Intelligence bridges the gap between media buyers and data, providing invaluable insights and real-time analysis for data-driven decision-making.
The tool also optimizes the best OEM advertising inventory, measuring placements against app-specific key performance indicators (KPIs) and desired engagement levels. Avow Intelligence offers clients a comprehensive understanding of ad placement behavior and its alignment with their objectives.
Origins
Wildner previously worked at firms such as Glispa in preventing fraud in performance mobile marketing. Then companies such as Xiaomi started working on monetizing users on their mobile smartphone platforms and they needed to build their own mobile marketing ecosystem.
“From that moment on, we found we have a unique niche when it comes to OEM inventory,” said Robert Wildner, CEO of Avow, in an interview with GamesBeat. “It was difficult at first but we developed working relationships with Xiaomi and with Huawei. Then we went all-in on the Chinese OEMs. We resell OEM inventory.”
Samsung launched its mobile game launcher last week to try to get cloud-based playable ads off the ground on its Galaxy smartphones, where its control of the ecosystem could help reduce friction in mobile ads. That’s an example of the kind of promise Google Stadia once offered with its cloud gaming service in terms of reducing friction.
For Wildner, this is a reminder about the interest in focusing on alternative app stores for mobile OEMs, and how that is Avow’s focus.
“We started to focus on gaming last year, and we didn’t have a single gaming client, and now a year later 50% of our customers are gaming clients,” said Wildner. “It’s an example of getting more out of the media and digital markets.”
Key features
Real-time insights: The tool seamlessly gathers insights from various mobile OEMs and MMPs, providing marketers with up-to-date information.
Optimized media buying: Avow Intelligence acts as a centralized source for accessing empirical market data, offering media buyers greater clarity and actionable insights. This enables the development of highly targeted and cost-effective campaigns, progressively reducing acquisition costs.
Down-funnel events: Avow Intelligence surpasses conventional cost-per-install (CPI) models by emphasizing an understanding of the complete user journey and focusing on long-term outcomes. This approach ensures that brands are not only seen and heard but also remembered.
Wildner said simplicity is increasingly important in an industry overwhelmed by data.
“Each mobile OEM has its own unique nuances; it’s not one-size-fits-all,” Wildner said. “This is why we have built and launched Avow Intelligence, a one-of-a-kind tool to simplify and optimize media buying on mobile OEMs.”
Some leading brands have already experienced the benefits of piloting Avow Intelligence, including Amazon Prime Video, LOTTO24, AirAsia, Exness, Didi Group, Unico Studio, Kumu, Byju’s, OctaFX, Joom, Kredivo, Navi, and Zephyr Mobile. Avow has 12 offices.
Working with OEMs and game companies
Part of the need for advertisers like game companies is to get more results from advertising in the wake of Apple’s focus on privacy over targeted advertising in the past couple of years. One way to do that is to go to the alternative app stores of the mobile OEMs.
When it comes to global OEM app stores, Wildner said his company knows how to operate with them when it comes to mobile media buying.
“What matters of gaming is whether you are getting the return-on-ad-spend (ROAS) or not,” Wildner said. “And that is the challenge. We have the right clients, we know the inventory.”
Avow figures out data from the mobile measurement partners and collects necessary information from the OEMs on what inventory is available, and then it helps make decisions on media buying.
The company has 50 people and it raised some seed funding six years ago.
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