Enhancing dynamic product ads performance with OneLink
Social media advertising spending is estimated to have reached $230 billion worldwide in 2022, up from $98.23 billion in 2021. With social platforms counting billions of active users, this is an effective way to drive traffic and generate revenue for mobile eCommerce businesses.
But although social ads are popular with advertisers, one drawback is the inability to take users directly from their social media feed to the destination app and relevant in-app content, with attribution links “breaking” in the process. This is forcing advertisers to search for creative solutions and workarounds.
One such solution is the “Social landing pages” experience, in which customers who interact with social ads get redirected first to a dedicated landing page, and only then to the desired app or store —adding an extra step in the user process.
This experience can be made smoother using deep-linking technology, which not only makes sure customers reach the desired app quickly and easily, but also takes them to the relevant area within the app. This makes for a seamless journey from initial ad to completion.
As useful as the social landing page may be, many advertisers would happily skip this additional friction point if given the chance, in exchange for a more direct journey.
General hypothesis
We wanted to find out:
Does using Universal links and App links, instead of URI scheme or social app landing pages, in fact improve social campaign performance?
Our working assumption was that social channels that support universal/app links (for Android and iOS respectively) create a better user experience, by taking users seamlessly from their social app to the destination.
Internal AppsFlyer experiments indicate that OneLinks (AppsFlyer’s deep-links) are indeed supported when used specifically in Meta catalogs for Dynamic Product Ads (DPA) and placed as the iOS/Android app URL field. This basically means that support for universal/app links using OneLink is now possible.
Two AppsFlyer customers agreed to take part in an experiment and share their performance results when using OneLink with universal/app links in Meta’s DPAs (catalog), each with their unique optimization and result logic in mind.
PatPat generates 3x revenue lift
PatPat is a growing global brand of children’s clothing serving millions of parents and children in over 140 countries. For over nine years, it’s been offering cute, quality designs and great prices. Patpat has more than 30,000 products and daily new arrivals.
PatPat’s main objective heading into this experiment was to improve campaign ROAS through increasing revenue — its main KPI. Measuring this was made possible thanks to pre-existing configurations with the Facebook software development kit (SDK).
To properly measure the incremental impact of the new setup, a control group was simultaneously created, in which links were configured with a URI scheme, and not universal/app links. (A URI, or uniform resource identifier, is a string of characters that directs users to a specific place on a site or app.)
By placing the OneLink directly in the Dynamic Product Ads applink URL field in the catalog, PatPat managed to dramatically boost its performance as initially expected.
PatPat’s click-to-install conversion rate with the new test setup reached 17%, compared with the control group conversion rate of only 4.13%.
The conversion rate increase translated into higher revenue, producing over three times more than the control group, and in turn reflected a dramatically higher ROAS.
An impressive additional increase in average revenue per user was also measured, with users spending 65% more than control group users.
Our team has successfully utilized OneLink in our Dynamic Product Ad campaigns to drive better performance on ROAS and DAU over the long term. Through our test with AppsFlyer in Meta, we have confirmed the effectiveness of our strategy.
Mark MA | Head of digital marketing team, PatPat
We strongly recommend that other eCommerce advertisers try using OneLink in their daily marketing campaigns.
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Banggood boosts re-engagement by 28x
Banggood is a leading direct-to-consumer online retailer, providing well-selected and cost-effective products to over 66 million registered users. Its global reach covers North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, South America, and the Middle East.
Heading into a similar experiment to the one PatPat took part in, Banggood had a similar goal. However this company was also looking to increase its user re-engagement performance.
Banggood previously used the URI scheme on its Facebook Dynamic Product Ads campaign, which is hard to measure, and couldn’t directly deep-link users to its app through universal/app links.
The main reason for using OneLink on its DPA campaign is to provide a better user experience.
When comparing the test’s performance to a similar control group, the re-engagement impact was astounding and far exceeded expectations: the new test format managed to generate over 28 times more re-engagements than the control group for similar traffic volumes.
As in PatPat’s case, the overall conversion rate was also positively impacted, measuring at over 16 times more than the control group.
Compared to using a URI scheme to launch the apps, OneLink (UniversalLink/AppLinks) provides excellent CPI and conversion rates with Facebook Dynamic Product Ads.
We can only hope that AppsFlyer can maintain this advantage and expand it to other ad types like static ads to help eCommerce customers acquire app users faster at lower rates
Gary Siu | Marketing manager, Banggood
Key takeaways
As expected when heading into this experiment, the lighter and more direct flow positively impacted performance, delivering massive increases for all key performance metrics measured by AppsFlyer’s advertisers.
This test is yet another indication of seamless, frictionless customer experiences translating into more profitable campaigns.
AppsFlyer will continue to collaborate with our partners to keep investigating possible lighter flows that benefit all parties involved.
