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GUEST ARTICLE: Everything marketers need to know about optimising mobile OEM user acquisition campaigns
Mumbai: Mobile original equipment manufacturer (OEM) inventory is rapidly increasing, with a year-over-year growth of 3.8 per cent, and with shipments expected to reach 1.43 billion by the end of 2022. Within this space, brands such as Vivo, Samsung, Huawei, Xiaomi, and Oppo (which includes Realme and OnePlus) occupied 52 per cent of the global smartphone market share as of Q1 2022.
The user inventory generated by these mobile OEMs provides a tremendous competitive advantage for budget holders, as it continues to scale for as long as smartphones dominate the telecommunications industry. In parallel, these giant companies have been developing new and better proprietary platforms and systems that support specific targeting and ongoing optimisation of their intrinsic user traffic.
As a result, mobile OEMs are becoming one (if not the most) successful channels for mobile marketers to add to their marketing mix plans to achieve scalable and targeted user acquisition.
Marketers should not miss the diversity and effectiveness of ad campaign optimisation capabilities provided by mobile OEMs.
When mobile advertisers don’t see the right results for their campaigns, their first instinct is to pause the ad channels that are not meeting their expectations. However, as new inventory sources (such as mobile OEMs) provide a very granular range of optimisation options towards specific targets, learning and taking advantage of such features is crucial for the campaign’s success.
From this perspective, to get better outcomes and higher engagements, mobile marketers should consider three layers of optimisation for their user acquisition (UA) advertising (ad) campaigns:
1. Advertisement placement optimisation: Not all placements will drive the same level of quality. Advertisers need to look at which ad placements are driving quality users compared to others, and increase the bid for those placements so they can leverage more traffic. In addition, there are advertising placements that drive volumes but not quality, and those can be optimised by calculating the return on ad spend (ROAS) for a particular ad placement so they can decrease the bid and still get a positive ROAS result and retain volumes.
2. Creative optimisation: When mobile advertisers are buying media, they need to prevent “advertising fatigue” and ensure that their users aren’t seeing the same ad multiple times, as it leads to them eventually not interacting with it. Therefore, an advertiser should always have three creatives running for A/B testing and constantly come up with new concepts. Hence, the engagement of the ad remains constant as users get to see something new each time the ad is displayed. The higher the engagement of the ad, the better the conversion rate and effective cost per install (ECPI) for the advertiser.
3. Targeting optimisation: Some app stores also offer appographic targeting that helps app advertisers promote their apps to new users based on their unique app interests. It allows the advertiser to target over 200 appographic segments based on app interests and leverages audience insights beyond category and ownership, and all of this is user privacy compliant.
Understanding how advertisers can optimise their advertising spend based on upcoming special promotions
Timing, timing, timing!
Advertisers looking to place their ads on mobile OEMs during the special promotions season need to start by planning way ahead. For example, if there is a shopping app that wants to run a campaign for promotional offers in a specific time period, they need to work closely and plan with their partner agency in order to leverage the right mobile OEM inventory mix.
When the shopping app is featured within alternative app stores on any of these promotional days, then not only does the conversion rate go up, but overall conversion volumes also become higher, and this is when an optimisation strategy is key to achieving maximum success.
Furthermore, if the shopping app has also been promoted through offline media and other networks such as TV and third-party ad networks, the effective cost per acquisition per user becomes much lower.
Key takeaways for mobile marketers to consider for UA campaign optimisation
Optimising efforts for app marketing can be challenging, but mobile marketers can certainly tackle such situations by focusing on a few things:
First of all, they need to look at pricing based on quality. They should never remove an entire mobile OEM ecosystem because of quality. They need to be careful that app discoverability decreases if they pause the campaigns on a specific smartphone OEM. Therefore, they can always choose to negotiate price deals based on quality.
Secondly, they should measure mobile OEM performance. Every mobile OEM has different levels of offering placements and inventories to get apps launched in their respective app stores since each is at a different maturity level in its offerings. Analysing which mobile OEM works best is the key to placing and winning bids for advertising user acquisition campaigns.
Last but certainly not least, mobile marketers often tend to cannibalise when bidding for multiple inventories from their agency partners. They should choose one agency partner that acts as a single source of truth, specialises in mobile OEM inventory, and has close partnerships with those mobile OEMs. They need the know-how to deal with the individual platforms from launch to running user acquisition campaigns and optimisation.
Adopting these success mantras can change the course of mobile marketers’ user acquisition goals ahead of this year’s festive season.
The author of the article is AVOW co-founder Ashwin Shekhar.
MAM
Why storytelling is the most powerful marketing tool we underuse
Insights by Glad U Came founder & CEO Maddie Amrutkar.
MUMBAI: The marketing ecosystem has never been more advanced. Real-time dashboards decode consumer behaviour instantly. Platforms promise reach, scale, and optimisation at the tap of a screen. Yet, despite all this progress, what truly separates brands that are remembered from those that are merely noticed is not technology, it is storytelling.
Not the performative kind. Not glossy brand films that look beautiful but say very little. But real storytelling, the kind that creates context, builds meaning, and allows people to see themselves within a brand’s journey.
In the race for scale, storytelling is often sidelined. Speed replaces depth. Virality becomes the goal. Campaigns are optimised to perform, not to endure. Somewhere along the way, brands forget that consumers are not just impressions on a dashboard but emotional beings shaped by narratives, memory, and belief.
Stories create meaning, not just visibility
Modern marketing is engineered to be seen. Visibility today is easy to buy. Meaning, however, remains priceless.
Storytelling moves communication beyond product features and price points. It frames a brand as something that has observed real consumer pain points and chosen to respond with intent. It connects what a brand does to why it exists and how it fits into a larger cultural or emotional context. Without this framing, even the most innovative products risk feeling transactional.
People don’t engage with brands because of features alone. They engage because the brand stands for something they recognise or aspire to. Stories are what give that recognition shape.
We mistake storytelling for format
One reason storytelling remains underused is that brands often reduce it to a format, a brand walkthrough video, a founder interview, or a feature-heavy launch film. But storytelling is not an asset; it is a discipline.
It doesn’t belong to one medium or moment. It is about structure, continuity, and intent across every consumer touchpoint. A social media post can tell a story if it carries context. A press release can tell a story if it links action to purpose. Even a product launch can become narrative-led if it reflects evolution rather than announcement.
At Glad U Came, we’ve seen storytelling emerge most powerfully in spaces brands often treat as purely tactical like celebrity gifting. Across fashion, beauty, and food, a well-crafted narrative can transform a product handover into a cultural moment. When a denim label aligns with youthful stardom, or a clean beauty brand frames science through personal routines and real personalities, the result isn’t just visibility, it’s continuity. Communication begins to feel less like promotion and more like participation in a story audiences already want to follow.
Performance pressure has replaced connection
Brands aren’t entirely at fault. Today’s markets are crowded, fast-moving, and relentlessly competitive. With clicks, conversions, reach, and engagement dominating boardroom conversations, connection often becomes collateral damage.
Stories don’t always deliver instant gratification. Their impact is cumulative. They work linearly, embedding themselves over time, which makes them harder to justify in performance-driven environments.
But storytelling builds emotional equity. It helps audiences understand not just what a brand sells, but who it is. And that understanding is what sustains relevance when trends fade and platforms evolve.
Consistency is where storytelling earns its power
A story told once is content. A story told consistently becomes identity.
Strong brands don’t reinvent themselves with every campaign. They evolve. They revisit the same values and themes from new angles, allowing audiences to grow alongside them. This consistency builds familiarity, and familiarity builds trust.
Audiences remember more than brands assume. They notice tonal shifts. They recognise inconsistency. Storytelling provides the discipline that keeps communication aligned over time.
Looking ahead
As marketing continues to evolve, tools will change and metrics will multiply. But the human need to find meaning before making a decision will remain constant.
Storytelling bridges the gap between message and memory. Brands that prioritise purpose over noise, and clarity over spectacle, will be the ones that endure.
Storytelling is not an optional layer in marketing. It is the foundation we often overlook—and the advantage we gain when we use it well.
