What is user acquisition (UA)?
The definition of user acquisition
User acquisition (often shortened to UA) is the act of gaining new users for an app, platform, or other service. On mobile, user acquisition is a strategy designed around generating installs, usually achieved by advertising campaigns and promotional offers.
Why is user acquisition important?
Without a user acquisition strategy, it can be tough for businesses to find and convert new users. User acquisition is a data-heavy science that looks for trends and patterns that work, cutting out the guesswork that can lead to wasted ad spend. With competition increasing, finding the means to boost app discovery while convincing users to install your app can become an exercise in optimization as well as an essential component of success.
What common challenges do UA managers face when acquiring new users?
Developing an overall strategy with new user acquisition as a key component takes expertise and savvy marketing. Common challenges include a lack of transparency throughout the mobile marketing ecosystem to difficulties segmenting users.
User acquisition and mobile ad fraud
Ad fraud is a huge issue throughout the mobile marketing ecosystem, with various ways fraudsters are trying to steal marketing spend. UA managers must be vigilant against this, with a clear view of expectations and how their company plans to combat fraudulent claims. Without preventative tools, UA managers can waste time trying to reclaim ad spend they have already handed over to a network or, in a worse scenario, fraud can go unnoticed. While this is taking money out of marketer’s pockets, the bigger impact occurs through compromised data. This unfortunate situation leads marketers to base their user acquisition strategy on incorrect analytics, scaling up the ‘best performing’ channels that were the source of ad fraud in the first place.
So, what can be done? The first step is understanding the different types of fraud that (without sufficient protection) can compromise your data and steal your ad spend. It’s important to be aware of Click Spam, Click Injection, SDK spoofing and in-app bot fraud.
With the fraud prevention suite, you can rely on Adjust to reject fraudulent claims – protecting your ad spend and keeping your data clean.
User acquisition and Adjust
From implementing your campaigns to users registering, purchasing, and playing to win, Adjust is there through the whole process, helping you optimize user acquisition. Our trackers stay true to the user they’re attributed to, giving you an insight into the lifetime of a user on your app. You can use all our data to find out what keeps your user’s attention and what increases churn.
Our KPI features can reveal where your highest lifetime value (LTV) users come from, and which campaigns produce the best results, laid out with excellent clarity within our dashboard.
With inbuilt retargeting, you can add incentives to improve retention and progression in the areas you see churn, and even optimize channels between our partners to drive users to your application.
If you’d like to learn more about user acquisition, take a look at our complete guide. This resource covers the meaning of user acquisition, the various ad formats at your disposal, and key challenges marketers face when looking to acquire new users.
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