Baidu?s Secret to Maximizing Mobile Acquisition

The Huge Emerging Market Opportunity for Mobile Advertisers

Emerging markets are set to accelerate mobile adoption. And we?re already seeing it?s impact in today?s market. In today?s market, there are over 5.3 billion mobile subscriptions ? a 77% ?global penetration rate.By 2020 there will be 3 billion more smartphones around the world, 80% of these mobile devices will be in the hands of people in emerging markets.

Mobile advertisers who include emerging markets into their acquisition strategies today will lead the charge in engaging valuable audiences -- both now and in 2021.

The Story

Chartboost recently partnered with Baidu?s user acquisition team to learn how companies of Baidu?s size is successfully targeting emerging markets to drive valuable installs.

Baidu is one of the largest internet companies in China, and the world overall. Besides owning China?s leading search engine, Baidu also dominates the Google Play store with popular non-gaming apps such as DU Speed Booster, DU Recorder, DU Battery Saver, and Baidu Antivirus.

The Scale Problem: Quality vs. Quantity

Scale is important to companies like Baidu with the massive reach, but the struggle between quantity and quality of users is a real issue for app marketers? ad campaigns.The global giant already has over 700 million users worldwide, proving that its apps have appeal with emerging market users.Emerging markets are a major piece of the puzzle. ?We get more installs for a lower price there,? says Baidu User Acquisition Manager, Junjie Zhang. ?The ROI is quite good in emerging countries.? The catch is finding advertising partners with both scale and advanced targeting capabilities.

Hyper-Targeted Campaigns: Global Scale at a Fraction of the Cost

Baidu?s user acquisition team chooses to launch their advertising campaigns on the Chartboost network because of the unique SDK global penetration and campaign targeting options. Chartboost SDK is installed on over 300k+ apps worldwide and averages over 40 billion monthly app sessions in both key English speaking countries and high potential emerging markets.The Baidu UA team fine-tuned their video and static campaigns by selecting specific app genres, audience genders, device models, and operating systems to target and engage key audiences across US, Indonesia, India, Mexico and Argentina.Leveraging the network?s far-reaching audience, Baidu has been able to rack up new users, bringing in more than 70,000 in January alone. ?The quality, scale and price of Chartboost?s traffic is essential for scaling at global volumes,? says Junjie.The Chartboost dashboard offers another advantage, allowing easy optimization even for huge campaigns with multiple interstitial and rewarded ads. ?The dashboard has CVE and CTV for each creative, so know we which creative is working or not, and why,? says Junjie.

Like all other successful developers, Baidu also measures the LTV of users soon after install to determine their quality. Many game developers, who either wait for or estimate 7-day LTV, may be interested to know that Baidu focuses most on 1-day LTV, finding that it offers a good prediction of quality.By working with an ad network that has an intimate understanding of their premium and direct SDK inventory coupled with extensive audience parameters and strong anti-fraud technology, Baidu was able to accelerate the quality and quantity of users for their campaigns.While Baidu has been best known in China to date, its future will likely see it become as well known globally as Google or Amazon. Mobile users are the audience that will get it there -- from millions today, to billions tomorrow.Want to learn how Chartboost can help you reach global markets with native, in-app advertising campaigns? Connect with our team of user acquisition experts here.