How Pixel Federation measured app installs & revenue growth after being featured

Challenge

As is common for mobile businesses, Pixel Federation focuses its growth efforts on both ASO and paid user acquisition (UA). Managing ASO at Pixel Federation currently falls under the purview of one individual, the ASO Lead, who works daily on optimizing keywords, implementing organic strategies, and communicating results with UA teams, product managers, and the wider company.

As the ASO Lead monitors data from many different sources (Apple, Google, AppTweak, AppsFlyer, etc), it can quickly become challenging to consolidate top KPIs in one place and establish a single source of truth.

Switching between platforms to compare data can be time-consuming, particularly when trying to attribute sudden spikes in app downloads to specific activities – like being featured, new marketing campaigns, pricing changes, and more.

Solution

Pixel Federation turned to Reporting Studio, a premium software enabling app and game marketers to build custom reports consolidating data across various sources (AppTweak, app store consoles, MMPs, etc.).

By integrating its AppsFlyer account in Reporting Studio, Pixel Federation could start monitoring its AppsFlyer metrics (installs, revenues, sessions, event count, user count, etc) directly in AppTweak, allowing its team to plot ASO performance next to paid acquisition to measure impact.

First, the team created a report to monitor both organic and non-organic installs for iOS.

• Organic installs are app downloads that occur without any direct effort by a marketer to acquire users via paid or owned media campaigns. They refer to downloads by users who discover apps by themselves through word-of-mouth or an app store keyword search. Organic installs have a high potential to drive engagement and lower costs, contributing to long-term growth.
• Non-organic installs (NOIs) refer to app downloads resulting from marketing activities, like paid or owned media campaigns. Non-organic installs happen when a user downloads an app after seeing an advertisement, often stemming from paid efforts like Apple Search Ads or Google Ads Campaigns.

Once this report was set up, Pixel Federation went a step further by adding organic and non-organic revenues to the same graph. Since the marketing team invests in paid acquisition, the goal was to construct a comprehensive report that would help them better understand ROI. Furthermore, it was important for Pixel Federation to have a holistic view of the impact of paid campaigns and other events (being featured, in-app events, etc.) on overall performance.

Results

The final report illustrated a distinct peak in performance on October 17. For Train Station 2, Pixel Federation saw a significant rise in organic revenues and installs (over 540% and 470%, respectively) alongside a smaller increase in non-organic revenues and installs.

The report also displays the ASO Impact line (the vertical green line on October 17). This line automatically highlights important events (such as metadata changes, algorithm updates, and app featurings) on the report.

Here, the ASO Impact line highlighted that Train Station 2 was featured in the App Store Today tab on October 17, 2023 (United States). Taking a closer look, we see that Train Station 2 was featured as the Game of the Day; this highly visible placement is estimated to have generated over 2 million views.

Thanks to the AppsFlyer integration in Reporting Studio, Pixel Federation could successfully measure the impact of app store featurings on the organic and non-organic performance of its leading app, Train Station 2.

With the report in place, the team can check it back anytime for refreshed data. Aided by the ASO Impact line, the ASO Lead can more efficiently monitor (and share) the impact of ASO efforts on its game performance.