- Marketers prefer Instagram as their platform for video-based user acquisition over TikTok, in accordance with global research from app marketing solution Zoomd that Marketing Dive can exclusively share.
- When asked to separate their user acquisition spend between Instagram and TikTok, 79% of survey respondents allotted at the least 75% of their budget to Instagram, compared with 25% at most for TikTok. However, when asked which media sources they worked with in 2023, 53% of respondents said each TikTok and Instagram.
- The survey was conducted in February and March 2024, before U.S. lawmakers approved a bill requiring TikTok to separate from its Chinese ownership or face a possible ban within the country, which the ByteDance-owned company is now difficult in court.
While the potential preference by mobile marketers for Instagram on the subject of user acquisition could easily be explained away by the uncertainty of TikTok’s future, the undeniable fact that the Zoomd survey was conducted before the U.S. Congress voted to force a sale of the platform from its Chinese ownership or face a ban could reveal a separate issue. Specifically, Instagram and its parent, Meta, could also be more advertiser friendly than TikTok and, subsequently, more palatable to marketers.
“I think the preference for Instagram is a mirrored image of the user acquisition KPIs achieved via Instagram and the combined impact of Meta’s ad solutions for mobile marketers,” said Zoomd CMO Omri Argaman, in a press release shared with Marketing Dive.
Other findings within the survey revealed that a median of fifty% of mobile marketers have used artificial intelligence (AI) technology to optimize their user acquisition campaigns, though that usage rate varied widely. The buzzy tech continues to captivate adland, while platforms including Meta have concurrently been expanding their know-how. Forty percent of respondents said that they used AI to optimize 60% of their user acquisition ads.
Reflecting the growing use of user-generated content and the increasing power of influencers, 56% of respondents in Zoomd’s survey said they used influencers and creators for user acquisition in 2023. Marketers are also betting on creators more broadly, with 44% planning to extend their investment in content creators this yr, in accordance with findings from the IAB and TalkShoppe.
Other findings from the study suggest that mobile marketers are having difficulty navigating the brand new privacy-driven app tracking changes on iOS and Android platforms. Only 13% of those surveyed used first-party data in most (greater than 80%) of their user acquisition campaigns, while 19% of respondents only used first-party data in 20% of their campaigns. Despite the increased challenges of retargeting and retention as a result of the privacy restrictions, 69% of respondents said they’re increasing their budgets for such campaigns by as much as 20% in 2024.
More optimistically, 53% of respondents said they plan on increasing their user acquisition budgets this yr, while the remaining 47% said they might stay the identical. More than half of the respondents (53%) said they used greater than 10 mobile media sources in 2023. Three-quarters of respondents said they’ll use the identical amount in 2024 while the rest said they might use more.
When respondents were asked how they monetize their apps, in-app purchases remain the most well-liked monetization option, cited by 81% of the respondents. Half of those surveyed said they monetized through in-app promoting and 38% said they used payment for downloads or subscriptions.
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