We have seen cities, even countries like Italy in lock down mode right now and millions of people are affected. It has become a global pandamic which not only has dramatic effects on people’s lives (think work from home and the Netflix-and-quarantine life style) but also on the global economy. 

And this leads to a thought about our own industry – adtech. How would this pandemic affect mobile ad spend and ad revenue. If revenues are in free fall given the stock market performance and other factors, big spenders’ marketing dollars might be budgeted in for later. However, AppMonet noticed that our publishers are actually in an entirely different situation. We serve ads mostly for self care, self education, casual games and news & entertainment apps. These industries will probably even benefit from this crisis. AppMonet saw at least 10% more app bid requests in the past few weeks compared to December. It is evident that mobile usage has been going up during this period. 

And according to Apptopia’s data, we saw significant increase of usage and installs on work from home and online education apps. In addition, as you can imagine, people who are quarantined need to be entertained. Sessions of China’s top streaming video apps were slowing but experienced a rebound as the severity of the virus increased. And in South Korea, the usage of Netflix soared. 

So publishers, what can you do to succeed during the turbulent times? There are two sides – user acquisition and app monetization. It seems to be the time to scale budgets in countries that have been hit hard by coronavirus – at least for those apps that benefit from people in idle mode. We have seen a declining CPM in terms of acquiring users because many big players have put a pause on marketing spend (reference).

On the app monetization side, the first and foremost, even if your entire office is working from home, make sure your app is working! Make sure there’s no issue with your server or services so that people can enjoy using your apps with no interruptions! More importantly, it’s time to optimize your monetization strategies. If you rely heavily on ads, it is time to optimize your ad placements and units, your eCPM, and the mobile ad network partners you choose to work with. 

AppMonet connects developers with the largest brand advertisers for higher revenue. Being in the center of NYC, AppMonet has harnessed relationships with the largest brand advertisers and agencies which created unique brand demand. With one unified SDK, AppMonet supports all major video brands while maximizing and diversifying apps’ brand advertising demand sources. We have been a trusted partner for many world renowned apps and we are certainly here to help! Get in touch today if you are looking to make higher revenue for your apps!