Q&A with Demand Rockstars: Adikteev

Adikteev is a DSP platform based in Paris, and one of BidMachine’s DSP partners. Our team chatted with the Adikteev team to learn more about their way of setting up campaigns and creating value for app publishers, as well as get their perspective on some current industry trends. 

Tell us a bit about how Adikteev works. How does Adikteev approach re-engagement? 

We’re a mobile demand-side platform (DSP) for performance-driven marketers. We help the world’s top-spending app publishers increase retention, reacquire churned users, and drive incremental revenue. App publishers in gaming, e-commerce, on-demand, services, and entertainment rely on us to deliver made-to-measure strategies, creatives, and algorithms. Our approach to re-engagement is quite simple: we prioritize the needs of our clients and aim to create custom campaigns tailored to the requirements of each individual app. 

What type of re-engagement campaigns does Adikteev do? What are usually the results?

We always adapt to the customer strategy by focusing on one or more of three main strategies: upsell, activate and retain. We help app publishers drive more purchases from previous purchasers, get first installers to become customers, and keep users coming back to the app. 

Our expertise in incrementality allows us to demonstrate the true value of our campaigns, providing our customers with feedback they can rely on and results they can quantify.

In the end, our clients can typically expect 60% higher retention rates as opposed to apps that have employed little to no re-engagement. Re-engagement can also drive 30% more incremental revenue.

Could you talk about the deeper Appsflyer integration that happened in 2019? What effect did it have? 

Our goal is always to facilitate the work for our clients. The integration with Appsflyer’s Audiences tool now allows advertisers to use their existing audience segmentation created via Appsflyer’s platform in their re-engagement campaigns with Adikteev. 

What are the main features that make your DSP different from the others? In which aspect is Adikteev different from the other re-engagement DSPs out there?

The primary way that we differentiate ourselves is through our highly customizable services. We start every business relationship with a free comprehensive pre-launch analysis or a deep audit of the app to define the optimal audience engagement strategy. 

Secondly, we were the first re-engagement partner in the world to start talking about incrementality. Our quick action four years ago allowed us to become experts, mastering public service ads (PSA), ghost ads, and intent to treat (ITT). Now, we can offer the most accurate, transparent, and verifiable incrementality measurement on the market.

Given that you are a performance-based DSP, which are the most important characteristics you look for in an SSP/Exchange?

As a re-engagement DSP, we look at SSPs in a very different way to other players in the market. We are very user-focused, which means our top priority is the reach. Since we only target users post-install, a high match rate is essential to our success with an SSP. We want to reach as many users as we can and find the most valuable.

Also, we’re known in the industry for our innovative creatives thanks to our dedicated design studio and our in-house creative development platform. Since video and rich media creatives tend to bring higher user engagement and the best conversion performance, we like to work with SSPs that are very strong in these impactful ad formats in order to maximize our clients’ ROAS. 

Industry Trends

How is Adikteev prepared for the possible removal of device IDs on mobile, following the ban of third-party cookies on the web? 

It’s hard to predict what will happen in the future, and there are plenty of theories and possibilities that have been posed by other marketers and industry specialists. At the very least, we think this is a possibility that should not be ignored.

We are currently talking to our industry partners who would be most affected by this outcome (SSPs, MMPs) to figure out a viable solution. As re-engagement is so user-centric, we believe that such a change in the space will more deeply integrate us with our clients, possibly through customer relationship management (CRM) integrations.

What do you think about the industry’s shift towards first-price auctions? How did it affect Adikteev and DSPs in general?

As a whole, the shift toward first-price auctions (FPA) has been a net positive for DSPs such as ours. Firstly, it provides greater inventory opportunities that aren’t available with second-price auctions (SPA). With SPA, DSPs can often wind up bidding against themselves for the same unit of inventory by placing a bid on two different SSPs. This can inflate the clearing price paid by the bidder. In the case of FPAs, the clearing price doesn’t depend on competing bids, meaning that the DSP will never be competing with itself for inventory.

In addition, the shift to FPA increases cost per mille (CPMs), which means that the bid price must be highly accurate in order to stay within performance goals. Because auctions compete with direct campaigns in FPA, our average reach increases as well as our ability to win the final auction and display an impression to a very valuable user when we are ready to buy very high.

Do you think programmatic is now becoming more popular with publishers than more traditional forms of buying?

Yes, and this is a trend we anticipated already 3 years ago. Now all our media buying is programmatic.

New ad formats evolve as digital space is amplified. What do you think will be the next big thing? 

The possibilities are nearly limitless when it comes to new ad formats. The tech is always evolving and it gives us plenty of opportunities to implement new features. For example, the technology is there to allow us to create ads that act as filters in social media platforms such as Snapchat or Instagram.

Recently, we experimented with a playable ad that implemented a gyroscope to create a maze that the user could interact with. A gravity engine allowed us to simulate gravity within the ad format, which was totally new for us. 

Regardless of what they end up looking like, we can predict that the main concern with these new formats for users will be privacy and data usage. For example, users who are shown ads allowing for the use of a filter will have to agree to allow for the use of their camera and the likelihood of this is still uncertain. In any case, experimenting with ad formats is an exciting and ever-changing part of what we do.

BidMachine is a programmatic ad exchange with in-app bidding technology at the forefront. For more information visit our website and stay tuned for the next blog post in our Q&A series!