How IPL season 14 provides an opportunity to app marketers

AppsFlyer report reveals that consumers moved to buy more products and services through mobile apps thereby making 2020 a significant year in surged IPL revenues

With consumers staying at home, the Indian Premier League has captured eyeballs like never before providing an opportunity for app marketers to tap and engage with the audiences. Consumers moved to buy more products and services through mobile apps thereby making 2020 a significant year in surged IPL revenues, AppsFlyer’s report titled ‘IPL 2021 A Historic Year for Mobile’ stated. According to the report, revenue-driven campaigns yielded double the paying users compared to organic installs for the gaming category while organic installs shot up in the food and drink, finance, and shopping category. For Gaming, remarketed users demonstrated 30% more retention, a rate that has been consistent over the past two years, indicating marketers to practice it further for gaming apps.

With nearly half of Indian internet users during the pandemic being first-time online shoppers, the ratio of paying users (non organic installs) in shopping apps went up by 20% and the organic paying users nearly doubled, the report stated. The study represents a comprehensive account of data and insights covering 2.1 billion installs of 2,501 apps with at least 1,000 monthly non-organic installs (NOI), during IPL seasons in 2019 and 2020, marking it as a lucrative opportunity for marketers in 2021. The data sample also includes 292.5 billion app opens and 1.1 billion remarketing conversions (app opens).

The insights revealed that the food and drink category spiked highest at lunch, with its second-highest daily peak in revenue and sessions from noon to 2pm. It also remained higher than any other vertical in the evening with 7pm to 10pm accounting for 30% of sessions, whereas 6pm to 10pm accounting for over 40% of revenue. Gaming apps witnessed a second-highest daily spike in sessions and revenue from noon to 2pm and saw a peak in revenue from 2pm to 8pm. Entertainment thrived during the four hours between 7pm and 11pm accounting for 31% of revenue and over 42% of sessions. 15% of sessions happened post-match i.e., from 10pm to midnight.

Meanwhile, shopping apps also shot up during evening matches, with almost 30% of revenue booked between 7pm to 11pm and continuing strong post-match from 10pm to 1am, accounting for almost 19% of income. Furthermore, finance app revenue began to climb at 10am, tapering off only by 7-8pm. This 10-hour period accounts for nearly three-quarters of all finance revenue.

The twin drivers of a pandemic lockdown and the rise of live watch parties aggressively fuelled demand for food deliveries and brands across food and drink witnessed tripled (+175%) NOI. Remarketed users showed 57% more retention than non-remarketed users. With the surge in new users, remarketing is highly recommended to shore up brand value and boost retention for the food and drink category, the report said.

Consumer’s pent-up enthusiasm led to greater success of user acquisition campaigns for gaming category in pre and post-season and food and drinks category in pre and mid-season, while mid-season drove revenue campaigns for gaming and shopping, with organic and in-app purchases hitting their peak in Week 5.

The FinTech category saw more organic installs, sessions, and daily active users in the pre-season and the early season — a change from previous years. As NOI was heavily concentrated in the weeks after IPL both in 2019 and 2020, AppsFlyer noted that marketers may want to shift UA efforts to the early season in 2021. “Year over year, 26.39% fewer Finance apps remarketed in 2020, despite remarketing proving highly effective, with 56% higher 30-day user retention. Marketers may want to resume remarketing to avoid losing their newly won users,” the report stated.

Entertainment category witnessed the influx of new organic users in 2020 and showed a 30-day retention rate over three times that of non-remarketed users. The in-app purchases tend to rise in Week 3, cresting in Weeks 5 and 6 therefore marketers might want to start UA campaigns earlier and ramp up revenue campaigns in the early weeks.

IPL is India’s biggest sporting event and provides a plethora of opportunities for app marketers to align their strategies with the rapid shift in audience behaviour during the actual matches, Sanjay Trisal, country manager, AppsFlyer India, said. “The IPL 2021 report not only analyses the potential for marketers in the overall game but also provides trends and opportunities that can be leveraged as the season progresses. An interesting facet of this report is the section on game day mobile user behaviour that syncs each app category towards the time of the day and talks about which apps peak during a particular time,” he added further.

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