Best Practices for App Ads

We know how important it is to run successful advertising campaigns. In order to ensure your campaigns on Facebook are performing optimally, here are some best practices to consider.

First, some resources...

• Mobile Gaming Solutions Playbook: A comprehensive guide to our solutions for advertisers launching a game. A lot of these tips are great for non-gaming apps, too.
• Facebook Marketing Partners: You don't have to go it alone. Get custom-tailored solutions, superior insights and data for better marketing decisions, and innovative solutions with one of our Marketing Partners. They already have deep expertise in all the Best Practices below.

Understand your objectives

Facebook has three different advertising objectives you can choose from when you want to run ads for an app: App installs, traffic, and conversions. Each objective is designed to help you achieve a specific business goal, so it's important to choose an objective that aligns with your goals.

For more information, see Help Center, Choose the right objective.

Targeting

Targeting is a key step when running Mobile App Ads on Facebook. We recommend that you define a target audience for each campaign, so that you can quickly identify what is working and what is not.

Who are the people that you feel are best suited for your app? Once you have made some decisions around this concept, use Broad Category and precise Interest targeting to reach your specified group of individuals. For example, you can target people who like running (a broad category) and a particular sports apparel brand (precise interest).

With Lookalike Audiences, you can use your existing audience segments to identify new groups and expand targeting across more groups.

For more information about targeting, see Advanced Targeting and Placement.

Testing

Continuous testing is crucial as you set up your campaigns. You want to fully understand which ad specifications work best for the audience you want to reach and which ad creative performs the best. In order to do so, you should create multiple ad campaign versions and test them to see which performs best. For example, you can determine if a certain ad creative receives the most clicks or a specific targeting group gets the most reach.

For more testing ideas, see:

• Split Testing
• Test and Learn

Ads creative

The actual creative content of your ad is a great place to apply best practices. They can even affect your bottom line; for example, if your ad contains too much text and not enough visual elements, your bid cost is increased. For some great tips on developing compelling ad creative, see:

• Help Center, Get the Most Out of Mobile App Ads
• Creative Hub, Get Inspired
• Facebook Business, Inspiration Section
• Winning with Video on Mobile e-learning course

Measure

Measuring the effectiveness of your ad campaigns and the activity of your app is vital to determining your level of success.

Use App Events to understand how many people have made purchases, reached a certain level, or completed a specific action within your app. Understanding these key metrics can help you make smart decisions about your overall app strategy. For more information, see:

• Measuring for App Ads
• SDK and App Event Setup
• App Events

To get the most out of mobile app ads and to measure them accurately, Facebook recommends working with a Mobile Measurement Partner.

Understand your bidding options

When you first start your app ad campaigns, use Optimized CPM (oCPM) bidding to allow us to automatically achieve the best results for your app ads. oCPM leverages Facebook’s proprietary algorithms to optimize all your campaigns for you. By using oCPM, you can optimize for audiences most likely to install your app, and you pay for each impression. oCPM bidding also allows you to simplify campaign management so that you can focus on other key strategies for your app.

Later, you can explore other bidding options such as cost per action (CPA).

Time your promotions with your app’s content

If you are releasing new content within your app or promoting a sale, that's an opportunity to coordinate with some tailored advertising. These are the ideal times to funnel as many people as possible into your app to expose users to new content or campaigns.

Scale your campaigns to reach larger audiences

Once you have optimized, targeted, and tested campaigns with great creative, consider scaling your campaigns globally to expand your reach.

Create a Facebook Page for your app

Building a Page is the first step for businesses on Facebook. Having a Facebook Page is a prerequisite to being able to advertise on Facebook. With some attention and care, your Page can be a great way to build your brand and connect with all the people who use your app.

• Announce app updates
• Promote new features
• Share specials and deals for loyal fans

As a case study for game apps, here are some tips from our partner Supercell on how they successfully developed and used their app's Facebook Page:

• Respect your fans. Create content for all your fans, not just one specific demographic.
• Develop content that is interesting to your fans such as videos, images, and interesting stories.
• Reply fast to questions, feedback, or complaints. Your Facebook Page is a great way to interact with your fans.
• Create wall posts regularly to keep your fans engaged.
• Foster community through contests, challenges and polls.