Moment marketing: a sustainable app revenue stream

Experiences should be given greater focus

Customers want to do this without clutter or compromise: in the arms race for audience attention, losses from mobile ad fraud are now likely in the billions and even higher for app-based businesses, and whilst in-app purchase (IAP) models present a more transparent way to generate revenue, only 5% of app users currently spend money in this way.

How can apps build new revenue models with the audiences they already have, to keep their community of users and advertisers loyal?

Getting more from the right moments

Let’s start with these data giants who capture our attention and fit into our daily lives by providing us with free information, entertainment, and services. Service-based monetization is a model which Elad Natanson touches on nicely here. It’s a way in which relevant features and content are brought together in new ways to create a two-way channel of value for apps and their users.

The giant apps understand that the real value lies in the richness and depth of their user data. This data is captured with our consent, as we come to rely on their in-the-moment services for finding holidays during our downtime, hunting down nearby high street deals or receiving train service updates during our daily commute.

As we well know, the audiences of these attention merchants aren’t the customer – they are the product.

Moments are a resource both scarce and abundant: we as consumers get progressively more picky about how and where we spend our time. It’s important to build a deeper understanding of how we make the most of their attention, through offline behaviors. This lets apps in on hidden opportunities to create value for users, to generate value from users.

Moment marketing in practice means:

• For users: delivering the right content and capability at the moment it’s most valuable
• For advertisers: adding a deeper understanding of customer behavior to your package, making it worth significantly more

Moments can be used as a way to bridge the gap between characteristics and captive moments worthy of their attention. This makes it more likely that you’ll win their engagement with not only service they are likely to find personally useful, but also a service they can make use of right when they need it the most.

By defining your user base by not only the items they buy and the ads they click on, but also through the places they go, the time they spend and the habits they have – your app can quickly become a gateway to the kind of service which is rightly making a comeback after a decade of rapid digital transformation: service which complements rather than distracts from what’s happening in the real world.