How to Build a Mobile OEM Advertising Strategy in 9 Steps

Mobile OEM advertising can unlock new Android audiences, but results depend on more than choosing a manufacturer and launching a campaign. Marketers need to match each target market with the right OEM partners, ad formats, targeting signals, and measurement plan.

A strong strategy begins with five decisions:

1. What outcome should the campaign deliver?
2. Which markets should you prioritize?
3. Which OEM partners can reach relevant users in those markets?
4. Which formats and targeting signals match the campaign goal?
5. How will you measure user quality and performance?

This guide draws on a Tenjin ROI 101 conversation between Roman, Marketing Director of Tenjin and Ashwin Shekhar, co-founder of AVOW, to explain how marketers can turn those decisions into a practical campaign plan. In an earlier post, he also shares what he believes are the most common mobile OEM advertising myths.

1. Define Your OEM Campaign Goal

Mobile OEM advertising includes several formats and unsurprisingly, they all serve different purposes. Before selecting an OEM partner or placement, it’s important to define the result you want the campaign to deliver. It’s this goal that will end up driving and determining your market selection, format, targeting strategy, KPIs, and budget.

The format you’ll want to go with really depends on what you’d like to achieve.

This here is a rough guideline for a starting point, rather than a rigid rule. A campaign can combine several formats as it develops, and this is fine, as long as each format maintains a definite role.

Starting out with a goal helps prevent one of the most common mistakes: choosing an available placement before knowing whether or not it will actually support app growth and overall objectives.

2. Choose Your Priority Market for OEM Advertising

Since Android does not operate as one uniform advertising environment, there are many options. Different manufacturers lead in different markets and tiers, and each offers its own audience reach, inventory, formats, and campaign requirements.

As Ashwin explains:

“If you want to advertise in Brazil and you set up with a particular OEM that doesn’t have market share in Brazil, you’re basically wasting time. You need to know which OEMs dominate which markets, which products to use, and what mix is right for your campaign.”

Instead of beginning with a preferred manufacturer, begin with the countries where your app has the strongest opportunity.

He suggests evaluating each market according to this criteria:

• Current user demand
• Revenue potential
• Android device distribution
• Relevant OEM market presence
• App localization and store availability
• Existing acquisition costs
• Expected user value
• Available campaign formats

These criterion will most likely produce a different OEM result and mix for each targeted market. For example, a manufacturer that provides significant reach in Southeast Asia may play a smaller role in Europe or Latin America.

Ultimately, your strategy should reflect those cultural and regional differences rather than applying the same blanket manufacturer mix everywhere.

3. Choose the Right OEM Partners

Working with only one manufacturer can restrict reach, especially when a campaign spans across several markets.

Casting out to a broader OEM mix gives advertisers the opportunity to work with the best fit manufacturer for that region or country. Starting out broad can also provide access to different device segments, audience profiles, app stores, and native placements.

However, adding more manufacturers does not automatically translate to improved performance. Similar to choosing formats, the right partner should have a defined role within the campaign.

Pregunta:

• Does this manufacturer have meaningful reach in the target market?
• Which device and price segments does it cover?
• Which campaign formats does it support?
• Can it reach the app’s intended audience?
• What commercial and technical requirements apply?
• How will its performance be attributed and measured?

The objective is not to activate as many OEMs as possible. It is to create the smallest effective mix that provides enough relevant reach to test the strategy properly.

4. Match the Advertising Format to Your Objective

Not sure which OEM format works best for your audience? OEM advertising is able to reach users at different points in their device experience. This means that choosing the best format depends when and where you want your app or brand to appear.

When Should You Use Dynamic Preloads?

Dynamic preloads recommend or install apps during the initial device setup experience.

This format may suit apps that benefit from reaching users before they establish their usual app habits. Gaming, entertainment, utility, and subscription apps may find this moment particularly valuable because users are actively personalizing a new device.

Ashwin explains why this timing can matter for gaming apps:

“Once you get hooked onto a certain game, you’re not going to change. So, getting these users very early, when they set up a device, is very important. Dynamic preloads give you the ability to scale very quickly and achieve being one of the first apps on those devices.”

Dynamic preloads can support scale, but install volume should not become the only success metric. Compare retention, engagement, revenue, and LTV with users acquired through other channels.

For apps where early habit formation influences long-term engagement, dynamic preloads may justify a structured test.

When Should You Use Alternative App Stores?

Manufacturer-owned app stores give advertisers another route to app discovery outside Google Play.

Xiaomi operates GetApps, Samsung offers the Galaxy Store, Huawei runs AppGallery, and other manufacturers have their own equivalents.

Alternative app stores may provide:

• Search advertising
• Featured placements
• Recommended-app sections
• Category promotions
• Banners and other store inventory

Ashwin explains why these stores can help apps compete for visibility:

“The Google Play Store is very crowded. It is important to be on the alternative app stores also because we see a considerable number of users use the default app store on phones itself. And it also breaks out from the clutter and gives you much higher visibility than when you are on the Google Play Store.”

Alternative app stores may be particularly useful for:

• New app or game launches
• Expansion into markets with strong OEM store usage
• Apps competing in crowded Google Play categories
• Teams seeking additional organic and paid discoverability

Maintaining listings across multiple stores can appear operationally demanding. However, Ashwin says some OEM setups can simplify the update process:

“Currently with most of the OEMs, we have a setup where if you upload the app once, whenever you next update the app on Google Play Store, it will pull the same build into all of these alternative app stores. This will significantly reduce the number of work and effort you have to put in.”

The exact process will vary by manufacturer and commercial agreement. Before launching, confirm how each store handles submissions, builds, updates, localization, compliance, and measurement.

When Should You Use OEM Display Advertising?

OEM display ads appear across manufacturer-controlled device surfaces, including browsers, launchers, native apps, music and video players, app discovery feeds, and other parts of the user experience.

Display campaigns can combine these placements with audience signals such as device type, app usage, recent behavior, and time spent in relevant app categories.

Ashwin explains how targeting can influence the quality of display campaigns:

“Display is a little more pricey than store and so on, but the quality is being driven by us in terms of optimizing and showing users the most relevant ads.”

This format may suit advertisers optimizing for post-install actions rather than install volume alone. These actions could include:

• Registrations
• Purchases
• Suscripciones
• Bookings
• Completed onboarding
• Other events associated with long-term value

OEM display advertising may cost more than some app-store or preload placements. Advertisers should therefore evaluate whether better targeting and downstream user quality justify the higher acquisition cost.

When Should You Use OEM Branding Placements?

Branding campaigns can use prominent placements such as lock screens, splash screens, banners, and other manufacturer-owned inventory.

These placements may support:

• Product launches
• Rebrands
• Market entry
• Seasonal campaigns
• Brand-awareness initiatives

Ashwin shared an example of how AVOW used OEM placements during a company rebrand:

“We had a company doing a full rebrand. We leveraged brand campaigns where we showed, on user devices in the lock screen, the switch from one brand logo to a new brand identity. This increased awareness of what the brand was changing and why the transition was happening.”

This example shows how OEM inventory can support more than immediate app-install goals. By reaching users across several device surfaces, brands can communicate a broader message over time.

Branding campaigns also require different KPIs from performance campaigns. Reach, frequency, engagement, and branded activity may matter more than immediate installs.

5. Use Appographic and Behavioral Targeting

Selecting an ad format determines where the campaign appears. Targeting determines which users see it.

Depending on the manufacturer and market, OEM targeting may use signals such as:

• Location
• Device type
• Demographic attributes
• Installed apps
• Recent app activity
• Time spent in app categories
• Keywords or expressed interests

The strongest targeting strategy combines several signals rather than relying on one.

Use Appographic Targeting to Identify Relevant Interests

Appographic targeting uses the apps or app categories installed on a device to identify potentially relevant audiences.

Ashwin provides a simple example:

“If you have Netflix and don’t have Amazon Prime, I can show you an Amazon Prime ad. Appographic targeting is the ability to target users using what apps they have on the phone.”

The presence of streaming, finance, travel, sports, or gaming apps may indicate an interest in the same or a related category.

However, an installed app does not necessarily prove active interest. A user may have stopped using it.

Add Behavioral Signals to Identify Current Activity

Behavioral targeting adds information about whether users have recently opened or interacted with particular apps or categories.

This moves the strategy from knowing what users have installed to understanding what they currently use.

Use Time-Spent Signals to Measure Engagement Depth

Time-spent signals help distinguish occasional app usage from sustained engagement.

Together, the three signals answer different questions:

Ashwin recommends combining these signals:

“Ideally you want to combine all three to reach the right user at the right time at the right point.”

For example, a sports campaign could focus on users who have live-score apps installed, opened them recently, and spent meaningful time engaging with sports content.

This approach targets demonstrated behavior rather than relying only on broad or inferred interests.

Advertisers should confirm which signals each OEM makes available and how consent frameworks, privacy requirements, and regional regulations affect their use.

6. Measure OEM Advertising Campaigns in Tenjin

Define the measurement plan before the campaign launches.

The plan should specify:

• The campaign objective
• The attribution setup
• The events Tenjin should track
• The reporting windows
• The target CPI or acquisition cost
• The retention benchmarks
• The revenue and LTV milestones
• The criteria for increasing or reducing spend

AVOW integrates with Tenjin, allowing advertisers to evaluate OEM campaign results alongside social, search, and ad-network campaigns.

As Ashwin explains:

“For any advertiser using Tenjin, you can track any OEM advertising activity similar to what you do on Facebook or Google. Use Tenjin as your single source of truth for tracking multiple campaigns.”

Advertisers can compare channel performance within the same Tenjin reporting environment, but the technical attribution setup may vary by OEM format.

Standard click-based placements may use tracking links and callbacks. Google Play Auto-Install campaigns instead use campaign information passed through the Google Play Install Referrer.

Once the campaign begins, compare OEM cohorts using metrics such as:

• Install volume
• Coste por instalación
• Onboarding completion
• Day 1, Day 7, and Day 30 retention
• Purchase or subscription conversion
• Average revenue per user
• Lifetime value
• Return on ad spend

Measurement should answer more than whether the campaign generated installs. It should show whether those users delivered enough engagement and value to justify further investment.

7. Test Your OEM Advertising Campaign

A first OEM campaign should answer a specific question rather than test every available variable at once.

Choose One Primary Objective

Decide whether the test will prioritize scale, user quality, discoverability, or awareness.

Select One or Two Priority Markets

Choose markets where the app has credible demand, suitable economics, and access to relevant OEM inventory.

Build a Focused OEM Mix

Include the manufacturers needed to reach a meaningful audience without making the test unnecessarily complicated.

Choose One Primary Format

Testing several formats simultaneously can make it difficult to identify what influenced the result. Begin with the format most closely aligned with the campaign goal.

Define Target Events and Benchmarks

Establish the install, retention, revenue, or event thresholds the campaign must reach.

Collect Enough Post-Install Data

Avoid making scaling decisions based only on early install volume. Allow enough time to evaluate retention and downstream behavior.

This structure gives the test a clear hypothesis:

In this market, this OEM mix and format can acquire users who meet these performance benchmarks.

The results can then guide the next test.

8. Decide Between Working Directly or Using an Aggregator

Advertisers can establish direct relationships with individual manufacturers or work through an OEM aggregation partner.

Going direct may make sense for advertisers with sufficient budgets, established OEM expertise, and dedicated regional resources.

However, Ashwin describes the practical challenge of managing multiple OEM relationships independently:

“If an advertiser chooses to go directly with any OEM, they are more than welcome to do so. But this comes with the hard part. You need to have paperwork to sign with each of these different 13 OEMs. You need to put a considerable amount of budget for each of these OEMs and you don’t know how it’s going to work.”

An aggregator can consolidate those relationships and help advertisers select the appropriate partners for each market.

As Ashwin explains:

“When an advertiser works with us, we act as a one-stop solution and we aggregate all of the OEMs. They just sign one paperwork with us and we have a single point of contact. We help you scale on all of these partners.”

Working through an aggregator may make sense when an advertiser wants to test several manufacturers or markets without negotiating and managing every relationship separately.

The right decision depends on the team’s budget, internal expertise, target markets, and need for strategic support.

9. Scale Your OEM Campaigns Based on Cohort Quality

A successful initial test does not automatically justify scaling every OEM, placement, or market.

Break performance down by:

• Market
• Manufacturer
• Device segment
• Colocación
• Targeting group
• Creativo
• Campaign format
• Acquisition cohort

One manufacturer may deliver the lowest CPI but weaker retention. Another may generate fewer installs but stronger revenue or subscription conversion.

Scaling decisions should reflect the campaign’s original objective. If the goal is profitable growth, low-cost installs alone are not enough.

Increase investment where the campaign consistently produces valuable users. Reduce or refine spend where results fall below the agreed benchmark.

Bringing the Nine Steps Together

A strong mobile OEM advertising strategy starts with a clear campaign goal and builds from there. Marketers need to choose the right markets, select the manufacturers that matter in those regions, match each format to the intended user moment, and combine targeting signals that improve relevance.

From there, success depends on defining measurement before launch, running a focused first test, deciding whether to work directly with OEMs or through an aggregator, and scaling only when cohort quality supports further investment.

These nine steps work as one process:

1. Define your campaign goal
2. Choose your priority market
3. Choose the right partners
4. Match the advertising format to your objective
5. Use appographic and behavioral targeting
6. Set up attribution and measurement
7. Run a focused campaign test
8. Decide on the right operating model (direct or aggregate)
9. Scale your OEM campaigns according to cohort performance

Ashwin advises that OEM advertising works best when marketers treat it as a structured growth strategy rather than a standalone channel test. Every decision decision should support the next, from market selection through measurement and scaling.