With uncertainty around iOS 14.5, advertisers are shifting their budgets to Android. While publishing on Google Play remains one of the most obvious options, the potential of acquiring users in alternative Android app stores is creating a larger opportunity for developers and marketers. Publishers are constantly searching for new platforms that have a high-quality user base together with the option to continue with deterministic attribution. That’s why we feel that this is a perfect time to announce Tenjin’s new support for alternative Android app stores.

Starting from today, all Tenjin clients can start measuring advertising performance for the alternative Android stores. This includes install attribution, ROI, LTV measurement, and all the features that are currently available for Google Play and iOS apps.

Before we jump into a ‘how to’, I would like to share some exclusive Tenjin data for Android ad spend and talk a bit about the ‘go-to’ country for alternative Android stores.

iOS 14 concerns have pushed advertisers to reallocate their budgets to Android

As of this writing, advertisers are allocating more of their budgets to Android than to iOS. Following the release of iOS 14.5, Android spend increased to the point it has now overtaken iOS ad spend share.

Interestingly enough, we can see that this migration of ad spend was occurring in the last two years. Below is the data from two of our hyper-casual benchmark reports. 

As you can see, the trend was actually developing long before iOS 14 and Apple changes only seem to have boosted it. We expect to see this trend continue and for more budgets to get allocated to Google Play. Due to the rise in competition, it’s fair to expect to see a rise in CPIs too and changes in other user acquisition metrics. That is why this is the perfect time to start leveraging what alternative Android stores can offer.

The key to scaling in China is alternative Android App Stores

The first country that comes to mind when we talk about alternative Android stores is of course China. Google Play has not been available in China since 2011. That resulted in the formation of a new app store ecosystem in China that consists of over 300 stores. Moreover, the share of iOS devices is only 13% (Q1 2021) – source.

It’s evident that in order to tap into the Chinese user base, publishers need to figure out how to market their apps in alternative Android stores. Just to give one example, as of February 2021, Huawei AppGallery enjoys the biggest share in Android stores in China. It has roughly 37% of the market share (source), which translates into an eye-opening number of MAU (Monthly Active Users) of 261,389,000. Finally, good news for game publishers: there is a special category for games-only app stores in China.

Of course, advertising in China is something different compared to the traditional ways of advertising on mobile. This is why we are introducing new training called ‘#311 User Acquisition in China 101’. If you are a Tenjin customer, please make sure to write to support@tenjin.com to get this training.

How to get started with alternative Android stores

When we were developing this new feature, we wanted to make sure that it’s publishers have all the flexibility they need and that the setup would be really easy. And it is. It only takes two steps to start working with alternative Android stores:

– Install the new Android or Unity SDK (v1.12.5)

– Add the store URL or the URL that hosts the apk files to the new Tenjin app

Full details are available in the dedicated documentation page.

Under the hood, we are using two types of device identifiers, namely OAID and IMEI, to do the attribution.

That’s it for today. Good luck with expanding to the new Android stores! Please email us at support@tenjin.com if you have any questions or feedback.