The Golden Collection Of Utilities Case Studies: Read and Learn

It’s been some time since we wrote about Utilities! Meanwhile, this vertical has been shining at PropellerAds, and we have gathered a nice collection of case studies. Today, we will show you the most successful ones that provided valuable insights into running offers with VPNs, cleaners, and browsers. 

So, here is a sneak peek into our exclusive data.

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Case Study #1: 1198531 Conversions For Cleaner + VPN App

This case is about a Utility App for Android that combines a cleaner and VPN. Our partner wanted to boost the app installs and launched a PropellerAds campaign. He targeted four GEOs that have already proven to be the most effective: IN, US, ZA, and BR.

The main point of his strategy was to combine two formats: Onclick and Push notifications.

The partner chose to run the campaign based on the CPA Goal bidding model and set the following rates for each GEO:

• IN: $0,01
• US: $0,04
• ZA: $0,06
• BR: $0,06

The campaign stayed active for a month. The results? With an impressive total of 1,198,531 conversions, the app saw its highest conversion rates driven by traffic from India.

Here is how it looked at the partners’ statistics:

	Onclick conversions	Push conversions
IN	643595	432807
US	10916	8866
BR	18472	32939
ZA	20480	39456

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Case Study #2: VPN App with 1 Mln Impressions 

Here, our partner promoted another VPN app for iOS users in Brazil. Again, the goal was to gain as many installs as possible – and, of course, at the lowest possible price. 

He decided to pick Onclick as his main format and distribute his budget between the two bidding models: CPA Goal and SmartCPM. In fact, there were three campaigns: two with CPA Goal and one with SmartCPM.

After a month, CPA Goal campaigns brought about 300,000 impressions each – and 1,208 and 835 conversions accordingly. The average CPA price was $0,32 and $0,33 in the result, which was expensive enough, provided the offer payout was $0,25 per install.

Meanwhile, SmartCPM – a bidding model that automatically secures your maximum bid for the best converting zones – did its job. Thanks to it, these best zones gained more traffic – and resulted in much cheaper installs: the CPA price was only $0,4.

Campaign	Impressions	Conversions
Copy of 1811 BR CPAG	330 309	1208
1811 BR CPAG	316 599	835
1807 BR sCPM	603 800	577

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Case Study #3: The Same VPN, Different GEOs 

Another partner ran a VPN app, too — this time, targeting Android. He chose Onclick as his format and CPA Goal as a bidding model, and his goal was to get conversions from the US. 

To get more relevant traffic for the US and help CPA Goal auto-optimize, he split the campaign into two: 

Campaign	Impressions	Conversions	CPA price
Popunder-Android-US	1193976	5844	0,53
Popunder-Android-WW including US	528215	1640	0,54

As you see, this strategy helped to gain almost 5 times more conversions for a precisely targeted campaign, with even a smaller CPA price.

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Case Study #4: AI VPN Browser With 26,223 Conversions

This one is to remind you how important pre-landers can be for running Utility offers! Our partner ran a campaign for Opera Browser with an embedded VPN. The chosen target was pretty tough: US campaigns for iOS users require skills and budget. This said, the payout was generous enough, with every installation costing $3.

The partner created four Onclick-based campaigns :

• An Onclick campaign with high user activity targeting – to target fresh users who rarely see ads and are thus more engaged and willing to convert. 
• Direct Click campaign – to target the top Onclick zones with premium traffic
• Run of Network campaign – to target all the Onclick placements across PropellerAds
• Run of Network campaign with a prelander – to test if this prelander can boost the conversion volume.

This is what the pre-lander looked like:

Long story short, the pre-lander turned out to be really effective. It brought in almost twice as many conversions as each of the other campaigns. Look:

Campaign	Impressions	Conversions
RON – pre-lander	4 243 878	10 120
High User Activity – no pre-lander	6 577 539	6 726
Direct Click – no pre-lander	4 729 230	5 367
RON – no pre-lander	6 900 320	4 010

With the lowest volume of impressions, the pre-lander campaign gained a 2 – 4 times higher CR than the rest.

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Case Study #5: Security App for iPhone: CPI vs. Trial

This partner ran an iOS campaign for a defender app. The offer suggested two conversion types: CPI – cost per install, and CPT – cost per trial, where conversion was hit after a user both installed an app and signed up for a free trial.

After less than a month, it turned out that although CPT flow is more complicated, it performed better than some of the CPI campaigns.

Campaign	Impressions	Conversions
iOS US_CPT	2 010 511	904
iOS_US_safari_CPT	1 652 350	712
iOS US_CPT	1 707 401	390
iOS US_CPI	1 347 810	428
iOS_wifi_US	903 560	379
iOS_3G_US	803 183	231

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Case Study #6: Playing Around VPN App Settings

This case study is a great example of how splitting your campaigns can change your CPA rates. Here is a brief offer information:

Instead of running a single campaign targeting iOS users in the USA, our partner decided to create separate ones for different languages, connection types, and browsers.

Campaign	Impressions	CPA price
iOS-US (EN) – WiFi	502401	$40,68
iOS-US (EN) – 3G	385438	$33,16
US (ES) – Safari – WiFi	238581	$34,93
US (ES) – Safari – 3G	246274	$28,97
US (ES) – WiFi	179704	$53,75
US (ES) – 3G	126484	$47,44

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Case Study #7: Multitool app with 710 conversions

In this case, our partner created two campaigns to promote an app for a phone’s security and file management. Here is an overview:

The strategy behind this campaign was to begin with the highest possible bid. Here is how the partner did it: He launched one campaign with a $0,42 СPA Goal bid and another one with a $0,52. After a test period, it turned out that a campaign with a higher bid got an almost x2 CPM evaluation – and thus received more impressions and conversions. 

Here is how it looked in the statistics:

Campaign	Impressions	Conversions
CPA Goal $0,42	341 948	352
CPA Goal $0,52	236 380	358

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Bonus part: Top Common Mistakes for Utilities Campaigns

We have also researched a range of unsuccessful case studies, too – and this allowed us to find out the main reasons why a Utility campaign might fail.

• You set too low bid
• You picked too narrow a traffic slice, so you don’t receive enough traffic
• You test on poorly performing zones for a particular vertical
• Your pre-lander or Push creative is too aggressive, so it leads to traffic limitation
• Your landing page is too slow, so the link takes too much time to load
• Your link has too many redirects
• The margin of the offer is too high

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The Summary?

This case study collection shows various unexpected approaches to Utility offers – even the same targeting, bidding model, and format can work out differently depending on a strategy. 

Is this something you can just copy and paste? Probably so! Alternatively, you can borrow some tricks from what you’ve just seen and run your Utility campaign with some fresh ideas.