Key Mobile App Monetization Strategies to Perform for Your Product Marketing
- What is mobile app monetization?
- Most popular mobile app monetization strategies for 2024
- Mobile app monetization strategies: A snapshot
- Which mobile app monetization strategy should you choose?
- Top mobile app monetization platforms
- FAQ on mobile monetization strategies
- Wrapping up
After entrepreneurs have invested time and resources into creating a new mobile app, they might expect it to bring revenues. Merely developing a mobile app is not enough. To make it profitable, owners should promote or monetize it.
The overall number of apps available for download on the Apple App Store is 1.96 million, and 2.87 million on the Google Play Store. At the same time, the global mobile app market promises to surpass $670 billion in 2027, which makes it a lucrative segment for entrepreneurs to jump in.
How to enter the market with the maximum effect?
Diverse mobile app monetization strategies will help you keep your product free to download while still having the opportunity to earn. Leveraging these methods, entrepreneurs can manage their products wisely, encouraging customers and combating competition. This article delves into the most successful mobile app monetization approaches.
What is mobile app monetization?
Monetization entails generating revenue from a mobile app without taking a download fee. Simply put, it includes special activities, offers, or opportunities within an app that come with a price.
While crafting a paid app may seem a simple and effective way to make profits, such an approach is rather controversial in the modern realm. Owners will significantly narrow down their target audience by setting the price for downloading their product. Thus, the paid app segment in the Apple App Store and Google Play makes less than 10%.
Therefore, marketers seek to utilize app monetization strategies, allowing them to gain income by turning certain user activities into financial returns.
What are mobile app monetization models and how to choose the most profitable ones?
The methods vary significantly and include offering users certain paid services, additional functionality, premium content, or asking them to do something for a reward. Deciding which mobile app monetization models will be most effective for your specific app requires careful analysis.
Most popular mobile app monetization strategies for 2024
Your application can generate income in dozens of ways. The trick is discovering the optimal combination that will suit your niche, audience, and needs. Different apps require multiple monetization paths. Thus, the development and monetization strategy for shopping and financial solutions will substantially vary since they belong to completely different business niches.
Explore how eCommerce mobile applications work in the USA.
You’ll have to conduct research and be ready to test hypotheses to identify your monetization options. Noteworthy, you should start building your app already with your mobile app monetization strategy in mind. Otherwise, your product launch plan would be incomplete.
Let’s discover the mobile app monetization trends in 2024.
In-app advertising
One of the commonplace revenue models is in-app ads, which have proven their efficiency. Some marketers even claim that mobile app advertising performs better than general mobile ads.
What does in-app advertising imply?
With this technique, publishers sell the space and time in their applications to ad buyers and demonstrate the respective advertisements to viewers using the app.
Interstitial ads, video, native, and text ads are the varieties of in-app promo content. They are worth considering since mobile advertising is projected to surpass $399 billion in 2024. Therefore, this monetization method is one of the most effective and profitable models.
Although in-app ads can raise user engagement, developers and publishers must ensure their relevance and smooth integration into the overall user journey.
Freemium subscriptions
A freemium monetization model lies in the middle between a free app and a subscription app. Under this strategy, an owner provides a free app with exclusive paid content or additional features. Thus, users can enjoy the product without paying money, but if they want to unlock premium functions, content, or other benefits, these will be available for a subscription fee.
The model works for B2C and B2B segments alike and delivers average conversion rates of 2%-5%. However, giants like Spotify manage to attain 24% conversions by effectively turning free users into premium subscribers.
This successful example confirms that the model has high potential and can bring significant rewards. Through a customer-focused approach, owners can keep experimenting and conduct A/B testing to find improved ways to serve their consumer needs.
In-app purchases
You can enrich your application with paid extras inside to generate income. In-app purchases refer to sales offers within an app, allowing users to get optional perks or opportunities. This monetization strategy brings about 48.2% of mobile app earnings, hence its significant popularity.
What can you offer for sale in your app?
This could be a valuable commodity associated with your app, like additional analytics tools for a finance app, extended communication options for a marketing app, or specific game assets for gaming ones.
You can offer exclusive content or additional features to your app functionality. For example, MyFitnessPal provides personalized fitness and nutrition plans for an additional fee.
Affiliate marketing
One of the latest mobile app monetization strategies, affiliate marketing empowers you to make revenue by providing product recommendations within your app and getting commissions on sales.
To enable such earnings, you should take part in affiliate marketing programs available in your niche. You can also participate in generic affiliate programs, like Amazon Associates. It’s a large network that offers members convenient link-building tools to direct their audience to specific Amazon products and earn from qualifying sales.
Transaction fees
If you have a shopping application or other type that deals with buying or selling something, you can get your income through transaction fees.
Such mobile app monetization principles are easy to observe in the financial and eСommerce spaces. For instance, marketplaces, investment, and cryptocurrency apps usually take a percentage from each purchase or sale.
Interested in mobile app design? Learn more about the actual mobile app design trends.
Mobile app monetization strategies: A snapshot
To summarize the outlined approaches to mobile app monetization, we’ve compiled a comparative table of their advantages and drawbacks.
| Strategy | Pros | Cons |
| In-app advertising | High efficiency. In-app advertising leverages more sophisticated tools and strategies that make it more efficient than banner ads. | Low engagement. With the average in-app ads CTR making only 0.56%, actual user engagement is not that big. |
| More precise targeting. Knowing the audience of the app users, app owners can place the most relevant ads to that audience. | Competitor’s promotions. Your competitors’ ads may appear within your app, making the users switch to your rivals. | |
| Freemium subscriptions | Scalability. The strategy allows for attracting new users without big overheads. | No interest in premium options. The users may feel no need/desire to upgrade to paid subscriptions. |
| Try for free. Users can experience your app for free before they opt for paid features. | Frustrated users. Continual upsell offers may impede the user experience. | |
| Greater user community. Even consumers unwilling to pay for an app at the start may ultimately purchase the paid features. | Requires wise implementation. Paid subscriptions should be clear, transparent, and beneficial to users. Otherwise, they may divert your audience. | |
| In-App Purchases | Convenience. A straightforward way to buy the offered product. | May discourage users. The strategy requires a careful approach not to overwhelm a user with offers. |
| Flexibility. Owners can provide a vast range of extras for sale. | May harm the brand’s reputation. If the purchased product disappoints a user, the negative reviews may affect your brand. | |
| Effectiveness. The strategy brings 48,2% of mobile app earnings. | ||
| Affiliate Marketing | No payments from the user. An owner earns without charging a user anything. | High competition. Owners may have to struggle for affiliates who can promote their app. |
| Extend brand communication and relationships. Affiliate promos can help reinforce your own brand. | Brand reputation risks. You should ensure affiliates promote your app appropriately. | |
| Time consuming. Finding and controlling affiliates takes time. | ||
| Transaction fees | Simplicity. The strategy’s implementation and conditions are straightforward. | Security has to be guaranteed. You should invest in robust security measures. |
| Direct and steady income. You get fees each time a consumer uses your app, which enables you to forecast earnings easily. | Limited niche. Not all app types qualify for this monetization strategy. |
Which mobile app monetization strategy should you choose?
The most essential thing for any app is that monetization approaches do not override the role of user experience. To consider all crucial factors and retain the focus on a smooth consumer journey, stakeholders should answer several primary questions.
- What is the purpose of the app? Think of your monetization model through the prism of your apps’ function. What need does it address, and how does it attain its purpose? Some revenue-generation methods may not suit your application. Thus, subscription models are effective for news and entertainment apps; in-app advertising works well with gaming and eCommerce apps, and transaction fees – with financial apps.
- Who are your competitors? Similar to any product development, competitor analysis is vital to understand your app’s position in the market. Explore the apps in your business niche and see what monetization strategies work best with your competitors.
- Who are your users? Understanding your target audience is crucial for addressing their needs and crafting the offers they’ll be willing to pay for. Who is your typical consumer? What are their goals? What needs do they have? By addressing these questions, you can work out relevant mobile app monetization strategies to guarantee ongoing success.
If you plan to launch a retail application, discover the latest retail app trends.
Top mobile app monetization platforms
You can implement your revenue-generating methods through special mobile app monetization platforms. We have compared some of the highly rated ones and their essential features to give you a picture of the available services.
Google AdMob
Google AdMob is a renowned framework utilized by millions of app publishers. With this platform, you can arrange various kinds of in-app advertising.
You must provide advertising space, while AdMob will pick the most appropriate ad according to users’ interests.
Core features:
- Precious and relevant ad content to your consumers.
- Multiple ad networks.
- Advanced ad formats, including native, banner, rewarded, and interstitial.
- Selection of the desired ad duration and the number of impressions.
Meta Audience Network
Apart from the application itself, all you need to make money from this platform is a Facebook account.
Meta Audience Network helps entrepreneurs grow their businesses and provides a superior user experience. Setting up your advertising is quick and straightforward with this platform since it supports the do-it-yourself monetization strategy and works globally.
Core features:
- Monetization Manager helps control your properties, assess performance, and increase revenue.
- Convenient tools gauge the effectiveness of ad investment.
- App bidding for efficient monetization.
- Quality ads that do not impede user experience.
- A wealth of ad formats.
InMobi
InMobi provides an extensive range of mobile ad types, including native, rich media, carousel ads, and more.
The service delivers real-time ad statistics and advanced audience segmentation opportunities. The platform grants you access to a continually updated SDK and is easy to integrate into your program.
Core features:
- User segmentation by OS, device, GEO, and channel.
- Assistance for preloading ads.
- Multiple formats, like banner, interstitial, rewarded video, playable, and native.
FAQ on mobile monetization strategies
Yes, free apps can bring money through various monetization strategies, which include in-app advertising, freemium models, in-app purchases, affiliate marketing, transaction fees, and more. While the initial app download is free, these monetization strategies allow stakeholders to generate income and sustain the ongoing development and maintenance of the app.
In-app advertising is one of the most efficient monetization methods. From the publisher’s side, it requires only the advertising space and the analysis of which offers to present. The rapidly growing investments in this monetization type witness significant fruit it can bring for all stakeholders.
In-app monetization refers to the various strategies employed by app publishers to earn revenue within a mobile application. These methods include in-app advertising, in-app purchases, subscriptions, freemium models, and other tactics to turn user engagement into financial returns.
App monetization earnings entail the income generated by a mobile application through various monetization strategies. Marketers can apply tactics within an app to encourage users to pay for additional services or opportunities, such as premium content, extra functionality, virtual assets, and more. The app itself can be free to download, while monetization methods enable financial returns.
Wrapping up
Developing a mobile app is only part of the way. To make it bring income, the owners should either sell an app or make it free to download but craft appropriate monetization strategies ensuring long-term income. The latter path brings significant advantages since the abundance of available free solutions on the market makes users unwilling to pay.
Mobile app monetization strategies vary, and each app requires an individual approach to determine a winning combination. Analyze each method’s pros and cons and follow the suggested selection guidelines to enhance your monetization efforts and make your application profitable Additionally, you can leverage monetization platforms to streamline the process.
If you are ready to come up with your own app idea, let a professional developer give you a hand. With a proven track record of mobile app development, Coreteka can expedite the creation process and time-to-market. We’ll help you identify the core features of your product and seamlessly conduct development and launch.
Contact us to discuss your concept and build a mobile app that aligns with your business goals.
