Marketing Tips: Social Media Advertising and AdMob

In this installment of Marketing Tips, the Thunkable Team shares how to advertise with social media and utilizing Google AdMob. We’re sharing tips and tricks, plus how to monetize your app to offset the cost of advertising (or earn some extra money).

Let’s dive in! 

Know Your Customer 

Before we jump into setting up social media advertisements, we need to nail down the customer or target audience. What social media channels are they most likely to use? Where do they spend most of their time online? This will help us narrow down what platform is best to use when running social ads. From the outset of your mobile app development process, you had a clear vision of who you were building this app for.  Now that you’ve published your app, think about what social content might resonate with your potential customer. Would they respond to any of the following? 

• App demonstrations 
• App features
• User-generated Content
• App testimonials 
• Behind the scenes content

Select two or three content ideas (or add some of your own!) and get ready to spend a little money. 

Know Your Platform 

Social media advertising is second (behind search advertising) in digital ads, with over $153 billion spent in 2021; but, you don’t need billions to advertise your app. Let’s breakdown the biggest social media advertising platforms: 

Facebook

Facebook is a great place to start social media advertising. Its advertising audience size is 2.11 billion and it’s home to a large demographic of 25-34-year-olds and the largest demographic of folks over the age of 65. The average cost per click (CPC, or how much you pay for someone to click on an ad) is under a dollar, and there are quite a few Facebook ad types to choose from:

• Photo
• Video
• Stories
• Messenger
• Carousel
• Slideshow
• Collection
• Playables

Facebook is a great choice for social media advertising. It’s the most popular social media platform globally, and it provides in-depth metrics so you can see how well your ads are performing, regardless of which ad type you choose. 

Instagram

Instagram is home to the largest demographic of 18-34-year-olds, with an average CPC of less than four dollars. Similar to Facebook there are multiple ad types to choose from: 

• Images
• Carousel
• Stories
• Reels
• Stories
• Shops

Instagram ads tend to be more expensive than Facebook, but engagement is usually higher. Since Instagram is owned by Meta (aka Facebook) you can count on the same in-depth ad metrics. (You can also build these ads in the same place for both Facebook and Instagram, as an added bonus!)

YouTube

YouTube is a great place to buy ads because it’s the #1 social media platform, with an average CPC of less than four dollars. If you plan to advertise your app with videos, YouTube is a great place to invest your ad dollars. Here are the main YouTube ad types: 

• Skippable in-stream ads
• Non-skippable in-stream ads
• Bumper ads
• Outstream ads
• Overlay ads

It’s no surprise that video ads are the most engaging and effective with audiences. With YouTube ads, you can be sure that users are actually watching and hearing your ad (unlike Facebook or Instagram where people usually scroll and have everything on mute). 

Twitter

Twitter offers the cheapest CPC of all social platforms at less than 50 cents per click! Twitter has the following five main advertising categories:

• Promoted Ads
• Follower Ads
• Twitter Amplify 
• Twitter Takeover
• Twitter Live

There is less overall advertising competition on Twitter, but the metrics provided leave some users frustrated as their analytic tool only allows you to see data for the previous 91 days. 

TikTok

TikTok provides access to the largest group of 18-24-year-olds on social media. With an average CPC of just a dollar, TikTok might be the place for you. TikTok offers the following ad types: 

• Topview
• In-Feed Ads
• Branded Hashtag Challenge
• Branded Effects 

If you’re planning a video-heavy ad campaign, TikTok might be the right fit for you. TikTok does require a minimum ad spend, but, with the average user spending 45+ minutes a day on the platform, it might be the right investment for you. 

Linkedin

Linkedin’s main demographic is 25-34 years old and has an average CPC of six dollars. Linkedin offers the following ad types: 

• Sponsored Content
• Sponsored Messaging
• Lead Gen Forms
• Text and Dynamic Ads

While LinkedIn advertising is known for being more expensive, if your app is focused on business or employment, it might be a good place to start.

If you’re having a hard time choosing which platform to start with, we can help you decide.

Know How to Monetize 

When it comes to monetizing your app (and potentially rolling that revenue into ads), you can also utilize Google AdMob! Thunkable’s out-of-the-box AdMob integration provides three options:

• Banner Ad: No blocks required! A banner ad is a rectangular image or text ad that occupies an area within your app’s layout. 
• Interstitial Ad: These full-screen ads cover the entire interface of your host app. We recommend displaying these during natural transitions within your app, and allow the user to click on or close the ad. There is a limit of one interstitial ad component per app, but you can show the same ad multiple times. 
• Rewarded Video Ad: These full-screen ads provide users the option of watching a full video in exchange for in-app rewards. There is a limit of one rewarded video component per app but the ad can be shown multiple times. 

If you’d like to include any of the three integrations visit the AdMob page in our resource center for a step-by-step guide for Android and iOS devices. 

Final Thoughts

Whether you have a large or small budget, social media advertising or utilizing AdMob can be cost effective ways to promote your newly published app. We hope you found this informative and stay tuned for more Marketing Tips! 

Need Help?

If you need additional support on your no code journey we can help! Check out our Docs or leverage our community. These resources are always available as you keep on building in Thunkable, the best no code app builder.