NewsBreak provides a powerful ecosystem designed to help mobile apps and gaming companies acquire high-value users efficiently in competitive markets. This guide covers the essential technical setup, bidding strategies, and campaign configurations required to successfully scale your mobile app performance.
1. Campaign Setup Checklist: MMP Integration
Properly integrating your Mobile Measurement Partner (MMP) is critical to campaign success, as our smart bidding algorithms rely heavily on full-funnel postbacks to find high-performing user segments.
MMP Integration Guides
- Adjust: How to integrate with Adjust
- AppsFlyer: How to integrate with AppsFlyer
- Kochava: How to integrate with Kochava
- Tenjin: How to integrate with Tenjin
- Singular: How to integrate with Singular
- Branch: How to integrate with Branch
💡 Important Note on Postbacks: Activate the Full Sources Data Postback (all media sources data). The optimization algorithm relies heavily on this comprehensive historical data to identify the highest matching users when utilizing smart bidding strategies. It is also highly important to pass back event values and revenues to optimize your Target ROAS campaigns effectively.
Standard Event Mapping
Install events are automatically mapped and activated at the MMP level, meaning there is no need to manually set up installs. For deeper conversion objectives, use the following event maps:
| NewsBreak Event | MMP Event Equivalent | Optimization Functionality |
|---|---|---|
| Ad Revenue | app_ad_imp |
IAA (In-App Advertising) ROAS Optimization |
| Purchase | app_purchase |
IAP (In-App Purchase) ROAS Optimization |
| app_launch | app_launch |
Retention Optimization |
Note: Click-Through Attribution (CTA) and View-Through Attribution (VTA) URLs are both strictly required. If you are not using VTA URLs, please notify your Account Manager before proceeding. Always run a tracking test if you are utilizing Web-to-App tracking links.
2. Overview of Bidding Strategies
NewsBreak supports several bidding strategies tailored to your target event depths and campaign maturity:
- Maximize Conversions (Max CV): Optimizes settings to completely fill your daily budget while winning as many conversion actions as possible.
- Target CPA (tCPA): Optimizes ad distribution to acquire specific in-app events closely aligned with your designated target CPA goal.
-
Day 1 / Day 7 Target ROAS: Maximizes performance based on predictive Day 1 (24-hour cohort) or Day 7 return goals. Ad Revenue (IAA) tracking is highly recommended for this strategy.
- Requirement: To unlock smart ROAS bidding, your account must collect at least 20 conversions from the target event with value tracking enabled within the last 14 days.
- Day 1 & Day 7 Max Conversion Value: Follows the same tracking configurations as Target ROAS. If your ROAS campaigns are experiencing delivery constraints, switch to Max Conversion Value to help scale up your delivery.
💡 Bidding Versatility Tips:
• Max Conversion and Target CPA can be dynamically switched within the same Ad Set.
• Day 1/7 Target ROAS and Day 1/7 Max Conversion Value configurations can also be interchanged inside the same Ad Set.
3. Campaign & Ad Set Best Practices
Account and Campaign Structure
- Isolation Strategy: Always isolate different apps into completely separate ad accounts. Additionally, separate iOS and Android platforms into individual, dedicated accounts.
- Industry Classification: Select an Industry Tag for your ad account that is as accurate as possible to aid initial delivery algorithms.
- Optimization Goals: Set up completely unique campaigns for different conversion deep-links or goals (e.g., one campaign for CPI targets, another campaign dedicated to D1 ROAS optimization). Always verify that "App Install" is designated as the core objective.
- New App Launches: When launching a completely new app, always start with an install campaign running Max Conversion or Target CPA. Since installs are shallow events, this structure allows the algorithm to gather data rapidly and pass the initial cold-start learning phase. Deeper app event campaigns can be added progressively over time.
Ad Set & Budget Optimization
- The Learning Phase (Cold Start): An ad set finishes its learning phase and status changes to "Learning Phase - Complete" after collecting at least 50 conversion actions within a 7-day period. Avoid making any structural edits or budget changes while an ad set is actively learning.
- Minimum Budgets: To allow the system to function correctly, set a daily budget designed to cover at least 50 daily installs, ensuring it is never set lower than $150.
- Creative Dimension Separation: Separate different dimensions into separate ad sets (e.g., one ad set exclusively for 16:9 horizontal content and another for 9:16 vertical files). If budget scales permit, split image formats and video assets into individual ad sets entirely.
- Creative Rotation: When testing fresh visual assets, upload them directly into high-performing, active ad sets that have already graduated from the learning phase. The system will automatically run an internal A/B test to see if the new variation can scale. Avoid adding new assets to ad sets performing significantly off-target.
Targeting Strategies
- Initial Approach: Keep audience targeting as broad as possible at launch to help the algorithm explore and acquire data quickly.
- Precision A/B Testing: After logging historical delivery statistics, review demographic data. If certain audience profiles demonstrate significantly higher efficiency, break them out into precision ad sets for a standalone test.
- Audience Inclusion & Suppression: Leverage first-party lists by uploading high-value seed audiences to target or adding direct exclusion/suppression lists to refine target efficiency.
4. Creative Best Practices
The first 3 seconds are critical to conversion success. Optimize your content around these high-performing creative principles:
- Format Choice: Utilize native User-Generated Content (UGC) styles with direct, high-impact messaging.
- Gameplay Showcases: Highlight highly interactive gameplay loops or real playable experiences to capture active intent.
- Auditory Accompaniments: Use calming, non-intrusive background music to sustain view times and retention metrics.
- Call to Action: Conclude all creatives with an unmistakable, high-intent call to action encouraging direct downloads.
5. Case Study: Oakever Games Performance Uplift
Oakever Games, a premier mobile publisher known for titles like Vita Mahjong and Zen Word, aimed to acquire high-value users in the highly competitive US market while improving overall ROAS metrics.
The Strategy
- Creative: Deployed highly engaging, full-screen vertical UGC video creatives showcasing core features.
- Text: Crafted clear, intent-driven ad copy highlighting unique selling propositions (e.g., "play Vita Mahjong for 15 minutes every day").
- Bidding: Integrated parallel Target ROAS and Target CPA bidding rules to systematically balance acquisition scale with overall margin health.
The Results
By shifting to these optimization practices, Oakever Games experienced massive account scalability:
- D7 ROAS Uplift: Increased by 2X
- CPI Reduction: Decreased by -46% across target campaigns
- Ad Spend Scale: Generated a massive 10X uplift in overall profitable scale.