We Tested AppLovin Discovery for 4 Months. Here's What Happened.

**Conor McLaughlin** (0:00)
When we talked last, our average incrementality test score for AppLovin was around like 140, 150%, right? Which is super strong.
And those tests were actually, you know, partially on universal and partially on prospecting. So super strong results, even though, you know, even though it's still going after those retention and retargeting audiences. So it was my hypothesis before we ran any incrementality or discovery that we would see, you know, higher results from that because we're purely prospecting.

**Richard Gaffin** (0:34)
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Hey folks, welcome to the Ecommerce Playbook Podcast. I'm your host, Richard Gaffin, Director of Digital Product Strategy here at Common Thread Collective and I'm joined today by our, let's say our resident AppLovin guru, Mr. Conor McLaughlin, who joined us back in January when I was on with Tony to talk a little bit about some tests on AppLovin. We were beginning to run, I mean, incrementality tests specifically. And he's back today to talk about, we're here in May, it's been about four months to talk about kind of how that's gone and what we're seeing work on AppLovin. Overall, it's an exciting channel, but I think what we want to dig into is the specifics of what you can do with this channel to make it work. So, Conor, first off, how are you doing, man?

**Conor McLaughlin** (2:04)
I'm doing pretty good. I've been deep in the AppLovin trenches, so excited to share some updates today.

**Richard Gaffin** (2:11)
Awesome, man. All right. Well, let's dive right into it. So you put together kind of before we jumped on like a pretty good agenda here. So let's just kind of roll through it. So first off, I think the thing you wanted to talk about was some new campaign types that they've just rolled out.
I think last time you spoke, maybe they were beginning to. So now, or roll this specific campaign type out. So we want to talk a little bit about how that actually works in the real world. So let's say, yeah, speak to that a little bit.

**Conor McLaughlin** (2:35)
Yeah, let's do it. So previously when we talked, there were two campaign types out, universal and then prospecting as well. Back when AppLovin first came out, there was only universal campaigns, which essentially included prospecting, retargeting, and retention. So, you know, full funnel there. And then, you know, they came out with prospecting, which goes after new users as well as retargeting people that have been to the site. Now, this new campaign type that came out a couple months ago is called Discovery. And Discovery is in an effort from AppLovin to go after, like, 100% new users. It's not perfect, obviously, because of tracking cookies, things like that. But I would say most campaigns that we're running on Discovery we're seeing, like, between 85% and 90% complete new visitor traffic, users never interacted with the brand before. So that's really cool.

**Richard Gaffin** (3:32)
So what's the difference, maybe, to find, like, Prospecting versus Discovery on AppLovin? What's, how do they differ from each other?

**Conor McLaughlin** (3:38)
I gotcha. So, Prospecting includes, you know, can range between, like, 60% and 75% of that new visitor traffic. Then the other percentages made up from users that have been to the website, but haven't converted, so retargeting.

**Richard Gaffin** (3:54)
Gotcha. So, and you've written down here in your notes, too, like, layering spend, 10% Prospecting on top of Discovery. So I guess what that points to is, like, so how are you, how are you been using this with clients?

**Conor McLaughlin** (4:06)
Yeah, so most of the time, we've been really focusing on, like, just Discovery. Like, we want to use this as a channel to, you know, purely prospect to an audience that we haven't been able to get to on other channels, right? But now, like, we're reaching to a stage out with a few brands where, you know, we're capturing that traffic. We want to use Apple Oven as, like, you know, a full funnel platform as well, like we do the other ones. Like, on Google, we have brand and non-brand. Meta, we have prospecting, retention, remarketing. So essentially, I'm starting to layer in, like, a 10% either prospecting or universal campaign on top of the Discovery so that we can still focus on most of the spend on going after new customers. But then you also have a little bit of budget recapturing those users too.