#MARKiesAwards MY 2021 highlight: Social TV app KumuMedia yields success with revamped ad structure

KumuMedia Technologies is a Filipino social TV app that has three million registered users and about 25,000 live streams broadcast each day. Despite the growing number of active users, its investment in paid advertising was not generating a consistent and significant profit. Kumu worked with Elixus to build out a new four-level ad funnel structure that would help to dynamically nurture customers through the full customer journey from acquisition, to activation to retention. Kumu’s ability to take a step back and assess the situation, coupled with its grit to rework its marketing model from the ground up impressed the judges and secured it a finalist spot for Most Effective Use - Mobile at A+M's MARKies Awards Malaysia 2021.

Challenge 

Kumu had been successfully growing its monthly active users regularly during the first half of 2020, with thousands of new users per month. Despite the growing number of active users, Kumu’s investment in paid advertising was not generating a consistent and significant profit for the efforts they were putting in. New users were installing and using the app, but many individuals were not topping up and purchasing coins – even those who did never did so on a regular or ongoing basis. 

Elixus, a digital marketing agency, identified three key challenges for the brand. There was too much focus on acquiring new users for the sake of generating growth that the brand failed to focus on the poor spending quality of the acquired users. In addition, there was little or no in-app retargeting or remarketing to remind or encourage users to purchase coins or top up their accounts. Lastly, the content used on the app was mostly static images, which was a poor representation of a social app that showcases singers, performers, and live performances.

To that end, Kumu wanted to acquire high-value monthly active app users, drive in-app purchases, and increase its return on ad spend. With a budget of US$20,000, Kumu worked with Elixus to target Filipinos who were living and working outside of the Philippines. 

Strategy 

Kumu's previous approach to paid advertising had not been yielding the results it needed as it was in the advanced stages of securing its Series B round of funding. In order for Elixus to achieve Kumu's aggressive targets, it had to completely overhaul the platform's entire execution strategy, ad structure, and creative approach.

Upon further review of Kumu's ad structure, Elixus noticed that there were some fundamental holes within its ad structure. The platform had been almost entirely focusing on acquisition at the top of the funnel by running ad hoc campaigns to encourage users to buy coins or reactivate inactive accounts. While the pieces of the puzzle were there with the correct intentions, it was not a viable approach to paid advertising. To rectify the issue, Elixus implemented a full funnel, always-on paid ads structure across key paid channels; including Facebook, and Google Universal App Campaigns. Elixus worked with Kumu to build out a new four-level ad funnel structure that would help to dynamically nurture customers through the full customer journey from acquisition, to activation to retention.

In parallel to the ad structure, Elixus reviewed Kumu's data architecture, to ensure all key data sources from the platform’s Facebook Pixel, Adwords Pixel, UTM Tags for Google Analytics, SDK Connections for AppsFlyer and Clevertap were in place, and pushing the necessary data to optimise top-funnel targeting, and mid and bottom-funnel retargeting and retention. This action would allow Kumu to utlise in-app data through its data platforms to improve targeting for acquisition and in-app remarketing and retargeting respectively.

With the revamped ad structure and data architecture in place, Elixus and Kumu worked on applying an extensive A/B testing framework to test the best combination of visual banner, ad copy, and targeting for each respective ad channel. They tested five to 10 different variations of visuals against the same number of angles on the copy, and audiences on the targeting, and were able to put together a complete decision-making tree that would allow them to hedge Kumu's ad spend risk, find out what truly resonated with its audiences to meet the various ad objectives, create a wide number of opportunities for identifying high performing pockets of users; all the while optimising for the best cost per action.

The final step was to strategically replace static banners with motion videos, which has proven to outperform static visuals from between 10% to 45% across all key ad metrics, based on existing clients that Elixus work with. Taking square images and adding some simple GIF style upgrades with flashing ad copy or blinking lights; then converting five to eight banner carousel ad visuals into 15-second video ads; would drive better ad recall, hold the customer's attention span for a longer period, and create a more dynamic and engaging experience for the end user.

Execution

Taking a global approach, Elixus and Kumu ran app acquisition and retention campaigns across 26 countries in regions such as Asia, North America, Middle East, Europe, and Oceania. Kumu created a full-funnel to retarget people at the different stages of their journey with the platform: downloading the app, creating an account, watching content, making their first purchase, and being retained to make more purchases.

After testing the structure with the Filipino market, Kumu replicated it worldwide, particularly in North America and the Middle East; as they were the top revenue generator regions apart from the Philippines.

For the ad, Kumu used presentation videos from its Youtube channel and uploaded its own motion videos to highlight the platform’s main USPs: Being able to join a Filipino community, meeting and interacting with celebrities, and supporting the community using Gifts. In terms of targeting, Kumu used custom audiences such as people following the YouTube channels of their influencers, to draw a bridge between the YouTube content consumption and the app. 

One of Kumu’s top-performing ads angle had been to play on the potential homesickness of Filipinos living abroad. Due to the COVID-19 crisis, most Filipinos living abroad were not able to return for a while, so it nudged them to join the platform as a remedy for their homesickness and to feel at home through the app. From October to December 2020, that Facebook ad angle achieved 38,517 purchases with an average return on ad spend of 18.7.

Additionally, Elixus and Kumu used the platform’s first-party data from the in-app analytic tool Clevertap to segment various buckets of users - users who uninstalled the app, users who had downloaded but yet to launch the app, and users who had or had not made purchases. CleverTap also enabled the platform to bypass certain limitations of Facebook Audiences such as creating an audience pool with a lookback window of more than 180 days. Kumu also used these segmented audiences for future user acquisition by creating lookalike audiences on Facebook – it identified the existing high-profile spenders and used Lookalike Audience targeting on Facebook to reach out to potential users with the same likeliness of spending money on the app

To optimize installs, Kumu utilised a mobile measurement provider, Appsflyer, to get a holistic view on the quality of all of its marketing channels; in terms of D-1 retention, conversion rate percentage of in-app actions, and more. The data was then used for marketing decisions such as budget weightage of channels and campaigns.

Kumu and Elixus also ran A/B tests for formats, languages, and angles. Kumu found out that Taglish language performed better in targetting Filipinos abroad, in terms of return on ad spend. It has since used more Taglish in its content. The A/B testing also revealed that motion videos performed better than carousel for format.

Results

Kumu’s and Elixus efforts were met with resounding success, as it saw 17.5 times increase in-app installation, 33.6 times growth in purchases, 55 times growth in purchase value, and five times growth in return on ad spend – while reducing its cost per purchase by 85%.