Are you looking to invest in an app but you just don’t know where to start? It seems like every other week a new rising star skyrockets to the top of the charts with seemingly no rhyme or reason. Investors and venture capitalists gather round. MobileAction’s app intelligence, market intel, ad intel and many of our other products can certainly help you in making this decision. Read on to find out just how.
Now that we know what the rise of a game to popularity will look like, let’s see if we can spot a game that is a good contender for such a success in the app store. There are a few steps to follow that can give you a good idea of whether or not an app is heading for success.
By the end of this post you will be equipped with the knowledge of how you can use MobileAction to find the apps with the highest potential to invest or evaluate an app.
Start looking for an app to invest in with the biggest mover list
This list shows you which apps have increased the most in category ranking and is updated daily. Pick any app to start. There are three columns on this page, and you can pick any. The app you choose should have a presence organically and/or on the paid side.
Let’s take a look at the game Clawee. It has risen by around 300 places in ranking and has just updated. Would Clawee make a good investment?
Check the general app profile
At this point, you can assess the ratings and reviews of an application. You can also see its visibility score to decide if it’s worth further evaluation. You don’t need to invest your time into an app with a very low visibility score for example.
From the general app profile we can see that the application has recently updated, has a visibility score of 75 and has been receiving better reviews over the past week or so. This is not the highest visibility score nor the highest review, but let’s look a little further.
ASO Intelligence
This step can also be referred to as visibility analysis. Here we can go under the ASO tab and to the visibility report. Now we can compare it to a competitor. See in how many countries, it has an organic presence and think about whether it has potential or not. Even if an app has not yet reached the level of a competitor if it is following a similar pattern it may be worth investing in.
Clawee has the upper hand over this competitor, but it is not played all over the world as of yet.
The visibility report tells us that the application is ranking first for 44 keywords today, it has many more that are ranking between 31 and 100. We can also see that the visibility of the app has increased over the past few days.
Check Market Intelligence
This is when you can see download & revenue estimates of the selected application. Here we want to check for an upward trend in the downloads, revenue, daily active users, and monthly active users. Finally, we can check the audience geography to see where it gets its users from.
The download estimation on the daily setting indicates that Clawee has been increasing in downloads steadily from January 1st until January 9th. There has been a slight dip in the past couple days which might be something to look out for. However, there are rises and falls in the beginning or an app’s incline so it may be something to keep an eye on but not necessarily an indication that the app has had and passed its peak.
When the time frame is changed to show the entire year we can see that the application had a lot of success earlier on in the year (lining up with quarantine and dropping off at the beginning of school). The application peaks in downloads on Sundays especially. Though it has had recently very low downloads, this peak is reaching higher than its past two peaks. Weather or not this will signify the return of the app’s popularity or not is something to keep an eye on.
The revenue estimation for the app looks good with an upward trend. There is again a dip just in the last day. Looking over the past month there have been some dips before. However, this is something else to keep an eye on.
The daily active user count is quite impressively climbing, this bodes well for the app. Since January 3rd more and more people are playing the game each day.
As of right now, the majority of users are coming from the US, followed by the UK and Canada. This game has a lot of room to expand in other countries.
Check Ad Intelligence Campaign Analysis
Under the Ad Intelligence tab, click on campaign analysis to see what creatives the application is showing. This is where you can get a general overview of its paid efforts and a demo of the product.
- Study the path that previous campaigns have taken to see if you can spot patterns. You want to be able to spot which apps are on their way to the top when you are choosing one to invest in. Therefore, you should look at the patterns of other apps that have made it already.
Let’s take a look at a couple apps that rose very quickly to the top charts and what characteristics they had. It’s important to pick an app that stays at the top for a little while at least so that it will be worth your investment. Let’s look at some that have managed to hold on to their spot for a while.
This examination of a couple apps should help you figure out what to look for. We will examine some apps that have succeeded in the past.
Among us
Among Us! Is an example of a game that rose very quickly to the top of the charts and has stayed there for a very long time. Not to mention, the fact that it has become a subject outside of the game itself. There is merchandise and memes and even new lingo surrounding it.
What were the signs that this game was going to succeed as it did. The beginning of the spike started around Thursday July 16th, 2020.
Looking at the ratings and reviews in this time period, we can see that the game was receiving good ratings.
However, the game did see some help from organic sources. Some popular Twitch streamers stumbled across it which gave the game some great free marketing to get its jump start. This may have helped initial downloads but it is also an important reason why the game maintained its popularity. If it had been bad, it might have seen that initial rise in popularity and then a swift descent.
As an investor, you can look for a similar phenomenon, when a game that had initial popularity but has been receiving initially poor reviews updates and starts to see an improvement in player satisfaction. A list of all updates that an app has had and what each update consisted of can be found on MobileAction.
Project Makeover
Another app to experience a quick climb swiftly in downloads is Project Makeover. In the time of about a day this app climbed all the way to the top 10 list from scratch.
From the front page of the app we can see that it has a good visibility score and, of course, over 8 million downloads.
This time we can see that the climb did indeed start right after an update. There may have been a bug in the earlier version or they may have wanted to test the app and see if any changes needed to be made before promoting it on a wider scale.
Since its release in November it has climbed steadily to over 1700 total creatives and almost 700 are active.
The application boasts 9th place in overall Advertising and has a huge Ad publisher count. This means that the app is being very widely advertised.
The app mostly advertises on Facebook but it has not neglected Apple Search Ads. Project Makeover has taken the approach of targeting keywords of popular brand names within their category as well as their own brand name.
It is bidding on many popular keywords of game genres as well, such as “casino games” and “car games”.
Now you’re ready to invest!
There you have it! A step-by-step list of what you need to do to decide if an app is right for you to invest in. There are many more features of MobikeAction that can help you on your journey to find the right apps to invest in and you will be able to keep tabs on potential investments as well. Sign up for a demo with us to see for yourself abs keep up with all the rising star apps.
