Case Study: How OptiMine Helped Pandora Drive App Install & Activation Success

A leading public music streaming service had the dual challenge of measuring marketing investments to drive new user growth (app installs) but also activation (in-app listener hours). Compounding this dual-challenge was the fact that the brand managed a complex marketing ecosystem of difficult-to-track channels such as TV, display and social that their internal attribution system could not measure. Because the brand had recently completed an IPO, there was further urgency around driving cost effectiveness and proving the value of marketing investments. The brand selected OptiMine for its ability to measure digital & traditional media, its flexibility to measure media contributions to multiple outcomes, and for the speed and detail of OptiMine’s solution.

The streaming music brand was not able to measure its media accurately with its own attribution system and was investing significantly in channels that could not be tracked:

1. The brand had invested over $10MM in TV without an ability to measure how it drove incremental app installs or in-app activation and use.

2. The brand needed to understand how marketing drove app use (listener hours) across 8 unique audience segments in order to measure and maximize ad-generated revenue in-app.

3. After a successful IPO, the brand now had added urgency around marketing effectiveness, driving improvements in efficiency, and driving revenue lift through in-app advertising streams.

OptiMine was deployed in less than 6 weeks for a rapid solution and immediate ROI generation:

Upon deployment, OptiMine immediately began surfacing near-term, actionable performance lift opportunities to the brand. Some findings and guidance were expected, while many had never been seen before by the marketing team because they had no visibility to this type of cross-channel measurement prior to OptiMine. The brand began to improve performance by a series of important steps:

Budget-Neutral Shifts:

The streaming music brand was committed to TV for branding and awareness goals, but saw an opportunity with OptiMine’s guidance to adjust TV allocation to boost acquisition and in-app user activations while keeping overall TV spend level. Using OptiMine’s network-level guidance, the brand shifted 40% of their TV spend from the weakest performers to reallocate to the strongest networks, increasing listener hours by over 100 million.

Cross-Channel Reallocations:

The brand had invested in brand building within digital channels, where click-based tracking only told a very small part of the value equation. Interestingly, because of OptiMine’s highly detailed measures, it was found that 6 networks and partners the brand had walked away from (assuming value was low because click rates were too small) were actually significantly more valuable and needed to be re-activated.

Precise Spend Alignment:

The brand wanted to measure media contributions and impacts on its user segments and understand how campaigns could drive lift in activation and listener hours (a key revenue-driving outcome). Media was found to help activate its most loyal segments, but was found to be 30% more effective in re-activating recently lapsed segments, thereby boosting revenues (see figure below).

OptiMine helps leading retailers measure the incremental contributions of their digital and traditional marketing campaigns on any outcome (sales, traffic, new customer acquisition and more) across any conversion point (in-store, e-commerce, in-app, call center and more). OptiMine’s privacy-forward approach means you’ll never need to compromise with tech industry and state-by-state privacy changes and regulations.