Measuring marginal organic contribution from paid marketing One trap that mobile-first companies often fall into is believing that organic installs are the result of totally undirected, spontaneous, aimless discovery. This is a trap because it's unlikely; it's rare for a truly static, stable baseline of organic installs to exist for a company independent of paid marketing. Organic baselines can be tested. The most brute-force approach to establishing an organic baseline is to shut off paid marketing completely. But shutting off marketing spend across the board isn't practical for most companies, which intuitively understand that paid marketing is their primary source of revenue generation and thus can't afford to stop marketing just to test an organic baseline.
Well said. Organic baseline is an important yet challenging thing to measure if we want to understand the true incremental value of paid marketing. So many things to consider if we dig deeper! To put a bit of nuance into the brute force approach - shutting off paid marketing (go dark): 1. The organic baseline may be following certain trends or showing seasonality. So a simple 'pre-post' test may not work as well as a geo-based test. 2. It is also possible that paid marketing can have an impact on the organic baseline in the long term. E.g., serving millions of impressions may push the brand to the front of people's minds. If this is true, shutting off paid marketing may have some additional impact that is usually beyond the observation period of a typical test.
Independent analyst & investor. Proprietor of Mobile Dev Memo.
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