TikTok: The key to higher app retention

TikTok, hosting over one billion monthly active users worldwide, serves as a vibrant hub where communities gather to influence culture and interact and engage with commercial brands. It facilitates the discovery of new interests, products and businesses among users. It also offers significant benefits to advertisers across Europe and globally, often outperforming outcomes from other paid media outlets.

We conducted a recent meta-analysis in collaboration with Adjust, a global marketing partner that provides solutions for measuring, optimising and enhancing app growth across different platforms. The objective was to understand how TikTok-driven traffic affects European advertisers' campaigns. Read on to find out what we learned.

1. TikTok attracts highly engaged users at a lower cost

For education apps, TikTok brings users who are more actively engaged with the content at a lower cost per install (CPI), leading to longer app usage:

• Lower CPI: -38%

• Average monthly time spent by users coming from TikTok: +23%

In this scenario, user retention directly influences revenue. With increased retention rates, the revenue per user sees a notable boost of 34% not only upon app installation but also over the course of the month.

2. TikTok reduces uninstall rates for entertainment apps

Through TikTok, entertainment apps acquire new users at a lower CPI and experience higher retention rates with reduced uninstall rates compared to other paid media channels. Moreover, revenue generated from users discovering the app via TikTok surpasses that from other media sources within a few days:

• Lower CPI: -32%

• Lower average uninstall rate: -47%

• Revenue per user coming from TikTok for Entertainment apps (30 days): +50%

3. TikTok attracts more engaged users to finance apps

Compared to other paid media channels, TikTok draws users with a strong affinity for financial apps such as banking and taxation. These users exhibit a significantly lower uninstallation rate, indicating a higher level of retention on our platform:

• Average retention rate on finance apps by TikTok users:

  • 1 day: +18%

  • 7 days: +13%

  • 30 days: +33%

• Lower CPI: -56%

• Lower average uninstall rate compared to other paid networks: -43%

See success with TikTok

Leveraging TikTok as a marketing platform can lead to improved user engagement, retention and revenue generation for various app categories. Implementing a test-and-learn approach, where campaign strategies are iteratively tested and optimised, enables marketers to uncover new possibilities and refine their campaigns on the platform.

Consider optimising creatives and completing your SAN configuration to maximise the effectiveness of TikTok campaigns for enhanced tracking and performance analysis.

Download the full strategy report here.