What does the lifting of the ban mean for operators’ ASO efforts?

Words by Julian Rogers

For seven long years, betting companies were firmly shut out in the cold as Google resolutely denied their real-money gambling (RMG) apps access to its Play Store. So when news broke in July that the tech giant was suddenly laying out the welcome mat for Android betting apps in the UK, France and Ireland, the partial U-turn caused quite a stir in the industry.

One obvious upside is that it ameliorates what has hitherto been a long-winded, hit-or-miss customer conversion funnel with native apps residing outside the Play Store. The mobile web has picked up a lot of the slack on Android, yet having that presence in the Play Store’s shop window is clearly a boon from a marketing, UA and app discoverability standpoint.

“Already, we can see that the media exposure around opening the Play Store to gambling apps has had a very positive effect on the number of users searching for our growing brand,” says Lottoland CEO Nigel Birrell.

Although operators have historically concentrated on iOS native app development, Android dominates the mobile OS mix. Of the 380 million smartphone sales to end users in Q1 2017, just over 327 million were powered by Android. That’s 84.1% of handsets.

For years, Android has been the leader by a country mile, particularly in markets like Spain where it runs on over 90% of smartphones sold there. It’s a similar situation in much of Southern and Eastern Europe, which will benefit operators enormously when the lifting of the Play Store ban is expanded, probably later this year or in early 2018.

In the UK, the Android-iOS divide was far narrower – but it is widening. Data by Kantar Worldpanel ComTech for the three months to February 2017 revealed that Android accounted for 55% of UK smartphone sales compared with 42.3% for iOS. However, the split had shifted to 63.3% and 34.7% just three months later.

You could argue that it’s a stretch to describe the softening of Google’s stance as an industry game-changer, but there’s no denying this is a significant development. Indeed, many of the leading players in the UK have been quick to tweak their television adverts to trumpet the fact that their apps are now also available in the Play Store.

Matthew Balch, an ASO consultant and director of Sound Bet Media, predicts that Google’s app store will soon become an acquisition battleground among firms. “While I don’t think we’ll quite see an ‘install war’ to the levels we saw waged between operators on iOS between 2012 and 2014, I do think there are significant battles to be won on Android and I can see ASO playing an increasingly significant role.”

Rank and file

During the ban, a number of operators created free-to-play products, bet calculators and informational apps in order to establish a toehold in the app emporium. These apps have been hanging around for years, which means they have been ranking above some brands’ main RMG apps when searching for a particular operator.

For example, bet365’s RMG Android app ranks behind its bet365 News app which has notched up 500,000 downloads. Likewise, Betfair (sportsbook) didn’t rank number one for its brand name for the first few weeks. Instead, the top spot was occupied by a third-party app – Betacular Betfair Viewer – which has amassed one million downloads and a 4.3 rating from over 12,000 reviews. Operators’ flagship apps will sooner or later ascend to the top spot for specific brand queries, but it won’t tend to happen overnight.

With keyword searches for a competitive generic term like ‘betting’, sportsbooks will have to dislodge a whole host of affiliate and tipping apps that have gone unchallenged for years. “They are there because there has been no competition for so long,” says Ryan Murton, owner of SEO and ASO consultancy Clarets Media. “The Tier 1 operators are going to find it a lot easier and a lot quicker [to rank above these apps] because they should be getting thousands of organic installs a day and so will catch up with the tin-pot apps – that’s affiliate apps that don’t do very much.”

Furthermore, with searches for ‘casino’, ‘bingo’ and ‘poker’, operators also have to compete with a whole army of popular social casino apps that have been in the Play Store for years. Some have racked up tens of millions of downloads.

Murton, who has previously worked for Paddy Power, Betfair and Oddschecker.com, expects operators to now invest heavily in Android app install ads in order to boost their app’s visibility and drive downloads. William Hill and Ladbrokes already occupy the two available app install ad slots at the top of the page for ‘betting’.

“We can see that the media exposure around opening the Play Store to gambling apps has had a very positive effect” – Nigel Birrell, Lottoland

That presence is important when a plethora of tipping affiliate apps dominate the organic search results. In fact, not a single RMG gambling app shows up in the first 100 results for ‘betting’, aside from Paddy Power’s bet calculator app. Meanwhile, 888 Casino and Ladbrokes Casino ad installs appear at the top of the page for ‘casino’, while Wink Bingo and Gala Bingo ads target ‘bingo’ searches.

Title fight

A piece of good news for app publishers is that Google recently raised its Play Store title limit from 30 to 50 characters. Apple has slashed its title limit from 50 to 30 characters, though there is now an additional 30-character ‘subtitle’ field. Having an additional 20 characters in the Play Store is a welcome bonus in terms of ranking for relevant keywords.

For example, Paddy Power’s Android app maximises character allowance with ‘Paddy Power Sports Betting – Bet on Football’. Similarly, Sky Bet’s title is ‘Sky Bet: Sports Betting on Football & Horse Racing’. At the other end of the spectrum, bet365’s title couldn’t be more succinct: ‘bet365’. The online heavyweight clearly lets its brand do the talking.

Furthermore, while the Play Store has no meta-keyword field – unlike on iOS – the description field does have a bearing on an app’s ranking. The App Store algorithm ignores this. It means ASO teams have up to 4,000 characters at their disposal to get creative and try to influence its visibility.

Murton says: “The fact the description in Google Play is a ranking factor is huge because you can write thousands of characters whereas in the App Store you only have the title and the subtitle. That’s all you have really got to play with.” The challenge, of course, is writing compelling, attractive description copy while ensuring the main target keywords and phrases are used, and even duplicated.

“This is without doubt a ‘craft’ and takes practice to perfect,” says Balch. “Then there is the question of keyword position ‘hierarchy’ to consider as the algorithm weighs keywords used in the app title as being most important, followed by those used within the short description and, finally, the long description. Developers are, therefore, advised to prioritise their most efficient keywords using this hierarchical order.”

However, it seems operators aren’t being given carte blanche to include whatever they like in the description. One Tier 1 operator’s head of ASO, who wishes to remain anonymous, says Google rejected the initial app submission because the description included a free bet promotion. The offer was also removed from the submitted screenshot images. Google said the description contained details that “highlight user incentives for installing your app”, adding: “App listings which contain offers of monetary equivalent for install are a violation of our incentivised installs policy.”

The complete package

The Play Store also puts less emphasis than Apple on a sudden flurry of downloads from a ranking perspective, according to Murton. This is why you’ll see betting apps shoot up the free sports category in the App Store ahead of the Grand National and Cheltenham Festival. And it goes without saying that images and videos, although not ranking factors, are vital in the Play Store too.

Enticing and exciting artwork overlaid with compelling text is obviously more likely to encourage users to hit the install button than dull stills. Then, of course, there are the reviews and ratings, which do influence rankings. At the time of writing, Sky Bet has an impressive average rating of 4.4 from 205 reviews on Google Play, while Betfair (sportsbook) is even higher at 4.5 from 51 reviews.

But with gambling apps, especially fixed margin products like casino where losses are more likely to occur, negative ratings and reviews are inevitable. One trick here is to encourage users to rate the app after placing three bets or after a winner as they are more likely to be positive. Or you could do what the likes of Tinder and Uber do and direct users to customer services if they go to leave a low rating. This way you filter out the poor reviews.

Some firms, though, go down the Black Hat ASO route and buy fake ratings and reviews in order to dupe the algorithm and users. Indeed, one operator’s iOS app has nearly 2,000 ratings on the UK App Store, all of them five stars with reviews full of gobbledygook probably churned out by a review farm in China or India.

Ultimately, ASO on the Play Store and App Store is about optimising each element. “You’ve effectively got to treat the whole thing like a billboard,” says Fintan Costello, managing partner at Revenue Engineers and ex-head of egaming at Google.

“Is the thumbnail and image enticing enough to get people to click through? Is the description interesting and selling the app? The entire package needs to be right. You can even use release notes to your advantage. So from an advertising perspective, everything needs to be optimised and needs to be selling the brand and the functionality in the same way you would on your website.”

Sporting Index’s Android app landed in the Play Store in August. Product manager Jamie Adams says: “It’s a bit too early for us to say in terms of the differences between the two [stores], and there are always a number of unknowns when it comes to the way Google ranks for certain things.

“Keywords are important but, in our opinion, it is most likely a combination of title, description and the high-install or low-uninstall rate that we get from our users, which wouldn’t differ too much from Apple’s ASO. Also, the reviews will be key so it is best to make sure the product is going to satisfy your user base before going live in the store – no-one wants negative reviews to stack up at an early stage.”

Store wars

Up until now, operators have tended to focus more attention on native iOS apps due to there being no app store ban, greater standardisation of devices and screen sizes, and because iOS users are typically more valuable. However, Google’s move means they are bound to plough more money and resources into native Android app development going forward.

“The fact the description in Google Play is a ranking factor is huge because you can write thousands of characters” – Ryan Murton, Clarets Media

Indeed, it didn’t take long at all for real-money gambling Android apps to appear in Google Play, and EGR Marketing understands that many operators were given advanced warning about the lifting of the ban, even signing non-disclosure agreements. Going forward, the ASO teams have two lots of apps and two stores with different rules and algorithms to contend with.

The brands that will excel are the ones that give ASO the attention it deserves, says Balch. “I think there is definitely a gap widening between brands who see ASO as a ‘channel’ in its own right and invest time and energy into getting it right and those who have traditionally ignored it.

“When one considers the increased conversion rate and value of users driven by organic discovery versus most paid channels, ASO becomes a no brainer. However, there are plenty of operators out there who will spend six figures a month on TV to push users towards the app store, yet fail to optimise keywords, design compelling preview screens or adequately describe their app’s feature set.” Balch calls this the “leaky bucket” effect.

Sam Saares, senior manager for ASO and UA at The Stars Group, echoes Balch’s sentiments regarding the importance of ASO these days. “ASO has evolved a lot over the years and is now starting to be considered a separate performance marketing channel in its own right,” he says.

“With the increase in competition for organic users, there are only limited gains to be made from metadata optimisations, so marketers are focusing more on the conversion rates of their App Store pages and look for ways to make rankings gains for keywords that drive the most paying users to their apps. ASO attribution remains difficult due to limited tracking available for organic traffic, yet analytics improvements by both main platforms are making it easier for developers to understand the impact of ASO on overall mobile performance.”

Today, over five million apps sit in the Play Store and App Store combined, and it’s predicted that there will be five million in the App Store alone by 2020. Yet Costello makes the bold prediction that app stores will be “dead” in five years’ time, usurped by Progressive Web Apps (PWAs). PWAs take advantage of a device’s functionality to deliver a native-like UX that’s superior to the mobile web but they run in a browser.

The likes of Expedia, Lyft, Air France and Twitter have already launched PWAs. “In my view, Progressive Web Apps are the future of apps,” Costello states emphatically. Murton, though, disagrees, arguing that app stores will “always exist” as you’ll still need somewhere to host and authenticate apps.

In the meantime, though, the two main stores look sure to remain key marketing and UA channels for brands. And now that operators have come in from the cold where Android is concerned, it’s going to be interesting to see which brands and their ASO teams can take full advantage of their presence in the Play Store.