Petal Ads champions a new mobile ad platform for advertisers, brand owners, developers and their apps

By Maria Ramiro

The Petal Ads platform, launched in 2020 to help publishers and advertisers target a global ecosystem of 730 million Huawei device users, continues to grow from strength to strength.

Significantly, in what has been a very challenging 12 months for the advertising industry, Petal Ads has provided a mechanism to help brands and agencies monetise their campaigns, create promotions that draw greater engagement, and improve user retention.

At a high level, Petal Ads is an important element in the Huawei Mobile Services (HMS) ecosystem. Becoming a part of the Ads platform gives it access to over 580 million monthly active users (MAUs) on AppGallery, Huawei’s app store. AppGallery enabled more than 432 billion app distributions in 2021, a rise of 12.5% over the previous year. It is significant growth that represents unprecedented opportunities for developers looking to reach an ever-growing, app-hungry audience in over 170 countries worldwide.

But the platform serves more than just the global ecosystem. As it is relatively new, Petal Ads has worked to deliver its message to a growing audience, increasing brand visibility at important advertising showcases, including DMEXCO in 2022 and the App Promotion Summit in London.

At each event, the Petal Ads Business Development team shared their insights with large audiences of brands and agencies, demonstrating how marketers can use the many features and benefits of the platform to promote their apps and brands and drive new revenue.

How publishers benefit

“Our support works in two ways, said Jaime Gonzalo, VP of Consumer, Mobile Services, Europe, at Huawei. “We enable high-performing monetisation options for publishers looking to optimise the revenue from their inventory, and we provide advertisers with a large quality audience to grow their brand awareness and user acquisition.”

For publishers whose apps are already available on AppGallery, the ecosystem allows them to tap into an ad exchange that serves both the supply and demand sides. Huawei’s platform aggregates demand from advertisers and connects with publishers. It also includes a data management platform that can help to enhance targeting.

The Petal Ads platform assists by generating advertising revenues from content. There are three main benefits for publishers.

1. A quick and easy integration process that can see an app integrated in less than half a day
2. A high revenue share, often more than publishers would get on other platforms, and high CPMs compared to other ad networks
3. A commitment to delivering a quality ad experience within apps

Delivering a quality ads experience to users is vital to the Petal Ads platform. Strict guidelines ensure that only top advertising content is approved to show. This applies to publisher content on AppGallery and Huawei’s proprietary apps such as HUAWEI Browser, Petal Search, Petal Maps or HUAWEI Assistant.

How advertisers benefit

Petal Ads works at all stages of the customer funnel for advertisers. The platform offers precise delivery using its customer tags and DMP solutions. It also provides powerful placement guarantees on devices and performance results that advertisers can use with one-click installs and smart bidding to get the best return on investment.

There are also some great options to increase brand awareness and some of the lowest CPM on the market while aligning with key conversion markers such as awareness and retention.

When it comes to customer tags, advertisers can create an audience based on rules or other specific profiles, including localisation. Moreover, advertisers can use behavioural marketing based on whether customers have clicked on specific ads. There is also the option to upload prospect and customer lists into the Petal Ads system to ensure this audience can be targeted and retargeted.

Placement options are a powerful way to reach customers. These include the use of programmatic displays across Huawei-owned and operated inventory, as well as third-party partners, custom advertising slots within AppGallery, and Huawei’s Petal Search marketing solution. All the traditional ad formats available on the market, such as banners, flash, rewarded ads and native, can be used alongside different campaign types like app downloads. Advertisers can also bid on formats like cost-per-install and cost-per-acquisition, among other mobile models.

“On AppGallery, high-profile advertising includes page category ranking, which generates greater visibility and downloads, while featured pages present the app in response to users’ usual preferences,” Gonzalo explained. “Category keyword search also allows the app to appear to users, and recommended apps allow content providers to increase click-through rates. All of this delivers a compelling prospect to advertisers.”

Petal Ads offers unfettered access to the entire Huawei ecosystem spanning over 20 Huawei native apps spanning across 730 million mobile users worldwide. By utilising a full-funnel approach that gives businesses a streamlined experience at every stage, Petal Ads provides a diverse and exclusive range of advertising solutions through multiple key platforms of the Huawei ecosystem.

The platform stays in close conversation with its partner businesses at every stage, prioritising their needs and preferences. This enables these partners to offer unique ad placements that can help increase user awareness and retention.

For example, Petal Search, the Huawei-owned search engine, comes installed on Huawei devices and includes a special feature for apps allowing advertisers to reach consumers who are actively looking for something. This minimises the distance between publishers, advertisers and the end user. Petal Search also supports the discovery experience with visual and voice search capabilities, allowing users to download apps directly from ads. This improves click-through rates by as much as 35%, boosts conversions by 148% and lowers advertising costs by 70%.

Exponential growth

The success of Petal Ads is evidenced by its rapid growth. Advertiser numbers have increased 9x over the past year, while publisher growth has increased 4x. One of the chief advantages of the platform is that it can operate on its first-party data derived from Huawei’s 730 million global device monthly active users (MAUs). This allows advertisers to precisely target customer information through cross-channel advertising covering AppGallery, Display and Search Ads.

Getting creative

Petal Ads also helps marketers amplify their creative content. In practice, advertisers and publishers can access different ad formats designed to address a variety of campaign targets. This might be the splash displayed when an app or campaign is launched and ensures high click rates or the use of a banner when there’s a high level of traffic.

Rewarded videos proactively engage users to offer them a gift or perk within an app. As the format is native, it is perfectly integrated into the content. Interstitials show the ad format displayed at specific app transition points, and an app or campaign icon is displayed when launched and designed for branding advertising.

Advertisers have the option to set a maximum bid price for their campaigns, giving them full control over their budgets and enabling them to track results accurately using Huawei’s measurement solutions.

Huawei also integrates with companies, including AppsFlyer, Adjust, Kochava, Sizmek, Airbridge, Branch and Tenjin, to better control attribution conversion rates. Overall, through the Petal Ads Partner Program, the platform leverages partnerships with over 60 certified agencies and publishers to help businesses expand their reach to an even wider audience.

“The development of Petal Ads has not been in isolation. Over the past year, we have boosted the choice of apps in AppGallery, and achieved quality traffic for other services in our ecosystem, such as Petal Search, Petal Maps, HUAWEI Assistant, AI Search and the HUAWEI Browser,” according to Gonzalo. “Combine these with Petal Ads, and they make a healthy interconnected ecosystem that works in synergy to support our developer partners and meet the needs of our customers. We anticipate further growth in 2023.”

About the author:

Maria Ramiro is a media professional with over 12 years of digital business experience working at top tech and international media companies, including Sogecable, Mediaset, Telefónica and Huawei Technologies. In her current role, she leads the advertising business of Huawei in the European markets, including Industry Development, Business Development and Customer Success. Maria holds Executive Master’s in Digital Business from ESADE Business School.