This guide will cover the best performance marketing agencies, how to choose them, the main performance marketing channels, and how you stand to benefit from using performance marketing agencies.
Performance marketing is a form of advertising in which the advertiser only pays a platform for achieved results, such as clicks or conversions. This marketing concept, therefore, ensures a more efficient mobile campaign without wasting budget or resources.
Top Performance Marketing Agencies
Performance marketing enables you to monitor your mobile ad spend closely and reassign it (where and when necessary). Mobile marketers only pay for results and can track their performance with various tools, including advanced analytics.
With performance marketing, mobile digital campaigns are easily measurable too, and app installs and conversions truly count–the concept flips the traditional marketing model on its head.
In fact, performance marketing agency The Social Shepherd acquired over 146,000 new customers using Facebook Ads and increased the return on ad spend by 87% for Beebombs.
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Performance marketing agencies themselves are able to help marketers and app owners optimize their online marketing spend, use data-driven results, and get brands in front of qualified audiences as effectively as possible.
As the mobile app market continues to grow, finding the best performance marketing agencies is important. That’s why we’ve listed the experts in our directory below. Let’s explore the benefits of working with top performance marketing agencies and find out who the best players are in the industry.
What is performance marketing?
It’s a form of marketing where the advertiser only pays for completed actions. Performance marketing is a broad term that refers to both online marketing and advertising programs. Mobile marketers and app owners pay marketing companies for app installs, conversions, and qualified leads.
Performance marketing itself breaks down into two main types. They are as follows:
- The digital marketing strategy that’s driven by results; in other words, payment depends on how users interact with your mobile app.
- The digital marketing format in which brands only pay when there are measurable results. For example, when a user clicks or installs your mobile app. These results can include direct sales and qualified leads.
Featured Performance Marketing Agencies
Unlike traditional advertising, where fees are paid upfront and don’t depend upon the success of ads, mobile marketers use performance marketing to pay for successful transactions. Performance marketing reverses the traditional value proposition of marketing and advertising and allows for real-time ROI measurement.
With global mobile ad spending projected to reach $413 billion by 2024, app owners and marketers must be able to stay competitive in a cost-effective manner; this is particularly true when there are budgetary constraints to consider. Performance marketing is a highly effective and proven solution to this predicament.
The best performance marketing agencies
Performance marketing agencies are specialized marketing agencies that focus on achieving specific, measurable client outcomes, such as clicks, leads, sales, or other concrete actions.
Unlike traditional advertising, where the success of campaigns is measured by metrics like reach (or impressions), performance marketing emphasizes results that directly correlate to a brand’s goals.
We’ve listed the best performance marketing agencies below.
1. Moburst
Moburst is a mobile-first marketing agency specializing in helping brands grow through mobile app marketing, user acquisition, and performance marketing strategies. The agency focuses on driving engagement and increasing customer acquisition, particularly through mobile channels, for both startups and established brands.
The agency uses data-driven approaches, creative optimization, and targeted advertising strategies to achieve (measurable) client outcomes.
Overview
Moburst was founded in 2013 by Giladi Elbaz and Lior Eldan. The founders aimed to create a specialized agency that could help brands navigate the complexities of mobile marketing and grow their apps through innovative strategies like app store optimization, user acquisition, and creative advertising.
Since its founding, Moburst has expanded globally, with offices in locations such as New York, San Francisco, and Tel Aviv, and it serves clients across various industries, including gaming, eCommerce, and health tech.
Services
Moburst provides its customers with the following services:
- Improves app page conversion rates by optimizing visuals like screenshots, app icons, videos, and promotional graphics
- Runs tests on different app page elements (titles, descriptions, visuals) to determine what resonates best with users, helping to increase download rates
- Adapts app store content and visuals to different languages and regions for optimized performance across key markets
2. RevX
RevX is a performance marketing platform that specializes in helping mobile-first businesses acquire, engage, and retain app users through programmatic advertising. RevX focuses on app re-engagement and retargeting, encouraging previous app users to return, complete transactions, or engage more deeply with the app.
The platform enables brands to deliver personalized, targeted ads to users across multiple channels, including in-app, mobile web, and social media.
Overview
RevX was founded in 2014 and is a global tech company specializing in consumer intelligence and mobile marketing.
The founding team includes Mukesh Agarwal and Rohit Saxena, who had a vision to help app-first businesses improve their engagement and conversions by leveraging programmatic advertising, machine learning, and personalized ad targeting. The company is headquartered in Singapore and operates globally.
Services
RevX provides its customers with the following services:
- Helps brands retarget users with personalized, dynamic ads based on their past behaviour within the app
- Enables brands to tailor campaigns specifically to different audience segments for higher relevance and engagement
- Retargets users across multiple channels, including in-app, mobile web, and social platforms, to ensure a consistent reach
3. Favoured
Favoured is a digital marketing (and growth) agency specializing in performance marketing, user acquisition, and brand development. It focuses on helping companies grow their digital presence and scale their audience across multiple online platforms.
The agency primarily supports eCommerce, fintech, lifestyle, and app-based businesses by crafting campaigns that align with specific business goals, such as increasing conversions, improving brand awareness, and enhancing engagement.
Overview
Favoured was founded in 2019 by Ben Wooltorton and James Maddison. The agency was established to help brands leverage performance marketing strategies to drive growth. The founders brought their expertise in digital marketing and focused on creating tailored campaigns to help clients.
Based in the UK, Favoured has quickly grown to serve clients who seek effective growth marketing, paid media, and creative strategy services.
Services
Favoured provides its customers with the following services:
- Manages targeted campaigns on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, and Snapchat. These campaigns are tailored to reach the brand’s ideal audience
- The agency creates and manages pay-per-click (known as PPC) and search engine marketing campaigns on Google, helping brands reach high-intent users
- Enables the use of A/B testing to optimize ad creatives, messaging, and layouts, ensuring that campaigns perform at their highest potential
4. Perform[cb]
Perform[cb], formerly known as Clickbooth, is a performance marketing network and agency that specializes in customer acquisition, affiliate marketing, and CPA (known as cost-per-action) advertising.
Perform[cb] connects advertisers with a network of publishers and affiliates to drive high-quality traffic and conversions on a performance-based model. The company’s primary focus is on achieving specific actions—such as leads, sales, or app installs—ensuring that advertisers only pay for results.
Overview
Perform[cb] was originally founded as Clickbooth in 2002 by Erin Cigich and a team of digital marketing professionals. The company rebranded as Perform[cb] in 2020 to better reflect its broad capabilities across performance-based marketing services.
The company was built with a focus on performance marketing, first and foremost, aiming to provide brands with results-driven advertising solutions using CPA models.
Services
Perform[cb] provides its customers with the following services:
- Operates on a CPA model, meaning brands pay only when a specific action is completed
- The company has an extensive network of vetted affiliates and publishers across various industries, allowing advertisers to connect with high-quality traffic sources
- Helps recruit, onboard, and manage affiliate and publisher partners, allowing brands to focus on scaling campaigns
5. Verve
Verve is a mobile marketing (and location-based) advertising platform that helps brands reach and engage with customers based on their location data.
It focuses on programmatic advertising and proximity-based targeting, allowing brands to deliver highly relevant ads to users at opportune moments, such as when they are near a retail location or event. The platform helps advertisers create new campaigns that combine location intelligence with mobile advertising.
Overview
Verve was founded in 2005 by Tom Kenney and Gregory R. Hallinan. Over the years, Verve evolved and expanded its services beyond mobile location-based advertising to include broader programmatic and omnichannel capabilities.
In 2020, Verve became part of MGI (known as Media and Games Invest) and was rebranded as Verve Group, which broadened its focus to include multiple digital advertising channels.
Services
Verve provides its customers with the following services:
- Provides a programmatic exchange with real-time bidding, allowing advertisers to access ad inventory across mobile, desktop and Connected TV (known as CTV)
- Specializes in mobile formats with advanced targeting and interactive ad options
- Enables advertisers to target users based on location, using geofencing to set virtual boundaries and send ads
6. ASTRAD
ASTRAD is a demand-side platform (known as DSP) designed to help advertisers run and optimize their digital advertising campaigns. DSPs like ASTRAD are used to purchase ad inventory programmatically, allowing advertisers to automate and optimize the process of buying ad space.
ASTRAD provides advertisers with the tools to manage, track, and optimize their campaigns across various digital channels.
Overview
Services
ASTRAD provides its customers with the following services:
- Advertisers can bid for ad inventory in real time, allowing them to optimize ad spend and only pay for the most relevant impressions
- Connects with over 40 ad exchanges, SSPs, and networks, providing access to premium traffic sources across various platforms​
- Allows advertisers to target users based on geographic data, such as country, city, or zip code, optimizing ads for local relevance​
7. PreApps
PreApps is a mobile app marketing agency that specializes in helping app developers launch, promote, and grow their apps. It provides a range of services designed to drive app downloads, increase visibility, and optimize your app’s performance in the app stores.
PreApps works closely with developers, offering custom strategies to ensure that apps achieve optimal performance and meet their growth goals.
Overview
PreApps was founded in 2012 by Sean Casto. The company has worked with over 3,250 apps since its founding, ranging from startups to larger enterprises.
Top clients include Spotify, Uber, Angie’s List (also Angi), Waze and Groupon.
Services
PreApps provides its customers with the following services:
- Helps optimize your app’s visibility in app stores (Apple App Store, Google Play) by improving your app’s title, keywords, description, visuals, and ratings
- Researches and selects the right keywords that resonate with the target audience to improve overall discoverability
- Provides beta testing services to gather early feedback and reviews from real users
What are the main performance marketing channels?
There are six main types of performance marketing that agencies and mobile app marketers can use to drive traffic and achieve app installs, and new channels are constantly being developed. We’ve detailed them below for you.
Native ads
Mobile native advertising is similar to desktop native advertising in that it comprises sponsored content, social media ads, and in-feed ads. The primary difference is that desktop devices often get used at work for professional purposes. In contrast, mobile devices are more generally used for personal activities, which makes them a particularly effective place for native ads to reach new users.
Native ads take on a natural, non-intrusive state and appear natively on web pages and platforms; they are dynamically chosen based on each user viewing the mobile content. Mobile users are more accepting of these ads as they don’t disturb the user experience and allow you to promote your brand in a way that feels natural.
Google Ads
Search engine marketing, especially via Google Ads, can achieve great results with a measurable return on investment. Google Ads enable you to bid on specific keywords in order for clickable ads to appear in Google’s search engine results. These ads are scalable, and the conversion intent is generally higher, with results more immediate.
Search engine marketingÂ
Search engine marketing (SEM) is the process of advertising across search engine results pages (known as SERPS).
Paid search engine ads often rank higher than unpaid organic listings at the top of the SERP. Search engine marketing places targeted advertisements in front of relevant mobile users. Tools such as the aforementioned Google Ads enable mobile marketers to define a precise demographic, target keyword, and campaign budget.
Social media marketing
Performance marketing agencies often utilise the power of social media platforms as they can reach mobile users and drive them to your mobile app. Mobile users can share sponsored content quickly and organically, which only helps to extend the content’s reach. Facebook Ads has an extensive list of services that performance marketers use, but additional platforms such as LinkedIn Ads and Twitter offer many opportunities as well.
Performance marketing agency example
Source: Moburst
Affiliate marketingÂ
Another performance marketing channel is affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is a form of digital marketing that is affiliated with the advertiser and paid out after the desired action, such as an app install, takes place. This form of marketing typically involves partnering with coupon, loyalty, review and incentive sites and may include working with a popular influencer, like a well-known YouTuber or professional blogger.
Programmatic advertising
Programmatic advertising is where ads are targeted specifically to mobile users who are likely to be interested in your brand and product. Programmatic technology allows advertisers to serve ads to users based on their interests, demographics, cookie data, and browser activity. Simplified: AI and machine learning are used to buy ads in real time rather than via pre-set prices and standard human negotiations.
Featured Performance Marketing Agencies
What are performance marketing agencies?
Performance marketing agencies are businesses that offer a comprehensive range of channels and services that can be utilized to build successful mobile marketing campaigns. The best performance marketing agencies provide years of experience, global reach, and access to results-driven data as well as publisher relationships on an impressive scale.
Performance marketing agency example
Source: Target
These agencies often specialize in specific areas of marketing, for example, in affiliate marketing or SEO. The best performance marketing agencies provide a full suite of personalized services for each client, along with customized strategies designed to drive revenue and growth; they achieve results that help you reach your mobile app marketing goals.
Services typically include the following:
- Search engine marketing:Â Provides SEO, keyword integration, and ads on key search engines like Google and Bing
- Native advertising:Â They design pages to strategically position mobile ads
- Social media advertising:Â They increase visibility and traffic on social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram
- Affiliate marketing:Â They partner with other businesses and brands that can market your mobile app
- Display marketing:Â They develop brand aesthetics and design and format images, videos, and banner ads
By assessing ad performance when using performance marketing agencies, businesses can earn a higher return on investment with a lower risk factor applied. When you know what works best for your brand, you can create a targeted marketing strategy that maximizes your mobile app’s reach.
How can I benefit from performance marketing agencies?
Partnering with performance marketing agencies enables you to market your mobile apps and expand your reach efficiently. Some of the most significant benefits include how good they are for your budget, the ease with which you can track your mobile marketing campaigns, the ability to advertise to a segmented audience, and the low risk involved.
Low-risk factor
There’s less risk when you use performance marketing agencies and the mobile marketing campaigns they design. As you only pay for completed actions, you genuinely get what you pay for with these agencies. The types of marketing campaigns are flexible, and you can adjust your mobile budget as and when needed. You can even pause your performance marketing campaigns as desired, in most cases, simply by contacting the company.
Audience-specific advertising
Using performance marketing agencies, app marketers can advertise directly to a specific audience, allowing them to measure the overall effectiveness within highly targeted groups. Performance marketing agencies help design and improve your mobile advertising strategies to find the best fit for your app.
Performance marketing agency example
Source: Incubeta
Easy tracking
Performance marketing agencies give you access to dedicated mobile marketing tools so you can see how many leads are being converted (and from where); for example, this could be a user installing your mobile app or the measurement of sales and qualified leads. App owners are able to gain a good idea of their ongoing ROI and can evaluate the success of both small and larger mobile marketing campaigns with greater ease.
Budget efficiency
Performance marketing agencies are good for your budget; you only pay them when you receive results. They’re cost-effective and focus squarely on a results-driven strategy. Performance marketing agencies enable you to identify your goals and negotiate the ideal rate for each completed action.
How to choose top performance marketing agencies?
Choosing the best performance marketing agencies is essential for achieving your mobile marketing goals. When selecting a performance marketing agency, it’s important to consider the agency’s experience and track record in the industry, including their ability to provide valuable insights into mobile user behaviour. We’ve listed some other critical areas to consider below.
Efficient attribution and monitoring of ad performanceÂ
Effective monitoring and reporting on the performance of your mobile ads will determine a large part of your success. Therefore it’s crucial to look for performance marketing agencies that offer leading mobile attribution and customer data platforms, as well as tools that can help you track mobile ad performance metrics.
Performance marketing agencies must provide key insights into your mobile campaigns with efficient attribution.
Brand protection
The best mobile performance marketing agencies will ensure that your brand name and reputation stay protected from harmful or inappropriate content when advertising online. They should offer leading tools such as automated trackers that prevent your brand from appearing in undesirable locations, as well as flag cases where your app has been modified with malicious code.
Performance marketing agency example
Source: Directive
Specialize in multiple channels and content strategies
Performance marketing agencies specialise in distinct performance channels, so it’s vital to think about which is most significant to you. For instance, some performance marketing companies focus on SEO, while others offer years of expertise in paid advertising, CRO, or mobile web design. The best performance marketing agencies offer sophisticated content strategies and make use of fine-tuned growth strategies.
Recommendations and reviews
You should look for a performance marketing agency with a proven track record of success, one whose mobile marketing campaigns are analogous to yours. Ensuring they have the resources and expertise to manage your mobile campaigns effectively is important. Be sure to check out recommendations and reviews to arrive at the best one for you.
Partner with top performance marketing agenciesÂ
Using performance marketing enables app owners and mobile marketers to effectively measure their campaign results as well as their return on investment. App owners can employ this form of marketing by using top performance marketing agencies that facilitate more efficient use of mobile ad budgets and let them target specific audiences.
Performance marketing agencies shift the focus from ad impressions to user actions, leading to more meaningful and relevant advertising experiences. These agencies will also ensure that your brand name and reputation stay protected from negative or inappropriate content when advertising online and flag cases where your app has been modified with malicious code.
Overall, app marketers are able to reach their audience at scale, with payments only being made to advertising providers when business objectives are met. Below we’ve put together for you a list of the best performance marketing agencies.
