Moloco partnered with Bigo Live to optimise the campaigns and adapt to the rapid changes in user trends and variations in geographies.

3 years ago when the pandemic hit, many businesses found themselves enhancing their digital capabilities to better reach their consumers and audience during lockdowns. Live streaming is one such tool that surged in popularity since then and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 22.4% to reach $4.26 billion by 2028.

A live streaming application that utilises Artificial Intelligence and Real Time Communications tech to connect diversified communities around the world, Bigo Live enables broadcasters to live stream various content and connect with other creators and users. The content platform is developed by BIGO Technology, a Singapore-based company with more than 30 offices and 6 research & development (R&D) centres around the world.

In Southeast Asia specifically, the region is seeing the fastest revenue growth in global e-sports from 0.9 million in 2020 to an expected 2.0 million for live streaming. To ensure that they remain competitive as one of the bigger live streaming platforms in Southeast Asia, Bigo Live needed support for their expansion plans. Being their user acquisition (UA) partner, Moloco stepped in and brought data-driven recommendations on expanding to emerging markets, training, and guidance on advertiser’s iOS StoreKitAdNetwork (SKAN) adoption when Apple’s SKAN system first debuted, how best to use SKAN data to further their UA performance and recommended the use of A/B testing on Bigo Live’s creative assets.

Challenges in live streaming

However, with the rapid changes in video streaming trends, Bigo Live struggles to stay in touch with its community of users and broadcasters. They place importance on paying constant attention to how users are consuming video streaming content and how the needs of broadcasters are changing.

In order to stay relevant in such a dynamic industry, BIGO Technology started investing in R&D to constantly bring its users new features so that broadcasters can express their creativity and produce content seamlessly. However, they realised that they needed support in meeting their goals of finding valuable, active users.

Multiple in-app event optimization

Moloco partnered with Bigo Live to optimise the campaigns and adapt to the rapid changes in user trends and variations in geographies. Moloco provided campaign goal-setting recommendations, supported multiple in-app event optimisations, and managed the careful balance of multiple KPIs. This allowed the Bigo Live team to meet their multi KPI management needs and to be flexible in measuring various metrics.

Creative A/B Testing

Previously, Bigo Live had one creative across both platforms which displayed the Apple Store and Android Play logos. Moloco identified that as an opportunity to conduct A/B testing on Bigo Live’s creative assets by carrying out a simple test to only show the Android Play logo for the Android campaign. As a result, cost per impression (CPI) was reduced by 15% on the creative version for Android that only displayed the Android Play logo.

After 18 months, with the help of Moloco’s global research and access to inventories, they successfully expanded Bigo Live’s campaigns from two geographies to more than 20 covering North America, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, South America, and Africa. By monitoring, diversifying, and optimising the campaigns, Moloco also exceeded Bigo Live’s CPI and cost per acquisition (CPA) Day 1 goals by an average of 10-15% varying by geography.

“Performance marketing through first-party data is now in the spotlight; and brands who are able to unlock the full potential of such data will be set to succeed. Moloco is on a mission to make the digital economy more equitable and profitable by making advanced machine learning accessible to companies of all sizes and our partnership with Bigo Live is a perfect example of that,” said Yu-Sien Low, Head of DSP Business, SEA & ANZ.