Axon—AppLovin’s advertiser platform—has launched Prospecting Campaigns, a new product aimed at helping web and ecommerce brands acquire first-time customers.
Until now, Axon was mostly conversion-focused for its customers. That legacy/default conversion product is now called Universal Campaigns, while Prospecting Campaigns adds a second, distinct option for brands that want to reach people who haven’t purchased from their site before.
In its blog post about the launch, Axon says early tests have “more than doubled New Customer ROAS” for some advertisers.
Why This Matters:
This broadens what Axon (and, by extension, AppLovin) can offer to ecommerce and website-based advertisers, with an emphasis on DTC businesses.
FWIW, AppLovin’s web and ecommerce ad business is only about a year old, and, again, has leaned heavily on conversion-only performance. With Prospecting, Axon can now serve a wider set of use cases—from lower-funnel purchases to upper-funnel customer acquisition.
That flexibility opens a new customer pipeline for Axon and AppLovin and puts them in a better position to compete with companies like Meta that have historically owned DTC advertisers.
Experts React:
Regarding the launch, Scott Kramer, VP of Growth at DTC beauty brand AS Beauty, posted this on X:
“We’ve been working with them for awhile on this product and have been testing it for the last 2 weeks. The results speak for themselves.”
He also shared a thread with some performance data:
Another DTC growth-focused exec commented that early tests were:
“Solid, but not huge numbers. Running more incrementality tests now.”
Our Take:
AppLovin has had an odd stretch—strong earnings, yet lingering controversies that may or may not have staying power. The stock is down nearly 7% this month, but, to be fair, the markets have been unpredictable overall.
Prospecting gives Axon another way to drive advertiser growth at a time when the company is expanding internationally and trying to broaden perception beyond its developer-side roots.
