Welcome to a four-piece series, in which we dive into the complex world of Huawei’s ecosystem. In the previous article, we focused on reasons why AppGallery is the best alternative app store choice for developers and gamers (you can find it here).

Today we’re going to explore (formerly HUAWEI Ads), a fast-growing mobile ad platform for publishers, advertisers and marketers. Buckle up, we will give you some answers on how to drive growth and extend your audience using Petal Ads.

Meet Petal Ads

Petal Ads is a mobile advertising ecosystem that was originally designed to serve Huawei device users. The platform serves 1 billion global smart devices helping advertisers reach audiences across borders. Recently, the platform has also expanded beyond Huawei ecosystem. Thanks to ads SDKs Petal Ads can operate via third party apps and third-party networks, which allows reaching any Android device.

Since its launch in 2020, Petal Ads has experienced tremendous growth in its role to empower publishers, advertisers and marketers to grow their businesses and reach more customers. Over the past year, the platform has seen 9x increase in its network of advertisers (2,000+ advertisers in 200+ advertiser industries), 4x increase in its network of publishers (360,000+) and receives 4 billion ad requests daily, with an expectation to grow 400% in 2023. Moreover, 40% of the total of Petal Ads traffic currently comes from within Europe and 49,000 applications are already integrated with Ads Kits.

Petal Ads’ key advantage is that it can operate on its first-party data, derived from a base of 730m global device monthly active users (MAUs); this allows advertisers to precisely target customer information through a cross channel advertising covering the entire user funnel (AppGallery, Display, Search Ads).

As the platform is still relatively new, Huawei has been on a road show to meet developers at numerous events across Europe. From Nordic Games in Stockholm, PocketGamer Connects in Helsinki and DevGAMM in the Baltics, to Mobidictum in Turkey, Dmexco and OMR Festival in Germany and Israel Mobile Summit in Tel Aviv, to name just a few.

Figure 1. Petal Ads run a Masterclass at OMR 2023 in Germany

At each event, the Huawei team shared insight with large audiences of app developers, demonstrating how they can use the many features and benefits of the platform to promote their apps and brands and drive new revenue.

Of course, Petal Ads is an important element in the Huawei Mobile Services (HMS) ecosystem and becoming a part of the Ads platform means having access to over 580 million monthly active users on AppGallery, Huawei’s app store. More than 6 million developers worldwide have registered to join Huawei’s developer alliance, and over 223,000 apps have been integrated with HMS Core.

The platform also taps into an extensive coverage of Huawei devices in China with a market-leading active user base at 25% market share. This advantage leads the way in engaging both global and high-value Huawei audiences, such as the over 60 million Chinese travellers, connecting advertisers to international and Chinese markets.

How publishers benefit

“Our support works in two ways, said Jaime Gonzalo, VP Huawei Mobile Services Europe. “We enable publishers who are interested in monetising their inventory and we provide advertisers with a forum to grow awareness for their apps and enhance their brands.”

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

Petal Ads platform assists by generating advertising revenues from content. There are three main benefits for publishers – a quick and easy integration process that can see an app integrated in less than half a day; high revenue share, often 10% more than publishers would get on other platforms, and high CPM compared to other ad networks; and a commitment to delivering a quality ad experience within apps.

There are four integration stages. If you are not already on AppGallery, you can start with a developer account where you can register and upload your app to the store and go live on the HMS ecosystem. Using Petal Ads Publisher, you will be asked to use specific ad and creative formats before they integrate with the Petal Ads SDK, all of which are very simple and quick. A round-the-clock technical team is available to support the integration and ensure the app works correctly. Then it goes live.

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 not just to publisher content on AppGallery, but to Huawei’s proprietary apps such as Huawei Browser, Petal Search, Petal Maps and Huawei Assistant.

How advertisers benefit

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

When it comes to customer tags, you can create an audience based on rules or other specific profiles, including localisation. With a local footprint in most regional markets, Petal Ads provides you with a gateway to international markets including China. You can upload prospect and customer lists into the Petal Ads system to ensure they can be targeted and retargeted. You can also use behavioural marketing based on whether customers have clicked on specific ads.

Placement options are a powerful way to reach customers, including 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, and advertisers can bid on formats like cost-per-install and cost-per-acquisition plus other mobile models that will be launched soon.

Jaime Gonzalo explained: “On AppGallery, high profile advertising includes featured page category ranking which generates greater visibility and downloads, while featured pages present the app in response to users’ usual preferences. 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 Search also drives downloads. This Huawei-owned tool comes installed on Huawei devices and includes a special feature for apps allowing advertisers to reach consumers who are actively looking. This minimises the distance between publishers, advertisers and the end user. Petal Search supports the discovery experience with visual and voice search capabilities and allows 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%.

Getting creative

Providing the platform and the audience is not all that Petal Ads delivers. To amplify your creative content, you can access different ad formats designed to address a variety of campaign targets. This might be the splash displayed when an app 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 within an app, native is perfectly integrated into the content, and interstitial shows the ad format displayed at specific app transition points. Finally, the app icon is displayed when an app is launched and designed for branding advertising.

You have the option to set a maximum bid price for your campaigns, which gives you full control over your budget and enable you to track results accurately using Huawei’s measurement solutions. Petal Ads also integrates with AppsFlyer, Adjust, Kovacha, Singular and Szmok which are specific third-party vendors designed to control attribution conversion rates.

The last word

“The development of Petal Ads has not been in isolation. Over the past year we have expanded the number of apps that also integrate with HMS Core, 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,” said Jaime Gonzalo. “Combine these with Petal Ads and they make a healthy interconnected ecosystem which works in synergy to support our developer partners and meet the needs of our customers.”

If you want to learn more about Petal Ads, check our website and sign up for a dedicated Newsletter.

That’s a wrap for today and we’ll hopefully meet you soon in our last article of this series about AppGallery. Stay tuned!