Sponsorships are a great way to grow your app. With sponsorships you can fund your app or increase its visibility.
Sponsorships provide a fairly steady and predictable revenue stream for the app owners. Sponsorship also involves lots of freedom in pricing and defining the sponsored packages.
On the other hand, sponsors can greatly benefit from the direct access to their core audience.
In this blog post we’ll talk about app sponsorships and how app owners can successfully monetize their app with sponsorships.
The main sections of the post include:
Let’s dig in.
App sponsorship is a way for a brand (the sponsor) to advertise their products and services in another brand’s app in a way that’s integrated with the content of the app.
The sponsor aims to have their products, services, or messaging integrated into the app's content, features, or user experience, often in a way that aligns with the app's audience and enhances brand visibility.
Sponsorships are exclusive and hand-picked compared to other forms of digital advertising like banner ads. The sponsor pays the brand that owns the app directly.
Sponsored app content is the most effective when the sponsor targets the same core audience as the brand that’s being sponsored. Because of this, sponsors can be interested in paying for a prominent placement in the app in order to promote their business.
Sponsored content in apps is promotional material paid for by the sponsor or advertiser, and shared by another brand, influencer, or publisher in their app.
The content is typically created in partnership between the sponsor and the brand. It is designed to seamlessly blend with the app's original content.
For app owners, in-app sponsorships can:
All in all, app sponsorships are a straightforward and flexible way for app owners to generate revenue.
The benefits of in-app sponsorships for sponsored brands include
App sponsorship provides the sponsor users that are relevant and engaged: users spend more time on apps than websites. When they access your app, it provides a lot of exposure for the sponsor’s brand and content.
Mobile sponsorship is also highly measurable as every impression and click can be tracked. This way your sponsor can really see the impact their sponsored content has. Calculating the ROI is easier than with traditional sponsorship methods.
As app sponsorships are digital, there are very little material costs involved and the deployment is very flexible and quick.
Sponsored app content mockup.
Sponsors can make money from in-app sponsorships in a number of ways:
By placing their products, services, or messaging within an app that targets their desired audience, sponsors can encourage users to take specific actions, such as making a purchase, signing up for a service, or visiting a website.
To drive direct engagement, sponsors can drive app users to unique landing pages, drive them to direct sales, or provide tailored offers or coupons. If your sponsors use landing pages, recommend them to provide you with UTM tags or unique URLs as they can use them to measure the success of the investment.
App sponsorships are also strong in generating brand awareness. In an earlier interview from 2017, Ryan Griffin, Vice President and Group Director of Media and Mobile at Digitas highlighted: “For sponsorships, we generally see lifts in brand impact measures, such as awareness, brand favorability, and purchase intent, that are 1.5–2 times higher than general mobile advertising inclusive of mobile Web and 30–50% percent higher than standard in-app ads”
“The obvious upside of an app sponsorship is the greater degree of integrated brand presence”, Griffin added.
Finding sponsorships for your mobile app requires a strategic approach.
Visibility for sponsors on the splash screen.
Selling app sponsorships involves a clear understanding of both your app's value and the potential sponsor's goals.
There are no universal guidelines to pricing app sponsorships. The key is to understand the real value your app offers to a sponsor. Unlike traditional sponsorships, in-app ads are clickable, editable, and measurable, providing a unique value proposition.
Consider the size and engagement level of your app's user base when setting prices. Sponsorships have been sold for as little as a few hundred dollars to tens of thousands, depending on the app’s reach and the sponsor's objectives.
To increase value for the sponsor and your overall revenue, consider selling sponsorships as part of a complete sponsor package. This might include multiple ad placements, social media promotions, and other forms of brand activation, giving sponsors more extensive exposure and interaction with your audience.
Calculating sponsorship revenue isn't complicated. Read more about app monetization models.
Tips to communicating the value of your app sponsorships:
Be prepared to negotiate the terms of the sponsorship agreement, including the duration, payment method, exclusivity, and termination clauses. A well-documented contract that outlines all these details is crucial for maintaining a professional relationship.
Measuring the success of your app sponsorship is essential for maintaining sponsor relationships and securing future deals. Track key metrics such as
Regularly report these results to your sponsor, providing detailed feedback and suggestions for improvement. This transparency not only validates your performance but also helps build trust and opens the door for sponsorship renewals.
At the end of the contract period, evaluate the outcomes and impacts of the sponsorship.
Consider revenue growth, download rates, user retention, ratings, and social media presence. If the sponsorship was successful, propose a renewal or extension for future projects. Even if the sponsorship ends, maintaining a positive relationship can lead to future opportunities or referrals.
Example of a sponsored banner.
There are several ways you can leverage sponsored content in your app. For example, your app could feature:
Many of our customers have featured sponsored content in their apps. Here are a couple of examples.
The Eurovision Song Contest
The Eurovision Song Contest is the largest live music event in the world, with a world-wide viewership of 163 million watching the contest in 2024.
Bailey’s, the famous Irish cream liqueur brand, was one of the main sponsors of the Eurovision Song Contest 2024 and the official app. On top of logo visibility, the Bailey’s brand featured their own sponsored content section: “Listen for a treat”.
This ingenious section featured extra audio content for those with impaired eyesight. Baileys provided spoken descriptions of each Eurovision performance via a dedicated Spotify playlist, providing more accessibility for the fans.
The Eurovision Song Contest app provided major visibility for Bailey’s, as the app was featured in Apple App Store as “#1 in "Free apps”, “Entertainment apps” and “Apps we ❤️right now” categories during the week of the contest.
Helsinki Cup
The Helsinki Cup is one of the largest junior football tournaments in Europe. The tournament hosts over 20 000 junior players and their families and fans each year.
The tournament, and the Helsinki Cup app, was sponsored by a local Intersport store, which is a part of the larger international sporting goods retailer chain.
The Helsinki Cup app is central to the event, as it has been voted as the #1 communications channel by the participants. The app is active around the year, delivering new information about the tournament, accepting registrations, and so on.
Sponsor activations are also happening around the year. In this case (see picture below), there’s a vote in the app regarding the best-looking pair of football boots, involving a random draw to win the boots among everyone taking part.
This Helsinki Cup x Intersport sponsorship is a great example of a case where the profile of the app users and the target audience of the sponsoring brand overlap.
Estimating app sponsorship revenue – or setting targets – is rather straightforward once you have app sponsorship packages in place. Set targets on how many sponsored spaces or packages you can realistically fit and sell into your app, and sum their prices to get the total income.
We have set up a free Google sheet where you can estimate the revenue of your app from sponsorships, and other monetization methods. The sheet also includes an app cost calculator, and sections for forecasting the profit and ROI of your app.
Try it out, just make a copy of the file for yourself first, to make it editable.
Are you looking to build an app? Do it with Choicely.
Choicely is a No Code App Builder that has been used to create world-class apps for organizations like the Eurovision Song Contest, ITV Studios, Miss Universe and AFTV.
With Choicely, you can build an app in a fraction of the time and cost compared to traditional app development – and have an app running in a matter of mere weeks.
Try our App Makers Quiz to get personalized guides to your app making process, or simply start building your app right away.
And when it comes to In-App Sponsorships and other monetization methods, we can help.