McDonald’s has more than 36,000 restaurant locations across 100 countries and is one of the most well-known food service brands worldwide. When they launched their new global app in Spain, they worked with a leading agency, OMD Spain, and Aura to spread awareness of the launch and scale their user base.
Using Aura’s unique on-device placements and granular insights, they engaged users directly on their devices, achieving a 64% launch rate (first app open) and driving over 34,500 downloads on premium publishers such as Orange, Vodafone, and Samsung. Read the full story below.
Out with the old, in with the new global app
Recently, McDonald’s shifted their app strategy from multiple, localized apps to a single global app that caters to the diverse needs of their growing customer base across the world. With the new global app’s release, their goal was to spread awareness and drive installs in the Spanish market, which led OMD Spain to seek an innovative user acquisition partner like Aura, which uses unique placements to reach users at scale directly on their devices at the times they’re most engaged.
Reaching users directly on device with strong creatives and optimized targeting
Pairing Aura’s setup experience and smart notifications, McDonald’s Spain was able to meet users from the moment they unboxed their new device throughout the device lifecycle. The setup experience placement showed the McDonald’s app to relevant users from the moment they switched on their new devices, offering them to select the apps they would most likely use again and again. Getting in front of users at critical moments early in the device lifecycle helped the McDonald’s app become the food app of choice for users over the long-term.
"Pairing Aura’s setup experience and smart notifications, McDonald’s Spain was able to meet users from the moment they unboxed their new device throughout the device lifecycle."
To reach additional users beyond initial unboxing, McDonald’s Spain used timely, relevant notifications based on contextual triggers like location and device model.
Aura tested iterations of notification creatives using the same promotional messaging - download the app for a €1.50 Big Mac - and different images. Users could click to install the McDonald’s app from the notification without having to go to the app store, which created a frictionless experience and drove more installs.
The Aura team also leveraged the solution’s targeting capabilities and optimized the campaign to reach specific cities and carriers. For example, looking at the campaign across cities in Spain revealed a different launch rate in Palma (30%) and Granada (22%). Data like this let the OMD Spain team see a granular breakdown of campaign performance, and together with the Aura team could help them make better, data-driven decisions. For example, the top 5 cities according to download are:
Scaling with a 64% launch rate and driving over 34K installs
The best-performing creative had a 64% launch rate, which combined with the Aura team’s iterations on existing creatives helped drive launches effectively and at scale. In fact, McDonald’s Spain achieved over 34,500 installs thanks to the effectiveness of Aura’s placements and creatives. This focus on testing and improving the campaign over time boosted the overall average launch rate from 22% to 42%, as illustrated by the graph below.
OMD Spain relied on data from Aura’s customized and dedicated advertiser analytics dashboard to see how well the campaign was performing - granular breakdowns provided valuable insight into performance across user segments. The platform’s clear and accessible setup made it easy for OMD Spain to check performance daily, make better, data-driven decisions, and pull reports for key partners at McDonald’s Spain. Because Aura rests directly on a user’s device, OMD Spain felt assured that the data they were seeing and reporting on was safe and accurate.
The future looks like on-device campaigns
By partnering with Aura, OMD Spain and McDonald’s Spain achieved their goal to scale app installs and track them with analytics that go deeper than most other performance marketing channels we work with. McDonald’s Spain and OMD Spain are already planning to run more campaigns together with Aura and continue to drive scale.
