Glossary
What is OEM advertising?
OEM advertising is delivered through original equipment manufacturer partnerships — preinstalled apps, home screen recommendations, and placements in a device maker's own app store or setup flow.
The placements
- Preinstall. The app ships on the device. Maximum presence, and the user did not choose it.
- Dynamic preload. The app is installed on first boot or during setup rather than shipped in the image.
- Home screen recommendation. A suggested app in a folder or recommendation strip.
- Alternative app store placement, in the manufacturer's own store rather than the platform default.
- Setup flow. Suggested during device onboarding, when the user is actively choosing what to install.
Why advertisers use it
Scale and a different competitive set. OEM inventory reaches users at the moment a device is new, before habits have formed, and it is not competing in the same auction as the rest of mobile.
It is particularly significant outside the markets where the two dominant app stores hold near-total share — in several large markets, manufacturer stores and preload deals are a primary distribution route rather than a supplementary one.
The quality caveat
Install volume from preloads is not the same thing as user acquisition, and the gap is wider than in most channels.
A preinstalled app has been placed on a device belonging to someone who never asked for it. Open rates are low, retention is poor, and a meaningful proportion of installs never produce a session at all. Judged on CPI the channel looks extremely cheap; judged on activated users it frequently is not.
The measurement discipline is straightforward and often skipped: cohort OEM installs separately, judge them on activation and retention rather than on install count, and never blend them into a blended CPI that decisions are made from.
Dynamic preload and setup-flow placements, where the user makes some choice, generally produce materially better cohorts than silent preinstalls.
Common questions
Is OEM traffic fraudulent?
Not inherently — the installs are real. The issue is intent: a user who did not choose the app behaves very differently from one who did, which is a quality question rather than a fraud one.
How should I price an OEM deal?
Against activated users or a downstream event, not against installs. If the partner will only sell on installs, discount your bid by the activation gap you measure in the first cohort.
More in programmatic and supply
The exchanges, platforms and inventory an impression passes through.