PWA App Fundamentals: From the Team Leads at Improve Team

PWA apps are web applications that use modern web technologies to deliver an experience comparable to native mobile apps. They combine the best of both websites and mobile apps. PWAs support push notifications, load quickly, and deliver high performance. They can be installed directly from the browser, bypassing app store restrictions — which is especially important for gambling.

WebView apps are mobile applications that use a WebView component to display web content inside a native app. Essentially, they are containers that run a website — i.e., the offer receiving traffic — as part of a mobile application. They need to be published on Google Play and go through a moderation process.

The key difference between WebView and PWA apps is that WebView doesn't offer media buyers the same flexibility as PWA. WebView apps depend on the app store moderation process, which limits their lifespan and creates scaling challenges.

Due to the severe moderation issues currently affecting the WebView app market, this impacts ad performance and earning potential for both media buying teams and advertisers — traffic quality also suffers with standard WebView apps. PWA, on the other hand, allows you to bypass these restrictions, providing greater flexibility, speed, and reliability.

Google Play introduced new policies that made app moderation significantly stricter. On top of that, after an app is released, Google Play now scrutinizes it closely, and the app gets blocked literally within 2–3 days. There are exceptions, but there's no predictable app lifespan. Our first attempts to use PWA were back 3 years ago, when we ran into launch issues while uploading via WebView — but the problems soon disappeared and we went back to WebView apps.

Now, having to reload a massive number of ad campaigns 5–20 times a day due to app bans, we decided to take a closer look at PWA — and the tests proved successful. Currently, 80% of our total traffic is PWA.

For the most part, PWA apps allow you to fully replicate the app page in Google Play and customize every detail — from the app design to the "Install" button.

A strong, aggressive app design, a well-crafted description, and reviews — that's what drives guaranteed conversion.

A player sees a creative in an ad, clicks the link, and lands on a fake Google Play that motivates them to install the app, register, and play. The motivation is reinforced by the variables mentioned above. Add a perfect creative — app — landing page funnel on top of that and hit the right audience, and success is guaranteed.

Optimization happens through Meta Pixel, which collects player events. Let me show you just how effective PWAs can be and how many events you can collect when using them:

On pixel setup — if you don't have a pixel yet and are just planning to launch PWAs, you can migrate the audience from the app to the pixel. You can also buy a "seasoned" pixel with a ready-made audience and events already collected.

But our recommendation is to create your own pixel and start training it yourself. We've now split pixels by GEO, and it's already delivering results.

Early in testing, results will definitely be expensive. We ourselves didn't get PWAs to work on the first try.

Don't get discouraged if the tests don't pan out right away. The most important thing is to improve your approach with each new test — try more unique creatives, look at what might be off with the design, and so on.

At the start, I'm certain there will also be issues with the pixel. Running traffic to a pixel with 0 events versus one with thousands of events — those are two completely different things. So if you have the option, run traffic to an already optimized pixel, or put all your effort into optimizing a new one as quickly as possible.

We have established a dedicated PWA development department, and according to our plan, we'll be moving it into active operations within the next month.

Having our own PWAs is critically important to us — we need to be confident in every single detail. Right now, no variable can be left unattended.

Our advice is simple: test, test, and test again. There's no way around it. Try out different vendors and creatives, talk to your peers, look for information online (there's plenty of it out there), attend conferences, and network. Profit to all 🙂