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Mobile affiliate networks

Posted on April 29th, 2010 by admin

Affiliate marketing on mobile is a relatively new development, online, affiliate marketing is a huge business generating billions in revenue.  Historically, mobile advertising has focused on CPC or CPM based advertising – mobile affiliate marketing pays on the basis of CPA or Pay Per lead.    This can be very profitable if you find traffic that converts well – for example, you can easily get $5.00 for some programs for each registration, compared to a few cents for a click if you are using a mobile ad network like admob to make money from your mobile traffic.  Higher value mobile affiliate offers also open up the possibility of buying in mobile traffic from ad networks on an arbitrage basis as we have previously covered in our post on making money using admob PPC.

However, it’s not easy to find mobile affiliate networks to work with.   We’ve listed all of the networks active in mobile affiliate marketing over on our directory of mobile affiliate networks – here’s a review of some of the best.

Mobpartner

moblogo

Mobpartner is probably the biggest mobile affiliate network at the moment in terms of publishers with tens of thousands of affiliates.  They offer a range of programs from adult, to casino to applications, focused on the mobile web.   Mobpartner pay quickly via paypal and are a great alternative to using CPC networks such as admob.  Mobpartner do have many campaigns focused on particular countries but also a range of worldwide and international mobile affiliate programs.

Yeahmobi

Yeahmobi is a relatively new mobile CPA network.  They offer 100% fill rates and high quality offers ranging from mobile content to apps.  For advertisers and merchants they are offering services such as real time optimization.

Sponsormob

Sponsormob runs a very successful CPA-based affiliate network for mobile and has recently launched an advanced tracking tool for iphone applications.  They offer a large number of high quality programs and have excellent tracking technology.

Liquid Wireless

Liquid Wireless is the leader in mobile lead generation programs and is very strong in the US market.  They offer a number of unique mobile CPA and pay per lead offers such as surveys, loan consolidation and other services.

Offermobi

Offermobi has recently launched a mobile affiliate network focused on the US.  They are running a number of campaigns and look like one to watch.  In particular, offermobi looks like it will offer a number of pay per call products.

Conclusion

Although mobile affiliate marketing is in the early days its well worth giving some of these networks a try.    The early people to get into affiliate marketing online made a fortune and the same could be true on mobile.  Let us know how you get on!

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Offermobi

Posted on April 29th, 2010 by admin
offermobi

Make money with the offermobi.com affiliate network

OfferMobi.com is the first affiliate network focused on the mobile web. Led by industry veterans and leaders, we strive to bring our partners the very best service, pricing, and overall strategy to ensure growth for everyone.

For our Advertisers, we provide the ability to drive high quality, high volume acquistions with no risk, as our entire network is on a cost per acquisition model. We help with strategy and optimization to ensure the best consumers.

For our Affiliates, we give our affiliates the opportunity to generate additional income from their traffic, as we offer a wide Variety of offers, as well as valuable account services and updates. From big brand names to exclusive offers, we have them here.

Join the offermobi affiliate network

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Carnival of the Mobilists over at Mobienthusiast

Posted on April 29th, 2010 by admin

Another Carnival of the Mobilists over at Mobienthusiast this week.  Holly has done a great job reviewing all the latest and greatest mobile posts so go check it out.

Mobile marketing for the online casino industry – iphone, ipad or i dont know?

Posted on April 25th, 2010 by admin
This is an article which will be out soon in igaming magazine - publishing here as they don’t have a digital service.  It basically looks at what the opportunities are in mobile marketing for the online casino and gaming sector.
Mobile marketing for the online casino industry – iphone, ipad or i dont know?
According to the Wall St Analyst Mary Meeker, mobile represents a new wave of computing, on a par with previous technological cycles such as the desktop PC revolution.  She predicts that within the next five years more users will connect to the Internet over mobile devices than desktop PCs”.  Her most recent report points out that whilst some companies will “Win Big” from mobile, others will get left behind and will “Wonder What Just Happened”.

Already many Casino and gaming operators, affiliate networks, service providers, brands and marketers have begun to move into mobile.  However, as fast as the industry moves, it is hard to keep up with the new trends in mobile, which is developing at an incredible rate.  Just as the casino sector got to grips with the mobile web, along came the iphone and applications wave.  Now, just as the industry is beginning to understand the iphone along comes the ipad – another potentially explosive new platform and form factor – taking the mobile concept to the PC, rather than the PC concept to mobile.

So how can new and existing players in the market stay current and relevant on this evolving platform and how can they make the most of the opportunities available?

The Story so far

The landgrab for the mobile casino market has already begun. The likes of Spin3, Playtech and others have already deployed sophisticated platforms covering a range of games types.  Spin3 has a large number of brands active on its mobile platform including Ladbrokes, Jackpot City, All Slots Casino and Wild Jack Mobile Casino.  The mobile casino brand mfortune has begun advertising on television whilst a recent study by Comscore suggested that 7.6% of Smartphone users play mobile casino games. Major brands from the sports betting world such as William Hill are also ramping up promotion of their mobile services.  Affiliate networks such as Income Access, Brightshare, Euro Partners and Affiliates United have all begun recruiting for mobile casinos.  At mobyaffiliates.com, our directory of mobile affiliate programs, we have found that the market is dominated by the casino sector – which has rapidly overtaken other areas such as ringtones.
However, success so far has been patchy to say the least and many players are yet to see any positive return from their investment in mobile.  Mobile is in many ways much more complex than the PC environment that the online casino sector is used to.  Instead of catering to a handful of different browsers and one dominant operating system (Windows), the mobile channel is extremely fragmented across different operating systems, browsers and handsets. It is notable that mfortune, one of the more successful mobile casino brands is operated by a team from outside of the online sector.
In order to succeed on mobile and make get a return on investment what issues do existing industry players and new entrants have to consider on mobile?

What handsets and platforms to target?

The main complexity that mobile brings is the issue of dealing with multiple operating systems  and hundreds of devices.  This brings additional costs and operational overhead in terms of adapting services for each particular device.  The major operating systems at present are iphone, android, Symbian, Windows Mobile and Blackberry, but there are also niche platforms such as Palm, Maemo and Mobile Linux – just to increase the complexity further.

As a result, an increasingly common approach for mobile service providers is to focus on iphone-only development. The iphone has a much lower installed base of handsets than other platforms such as Symbian (used by Nokia) however, it is the most commercially attractive option for many mobile service providers due to the type of users (early adopters) and the high rates of usage for apps and mobile internet.  However, this approach leaves a large proportion of the potential market inaccessible, and for some services, including casino, an iphone audience may not be the most commercially attractive. In addition, Apple’s iphone App Store is heavily controlled, which means that many casino services are unable to get listed. However, Darren Pollard of Mayfair Mobile Gaming states that the situation is more nuanced than a blanket ban, “Although there is a generally accepted rule that Apple will not approve and/or support real-money gambling Apps on its iTunes App Store, these stores are run in regionally specific silos, so gambling operators should look to building relationships with influential people in these value chains in countries where gambling is legally and socially acceptable such as the United Kingdom.”

Android, Google’s mobile operating system, has many of the advantages of the iphone in terms of usability but is a much more open platform.  There are a wide range of independent app stores for android which will host all types of applications and the Android Market (Google’s app store) is much less controlled that the Apple app store. A wide range of devices are now being produced by a range of manufacturers using Android which means that it will attract a wider group of users than the high-priced iphone.  Although android doesn’t have as much market traction as the iphone it is catching up fast and some commentators expect it to become the dominant mobile operating system over time.
As a result a number of casino services are now focusing on a “dual platform” strategy that focuses on both iphone and Android.  In terms of the other platforms, Blackberry suffers from a  commercial point of view from the fact that the devices are often linked to company accounts which means that they are not always able to install new applications or take payments for games.  However, with Blackberry increasingly moving into the consumer market it is also becoming a potentially attractive operating system to target.  Symbian, used by Nokia has the largest base of handsets, but suffers from version fragmentation making it harder to develop applications.  However, given the potential scale of the market, Symbian is still worth considering if you are willing to deal with the head-aches involved in working with the platform.
Focus on the mobile web – not apps?

An alternative to choosing one or two operating systems or taking on the high costs of serving multiple OS is to focus on developing for the mobile web rather than applications.  Creating a mobile web site using HTML creates a platform-neutral service which can be used across iphone, Android, Symbian and all types of handsets.  In addition, a mobile web ite does not have to be accepted onto an app store which provides more flexibility for the casino sector on some platforms and in some markets.  Whilst a mobile-web based service cannot handle some of the rich interaction that can be provided using an application it is an adequate platform for a large number of services and is only increasing in power as mobile handset browsers improve and new web standards emerge.  For example, the new HTML 5 standard promises to allow much richer mobile web experiences on platforms including the iphone, and is potentially where gaming platform companies should concentrate their efforts.
User education is key

There have been a plethora of well documented issues plaguing the mobile gambling industry over the last five years in terms of user-education. This is to a large degree what is hampering take-up of the platform amongst casino players. Mayfair Mobile Gaming’s Darren Pollard says, “online gambling companies have not done themselves any favors by not addressing the issue of “mobile specific education” which has long been the Achilles heel on the uptake of mobile gambling” Gaming companies need to do much more to educate potential players on mobile specific issues such as data charges, network dropouts (players should not login to play a real money game on their mobile if they are about to get on the subway) and ease of discovery and installation of the mobile gambling application. Darren Pollard notes that “Although Apple has done a great job on user education with its user-friendly iTunes/iPhone ecosystem, the “true gambler” is not necessarily going to have an iPhone or Android device.”

what about the ipad and other emerging mobile platforms?

Increasingly, mobile internet is becoming more about other types of devices than the mobile handset.  For a while now a number of publishers and developers have found that web-enabled games devices such as the PSP account for a significant proportion of their mobile traffic.  In addition, the ipod touch has become a major source of traffic and usage for mobile web sites and “iphone” applications.

Now it appears that another category of web-enabled tablet devices might be the next big thing on mobile after the successful launch of the Apple’s ipad.  Already, the ipad has sold over half a million units and a range of similar devices are set to be released by competitors.  Potentially, Apple could have created another device class for the mobile web, which could fit very well with casino and other gaming services, perhaps more so than the mobile handset.   Some casino brands will already be developing specific web sites and applications for the ipad in order to take advantage of this new opportunity.  Whilst existing websites or apps designed for the iphone do work on the ipad it is likely that specially adapted services will be most successful in the long run.
So, whilst mobile does represent a big new market, operators and other industry players need to clearly understand the channel before making a play.  The right choices need to be made about which platforms and devices to target, and the most appropriate approach to product development.   The mobile platform keeps evolving at a rapid pace so ongoing investment is required to keep up to date with the latest opportunities.  However, given the growth of the platform, for those who succeed, the rewards will be enormous.
James Coops is the founder of mobyaffiliates.com, which helps merchants and networks to recruit affiliates for the mobile channel and enables affiliates to find the best mobile programs to make money on mobile.  He also runs mjelly.com – a directory of mobile sites and applications that helps publishers and developers to get traffic to their mobile services.
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Mobile affiliate marketing using PPC – using targeting to increase conversions

Posted on April 16th, 2010 by admin

Following last week’s post on using PPC mobile ad networks like admob for mobile affiliate marketing here’s an update – showing how using targeting can increase your conversions. The table below shows the results from changing targeting on PPC traffic from aiming at smartphones in general (iphone, android etc) to focus on a specific mobile operator network.  As you can see, targeting a specific operator increased the conversion rate from 2% to between 17%-19%.  The revenue per click increased from 1c to over 8c.

Conversions using PPC mobile advertising clicks – Smartphone vs Mobile Network based targeting

Day Targeting clicks conversions Conversion Rate Payout ($) Revenue per Click
1 Smartphone 725 11 2% 4.95 0.01
2 Network 564 107 19% 48.15 0.09
3 Network 703 121 17% 54.45 0.08
4 Network 537 97 18% 43.65 0.08

With each click costing just 5c this made the campaign ultra profitable – we are talking margins of nearly 100%. So the holy grail of mobile PPC arbitrage is possible, you just need the right targeting. In this case targeting a specific mobile network was better than targeting by handset.  The type of customer particular networks have can be a more attractive audience than that of a particular handset.   These type of targeting issues simply don’t arise in the online world, so there’s clearly plenty of opportunity out there for those (like us) that can get it right!

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Carnival of the Mobilists

Posted on April 12th, 2010 by admin

This week’s Carnival of the Mobilists is over at http://arjw.wordpress.com/2010/04/12/carnival-of-the-mobilists-219/

There’s three sets of posts with great mobile blogging from the likes of msearchgroove and more so go check it out

Mobile affiliate marketing using admob PPC

Posted on April 7th, 2010 by admin

Ok so a lot of people are getting interested in mobile affiliate marketing and whether there is a PPC arbitrage model yet on mobile.  Can you take traffic from a pay per click mobile advertising network such as admob or inmobi and drive it to a CPA-based mobile affiliate program and make a profit?

In some cases this can work, but it needs very careful management, tracking and targeting.  One of the issues with mobile advertising at the moment is that the quality of a lot of traffic on the blind mobile ad networks if of questionable quality, which makes conversions pretty poor in a lot of cases.  Here’s an example – the chart below shows the results from two different types of traffic – using organic traffic on a site controlled by us, and using traffic bought on admob.   The creative, landing page and offer was exactly the same in both cases however the conversion rate was hugely different.

Comparison of organic and admob traffic performance

As you can see from the data the organic traffic performed over 25 times better in terms of conversions.  Despite having 3.5 times as many clicks the traffic from admob only delivered less than 25% of the revenue of the organic traffic.  We have had a lot of success using admob for various things and it is a fantastic tool but you need to be very clever about how you test and target by geography, handset and platform to get the most out of it.

So – what should affiliate marketers take from this?  No you should not totally rule out using PPC on mobile, but it is very hard to make it work – just like on the PC web.  Let us know any questions in the comments or on our forum and we’ll try and answer them.



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Carnival of the Mobilists over at Mobsessed

Posted on April 6th, 2010 by admin

Carl Martin over at Mobsessed is hosting this week’s Carnival of the Mobilists and included a mobyaffiliates post on mobile app affiliate marketing.   Carl’s done a great job of reviewing all the various post and there’s plenty of good stuff in there so head on over for the best of mobile blogging!

Affiliate marketing for mobile apps

Posted on April 5th, 2010 by admin

If you are an app developer then cutting through the noise is becoming increasingly difficult, with 100,000s of apps out there and increasingly well organized competition from some big emerging players with multiple apps in the store.  There are a range of different ways you can promote your application including PR, getting on review sites, appstore SEO, viral, link exchanges, buying space on mobile ad networks and so on.

An emerging way of app promotion is on a pay per download or affiliate basis.  App developers only pay for each download – so you don’t waste money on clicks which don’t convert into users.  Developers can target by geography, handset and so on.  There are a range of different options for going down this route and here’s a few of them.  Let us know in the comments if you know any more.

Getjar – getjar is the biggest “open appstore” in the world with massive traffic.  As well as listing your app for free, developers can pay for additional downloads on a CPA starting at $0.01 per download.  Getjar have so much traffic that they can deliver MILLIONS of downloads on this basis to all types of handsets.

Mobango – Mobango operate a similar open appstore to Getjar although on a smaller scale.  However, Mobango do have very strong traffic and can also guarantee millions of downloads on a pay per download basis.  Mobango support all kinds of platforms from J2ME to Symbian to Android.

Sponsormob – our friends over at sponsormob operate a mobile affiliate network based out of Germany.  They recently developed an affiliate based tracking system for the iphone.  Developers can now use the sponsormob affiliate network to promote mobile apps on a CPA basis.

Apprupt – hosts a range of “appstores” on various partner sites including big media brands mobile portals in addition to a network of developer apps.  These appstores and apps are used to pump out downloads on an affiliate basis.  Apprupt allow developers to use credits they get from delivering downloads for others to spend on themselves.  A great performance based network for apps and well worth checking out.

Burstly – a new mobile ad optimizer and analytics tools which is also promoting a CPA based app download / link exchange service focused on the iphone.  Not many details as yet but this looks like one to watch.

Let us know if you are using other ways of promoting apps on an affiliate or CPA basis and we’ll add them into this post.

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Offerpal pushing CPA-based network

Posted on April 1st, 2010 by admin

This just hit the mobile monday mailing list

For all you developers / marketeers who’ve traditionally promoted iPhone apps by ad networks on a CPC basis Offerpal bring to the UK a new way to distribute (and monetise) your app.

Offerpal Media is the leader in distribution services for applications on the iPhone operating exclusively on a cost per install basis.

Only when a user has downloaded and opened an app promoted on our network of 1,700 apps does the advertiser pay. We’ve helped dozens of apps break into the top 25 in the App Store including Google Mobile app, Shazam and Flixster.

Integration is quick and easy either using our SDK or server 2 server.

Email me to find out more paul.bowen@offerpal.com

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