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Kissmyads affiliate achieving $1000s per day in revenue

Posted on July 6th, 2011 by admin

The German based mobile affiliate network Kissmyads is reporting that some of their affiliates are achieving great results with their mobile CPA offers.  According to a recent update from the team there a number of affiliates are doing $100s per day in revenue and the top affiliate is well into the $1000s per day.   The network has just launched a load of new offers in countries including the UK, Asia and so on.

So give it a go and start making money with kissmyads today

Here’s the update from the Kissmyads team:

Thank you again for signing up as an affiliate of KissMyAds, a forerunner in Mobile Affiliate Marketing. Today, we would like to send you a short update about our service, which has started to really take off over the recent weeks. By now, we have signed up partners in the US, major European countries such as the UK, Germany, France and Spain, in key Asian countries such as India, Pakistan, the ASEAN states and China.

NEW OFFERS IN OUR SYSTEM

We are happy to announce that the range of offers is growing fast. So why don’t you check our platform today and see what advertising works well with for target audience. We currently feature new mobile-specific offers – mobile video entertainment services, social networks, and more. Our team is also in talks with new, some very high profile advertisers on a daily basis.

GROWING REVENUES FOR ACTIVE AFFILIATES

We are proud to mention that some of our affiliates are telling success stories. Implementing targeted strategies to spread the word of the featured offers, we now have marketing partners in many parts of the world that report daily revenues of several hundred US Dollars. Currently, our high performer achieves four-digit USD revenues on a daily basis.

Start making money with kissmyads today

New mobile lead generation features at sponsormob

Posted on June 30th, 2011 by admin

Some news in from our friends over at sponsormob.  They have recently launched a new mobile lead generation feature called “Host and Post”.

Host and Post allows Sponsormob to host sign-up forms on mobile, collecting qualified leads on behalf of Advertisers and passing the information on successfully.
Advertisers simply let us take their internet landing pages and place them on Mobile. Sponsormob then gather the information and send it to the Advertiser.


It is interesting that sponsormob are moving to service mobile lead generation and data capture.  This is proving to be one of the fastest growing areas of the mobile marketing and mcommerce markets at the moment.


Sponsormob also mention that they will also be adding Click-to-Call. This feature will let Advertisers connect with users on the go, maximizing revenues.  This could provide a lot of advantages – increased revenue, accessing users directly, increased conversions.


Great to see sponsormob making waves and we’ll keep you updated for when they announce the launch of more features.

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May Carnival of the Mobilists over at Francisco Kattan

Posted on June 2nd, 2011 by admin

So the Carnival of the Mobilists is back for May hosted over at Francisco Kattan’s blog.  The Carnival provides a round up of the best mobile blogging over the last month.   There are posts on mobile app business models, a mobile coupons post by the mighty Russel Buckley (formerly of Admob), a major thought piece by Ajit Joakar on Telco 2.0 and analysis of Nokia and Windows Mobile 7.   Fransico also included the Mobyaffiliates piece on making money from mobile marketing.   There’s also pieces covering mobile games, Meego and more.  So go check it out!

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Is it possible to make money from mobile affiliate marketing?

Posted on June 1st, 2011 by admin

As with any new medium, the growth of mobile is creating lots of new opportunities to make money.  One area that is getting a lot of interest at the moment is mobile affiliate marketing.   There is clearly huge potential from this business model which could tranform the economics of mobile web and app publishing if it takes off.   At the same time, huge new opportunities for individuals to make money on mobile could open up.  In the hyper-growth mobile markets in the developing world, this could create a whole new industry for entreprenuerial individuals to generate income from the mobile platform.   For those involved in the mobile industry who have the knowledge of mobile web and apps this could be a huge personal opportunity – in the same way that affliate marketing benefited the early web industry workers who started playing around with sites.   However, there are real questions about the maturity of the affiliate marketing business model on mobile at present, and a number of barriers remain.

Affiliate marketing a key revenue generator in the online market

In the online / PC – focused world affiliate marketing is well established as a key source of revenue from a range of different sites and services.  Revenue is generated by sending users to carry out a transaction on another site or platform – for example to a retailer or airline.  The advantage to the site is obvious – they dont have to carry any stock themselves (as an ecommerce retailer would) or deliver the actual service (as an airline or ticketing agent would).   Sites can work with a range of different providers, creating a very flexible operating model.  Taking a share of the  value of the goods and services provided (typically in the low % points) can deliver a significant CPA (cost per action) payout for each transaction for the publisher, especially for high-value items (travel, financial services for example).   Similarly, for lower value items, a high volume of referrals can also deliver scale of revenue.   So – taking this business model to mobile could unlock a range of additional income streams for the industry.

Major sites such as Trip Advisor (Travel) drive most of their revenue from the affiliate model, but what is more interesting perhaps is that 10000s of individuals have been able to earn a living from it.  The characteristics of the affiliate business model that we noted above (no need for inventory, flexibility) have made it a great way for individual web entrepreneurs to generate income.   With commodity tools like wordpress and google ads individual affiliates can quickly create an online business in a niche they are interested in based on affliate marketing.

So – the question is – are the conditions right for this business model to move onto mobile?  For a number of reasons, it does seem like 2011 is the year that mobile affliate marketing will take off – creating huge new opportunities to make money for businesses and individuals.

The conditions for making money from affliate marketing on mobile are coming into place

A number of trends and enablers are coming together in 2011 to support the emergence of the affliate business model on mobile – growing usage, media buying opportunities, affiliate networks on mobile and mcommerce taking off.

Growing Usage

Mobile has reached a critical mass in terms of consumer adoption.  Mobile web usage is growing at triple digit rates and has moved from the early adopters into the mainstream, with services like facebook and twitter driving adoption of mobile internet.  At the same time, Apps have hugely increased consumers uptake of mobile services and provided a distribution and discovery channel for different services.  This has created the fundamental platform for mobile affiliate marketing that has been lacking in the past, when compared with the web.

Media buying opportunities

Having a mobile audience is all very well, but useless as an affiliate marketer if you can’t reach it.  The growth of mobile ad networks such as admob has created a channel to reach consumers in an increasingly targeted way – for example by handset, country, operator and demographic.  This allows marketers to target their mobile audience to particular offers.  At the same time, the growth in mobile search has opened up more buying opportunities in terms of search engine marketing buys.  Previously, the volume of mobile searches meant that there was limited volumes of this type of inventory but the growth seen on google mobile and other search engines has changed this.  As a result there are now plenty of channels for reaching consumers with commercial services.

Affiliate networks on mobile

Affiliate networks provide the transactional glue that links consumer , marketers and merchants.   However, to date, the major networks such as TradeDoubler, Buy.at and Commission Junction have been slow to move onto mobile.  This is partly due to lack of demand but also because their underlying tracking technologies did not work in the mobile environment where things such as cookies are not as reliable.   There have been a couple of mobile focused affiliate networks active for a while including mobpartner and sponsormob.  Howevever, 2010 and 11 have seen a massive growth in other mobile-focused affiliate ad networks including Kissmyads, Moolah Media, Apprupt and others.  In addition, the online networks have also made a bigger effort to make their services compatible with mobile – Linkshare has said that it aims for all its services to work on the platform.

Mcommerce taking off

This Christmas was the first time that mcommerce really started to get traction.  Not only were consumers using mobile but they were starting to buy on it.  Players like eBay, Dominos Pizza and others all reported huge surges in spending via mobile apps and sites.  Big retailers like Marks and Spencer and Tesco in the UK started to launch mobile commerce sites and apps.  All this means that spending and retail are starting to move onto mobile – creating the opportunity for marketers to make money – whether that’s big mobile publishers or apps or kids in the garage or bedroom.

Barriers to making money on mobile still remain

Despite all this, there are still some major barriers to affiliate marketing on mobile.   As a result, a lot of marketers coming from the online world are finding that their fingers are getting burned.  This is really the subject of another post but in summary the key roadblocks include:

The lack of an effective Mobile SEO strategy – in the online world many affiliate use organic search engine marketing/ SEO as a channel.  However, on mobile it is very hard to rank in the search engines with a mobile-only service – google typically prioritises PC-focused sites in the mobile search results

High value offers still missing – whilst mcommerce has moved onto mobile there is still a lack of really high value offers to promote.  Travel, financial services and retail typically do not provide mobile affiliate programs which are dominated by lower value items such as apps, mobile content and so on

Technological hurdles to tracking transactions – as noted above key technologies such as cookies are still unreliable on mobile which is preventing

Merchants slow to roll out services – amazon runs one of the biggest affiliate programs on the web but still does not allow mobile sales to count towards the total, probably for reasons of tracking.  With big players like this being slow to move, this means that the rest of the merchants also have less impetus to make sure their own inhouse network or affliate network partner is tooled up for mobile.

Successful affiliate strategies and techniques still being developed – online there are lots of well developed approaches to making money from afffiliate marketing via things like PPC arbitrage or in certain sectors.  However, on mobile these are still very nascent so there is less information and experience about what works and what does not work.  For example, the mobyaffiliates post on using mobile network targeting to increase conversions is a good example of useful learnings.

    So – whilst the time is right to start looking at the affiliate marketing model on mobile it is by no means easy to make money on the platform just yet.  We’ll be covering some of the emerging success stories here on mobyaffliates in the coming year.

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    Mobile Affiliate Marketing in New Media Age

    Posted on May 15th, 2011 by admin

    New Media Age is one of the leading magazines in the UK covering the digital media and digital marketing sector.  They just featured a large article all about mobile affiliate marketing.  The guys over at DC Storm have linked to the article from their site with a quote fromNeil Sampson, Head of New Business at DC Storm highlighted.

    You can grab the pdf here

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    Sponsormob announced new hire

    Posted on May 5th, 2011 by admin

    Our friends over at Sponsormob have announced a new hire to expand their operations in the US.  Sponsormob have been doing CPA on mobile for a while now, and are one of the well established players (alongside mobpartner).   With mobpartner and others (Moolah Media, Offermobi) recently announcing funding Sponsormob appears to be continuing to expand organically.  Everyone who works with these guys knows they are a quality operation so good to see that they are growing and moving into new markets.

    Press Release Below:

    Sponsormob, the CPA Network for the Mobile Internet, are pleased to announce Joe Niederberger as their new Business Development Manager for North America. He will be based in San Francisco, CA and will be responsible for growing and managing revenue from App Developers, Direct Advertisers, and Interactive and Mobile Ad Agencies.

    Mr. Niederberger has twenty-five years of experience in advertising and nearly ten years of online media and tactical experience with global brands across multiple vertical markets. He is also the veteran of five acquisitions worth over $1 billion. He is now charged with expanding Sponsormob’s Performance Advertising model within the North American market.

    Sponsormob is one of the first pure CPA Ad Networks that is ubiquitous across mobile device (iPhone, Android, Blackberry) and mobile operating system, allowing for advertisers to reach target audiences at their desired frequency, as well as communicate, engage, and interact with them without financial risk.

    To begin working with Sponsormob, sign up on the Advertiser Page.

    Contact

    Joe Niederberger
    North America Business Development Manager
    joe@sponsormob.com
    +1 510.421.4046
    or +1 925.938.0605
    Skype: jniederberger

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    Mobpartner mobile affiliate network raises €2.5m

    Posted on March 30th, 2011 by admin

    Big news – Mobpartner, the pioneer of the mobile affiliate marketing industry has scored a big round of investment.   According to Techcrunch they’ve  raised €2.5 million ($3.5 million) from French-based VCs.  They are going to use the money to develop mobpartners services in both Europe, US as well as in the hyper growth emerging mobile markets in Africa, Asia and South America.

    Mobpartner really deserved this raise, they have been around since 2008 and were doing CPA-based mobile advertising way before anyone else.  With the likes of offermobi , moolah media and kissmyads recently coming into the market and making a big noise and getting funding it’s great that the pioneers have got some recognition.

    From an affiliate perspective mobpartner is great.  The platform works well, they pay on time, by paypal and with a low $50 minimum.   They also let you manage your account via mobile as well as on web.  There’s loads of campaigns on there for all kinds of countries.  Recent innovations like their API make it even easier to integrate their mobile affiliate campaigns.

    Techcrunch says that in the last half year, MobPartner has completed over 1 million transactions so they are clearly getting a lot of traction.

    You can start making money with Mobpartner right here

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    KissMyAds launches – another new mobile affiliate network in town

    Posted on February 17th, 2011 by admin

    KissMyAds is the latest mobile affiliate network to launch.  The sector is really heating up with the recent entry of Moolah Media into the market and the news that Offermobi has raised $1m to fund the development of its platform.

    KissmyAds is pushing two angles – the ability to monetise Android Apps.  As paying for apps on android has been slow to take off there is a proliferation of free apps and only so much CPC ad inventory from the likes of admob to monetise all this free usage with.  So affiliate marketing is the perfect fit – you can deliver a 100% fill rate no matter how much volume is there.

    The second angle Kissmyads is taking is to offer a lifetime share of subscriptions so affiliates get an ongoing revenue stream if they achieve a sign-up.   Good to see some innovation happening in this space and different approaches being taken – all good news for affiliates.

    KissMyAds seem to be using the same Has Offers platform as Liquid Wireless – this is a great choice, reliable, good UI for affiliates and much more user friendly than the platform Offermobi are using in our opinion.

    So well worth checking out KissMyAds and signing up to their affiliate program.  Let us know how you get on!

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    Offermobi raises $1m in funding for mobile affiliate marketing

    Posted on February 2nd, 2011 by admin

    Congratulations to offermobi who have just announced a big round of funding for their mobile affiliate marketing platform.   They’ve pulled in a $1m investment to help expand into different verticals such as finance, entertainment and so on.  Great news for mobile affiliates – this means more offers coming on stream to promote.  With the news of facebook opening up its mobile web presence to ads a combination with offermobi affiliate programs could be a real money spinner for those in the know ….

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    Mobile Affiliate Marketing – London Affiliate Conference Presentation

    Posted on January 29th, 2011 by admin

    Here’s the presentation I gave at the 2011 London Affiliate Conference on mobile affiliate marketing. It was a great session and good to be back at LAC. Get in touch at james@mobyaffiliates.com with any questions .

    Mobile Affiliate Marketing

    Burstly direct ad sales good news for mobile ad buyers

    Posted on November 7th, 2010 by admin

    Burstly is an innovative new mobile ad network based out in the US.  They have some nice tools for developers like a link exchange platform and ad mediation/ ad optimization for managing multiple ad networks.

    They have also just launched something that should be interested to anyone operating on the buy-side of the mobile ad market.  According to techcrunch Burstly have rolled out a new feature for developers which is the ability to sell advertising in apps directly – bypassing mobile ad networks like admob.   The app developer just integrates the burstly platform into the PC version of their website and advertisers can use it to buy inventory.  You can target by geography, handset and so on.

    This is potentially very big news for mobile ad buyers including affiliate marketers, app promotors and so on.   Blind networks like admob (where you can’t choose where your ad will be shown) have been great for providing scale and reach and good device, operator and geographic targeting capabilities but most people find that the traffic is fairly low quality – i.e. it doesn’t really convert well into sales or other actions.  Admob have done a lot to combat click fraud but you cant help but wonder if there isnt a good proportion of the traffic they send that isn’t for real.  Also whilst you can target by geography or device and so on the only control you have over where your ad is shown is to choose a broad category like “communities” “entertainment”.    If you read the mobyaffiliates blog post on mobile PPC affiliate marketing on admob you can see that using traffic that you know the source of has a huge impact compared to buying PPC traffic from mobile ad networks.  In fact, using our own traffic rather than admob lead to 25 times more conversions!!

    So if you can now choose what sites to advertise on using Burstly this could make a huge difference to the success of any mobile marketing you are carrying out.  We are talking more conversions whether that is sales, downloads of an app or other measures of engagement.  Being able to choose the exact site you are advertising on will not only remove concerns about click fraud but also allow you to access the type of users you are looking for more precisely.   This could potentially be very powerful and smart mobile marketers should be filling their boots with this new source of quality inventory.

    The issue is whether Burstly can sign up enough apps to the platform to provide sufficient scale.  Also Burstly will need to offer advertisers a centralised place to find all the publishers/ developers that are selling direct.  There is a risk that ad networks will boot publishers off their platforms if they start selling their own inventory but this seems unlikely.  After all there are plenty of ad networks out there and if one bans a particular publishers others will still be willing to work with them.  In the online world it is quite common for ad network and direct sales to sit alongside each other.

    To date, direct ad sales in mobile has only been for the biggest players like operators or major brands.  Most people have sold via ad networks like admob or via agencies such as 4th Screen advertising.  The traffic sold through the likes of 4th Screen advertising can be expensive, is often priced on a CPM basis not CPC and it’s not easy to buy small amounts. Going directly to specific apps or sites yourself is time consuming and its hard to manage the campaign except on a tenancy basis unless you are going to track the conversions yourself using a mobile analytics solution of some kind (time consuming).   This move from Burstly promises to change this and let you buy ads directly in a very easy way.   So if you are involved in buying mobile advertising this is something you should definitely be onto.

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    Mobile Pay Per Call and Click to Call Advertising

    Posted on May 14th, 2010 by admin

    Earlier this year Google launched pay per call advertising on mobile and the mobile ad network admob (now owned by Google) has been offering it as an option since 2008.

    However, to date, Pay Per Call mobile has not really taken off.  Many advertisers complained of a very low ratio between clicks on the call link and actual calls completed.  Many handsets also did not support click to call ads and even if they did, consumers were very wary.  Also the type of advertisers who might use pay per call were not really ready to use mobile as a channel – in many cases local businesses are only just getting to grips with the internet, let alone mobile internet, whilst other potential advertisers had not yet emerged.

    This is now changing as the market for mobile advertising becomes more mature and sophisticated.  Firstly, advertisers in pay per performance that use lead generation models involving the telephone such as insurance, debt consolidation, utilities, pay TV and so on are beginning to look to mobile as other channels become saturated.  For example, the mobile affiliate network mobpartner has recently started to offer pay per call programs such as an offer from the Polish subsidiary of the multinational, blue-chip Financial Services company Aviva.  The aim of the campaign is to promote cheap automotive insurance and it pays $2.1 per lead – not bad for Polish traffic if you can get it to convert.

    The question is – can these type of offers convert well on mobile?  The key as always is getting the right traffic – and targeting very carefully according to handset, operator, geography and so on (see our previous posts on using admob PPC for CPA offers).   In any case, for those that can get it right, mobile pay per call looks like it could be a very lucrative area of the market and we’ll be telling you all about it here on mobyaffiliates.

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    Mobile Marketing Association Mobile Affiliate Marketing Guidelines

    Posted on May 9th, 2010 by admin

    The mobile marketing association has just released its new set of guidelines – hat tip to the Amnavigator blog for noting this.  From the MMA Release:

    “The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) (www.mmaglobal.com) today released the latest version of its U.S. Consumer Best Practices (CBP) Guidelines for Cross-Carrier Mobile Content Services. The guidelines are the industry standard for cross-carrier mobile content services such as text messaging (SMS), multimedia messaging (MMS), shortcode programs, Interactive Voice Response (IVR) and mobile Web.

    Produced by the MMA’s CBP Committee, the new, version 5.0 guidelines provide measures of acceptable and unacceptable practices for all players in the U.S. ecosystem. The guidelines also serve as the benchmarks for the four largest U.S. wireless service providers – Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile USA – eliminating the need for brands, agencies and marketers to refer to four separate carrier playbooks.”

    If you’re involved in mobile affiliate marketing this is a great resource and well worth checking out to check that any marketing or services you are running stay on the right side of best practice.

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    Carnival of the Mobilists 223

    Posted on May 9th, 2010 by admin

    Roll up Roll up for the Carnival of the Mobiliststs touching down here at Mobyaffiliates – the no.1 place for making money on mobile. We’ve got a nice set of quality posts this week so have a read and keep up to date with the best of the mobile blogosphere.

    Mobile Advertising

    First up is an Epic post from Andy at the most excellent Mobithinking blog covering mobile advertising.  Andy asks if the FTC stop Google buying AdMob?  and should advertisers pay US$1 million for the ability to run iAds? Are Google and Apple at war? Will the FTC investigate Apple?  Inquiring minds want to know and Andy breaks it down.

    Mobile Ads Go Mainstream: starring the FTC, Google, Apple’s $1m iAds and a soap-opera story-line that’s has the media hooked

    The Mobile Boom

    Carnival Veteran and mobile guru C Enqrique Ortiz has an indepth article which analyses why mobile is booming.   This is a cracking bit of work with a load of great stats and analysis and wins post of the week!

    http://weblog.cenriqueortiz.com/mobility/2010/05/09/on-reasons-why-the-mobilewireless-usage-boom-was-underway-part-2/

    Blackberry

    Carlo Longino MBA (Congrats!) and Founding Mobilist has submitted a post from the WIP Wireless Industry Partnership reviewing their recent Blackberry event.  The post is a great overview of what’s happening in the world of RIM and is full of great stats such as that RIM accounts for 58% of the North American enterprise smartphone business.

    http://www.wipconnector.com/blog/rim_wes_2010_report_from_widality

    The Google Android Nexus One

    Mark Bridge over at the thefonecast.com has a lively assessment of the Google Nexus One handset and

    http://thefonecast.com/Opinion/tabid/87/EntryId/2755/Google-Nexus-One-quarterback-or-cheerleader.aspx

    Meanwhile, in a similar vein, industry legend Ajit Jaokar asks – Is it game over for Google’s direct to consumer strategy and what can we learn from it?  In Ajit’s view the Nexus One has not lived up to Google’s expectations in terms of sales.  As usual a provocative and analytical post from the Open Gardens Crew.

    http://opengardensblog.futuretext.com/archives/2010/05/is_it_game_over.html

    Mobile Web

    Amdocs have a nice post covering the “off-portal” mobile market.  Consumers are increasingly going off-portal to browse and consume content from their mobile handsets. And while that’s seemingly not great news for service providers trying hard not to be squeezed out of a very lucrative value chain, Matt Anderson explains why it might not actually turn out to be so bad after all if the walls were to come tumbling down.

    http://www.amdocs.com/blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=149

    Blyk is back

    Finally, the Queen of the Carnival Peggy Anne Saltz over at the ever-excellent Msearchgroove reports that  the ad funded mobile network Blyk has re-emerged in the Netherlands following a less than stellar UK launch.  Go check it out -

    http://www.msearchgroove.com/2010/05/06/blyk-is-back-with-ad-funded-service-in-the-netherlands-will-social-media-marketing-make-the-difference/

    That’s it – thanks for all the excellent submissions and thanks for reading – feel free to browse our posts on mobile affiliate marketing and other stuff whilst you’re in town.  Have a great week!

    iphone affiliate network apprupt gets more moolah

    Posted on May 7th, 2010 by admin

    Our friends over at Apprupt have emailed to say that they’ve raised investment from the mighty T Mobile.  Great news for the mobile affiliate industry with major players now spotting potential in the market.  Apprupt run an affiliate network based on iphone application link exchanges and white label app stores.  A great company and good news they are raising funding.

    Here’s the press release:

    T-Venture and Neuhaus Partners invest in apprupt

    apprupt closes financing round with Deutsche Telekom, Neuhaus Partners and KfW. apprupt will use the additional funding to further accelerate the growth and international expansion of its mobile affiliate network.

    Hamburg, May 6, 2010 - apprupt (www.apprupt.com), the first affiliate network for mobile applications, announced today the closing of a financing round with the Connected Life and Work Fund managed by T-Venture, the venture capital firm Neuhaus Partners and KfW. The funding is currently subject to approval by antitrust authorities.

    “apprupt has successfully positioned itself in recent months as the leading affiliate network for mobile apps in Germany. Having already been financed in 2008 by Neuhaus Partners, we are pleased to have landed another strong investor with T-Venture, who is significant for us in this market segment,” says Jascha Samadi, Director Marketing and Sales. “Together with our investors, we now look forward to future international growth in an exciting and rapidly growing market environment”, adds Kjell Fischer, Director Product and Operations.

    “We monitor the mobile Internet segment closely and have recognized early on mobile applications as an attractive target segment for us. We firmly believe in apprupt’s technology and the potential to develop the leading position in this rapidly growing market. We are pleased once again to invest in the company as well as the team and to support the further acceleration of growth,” says Paul Jozefak, Managing Partner at Neuhaus Partners.

    Harald Eisenächer, Senior Vice President Personal & Social Networking of Deutsche Telekom, adds: “Mobile applications are currently one of the fastest growing market segments. apprupt is well positioned with its range of products and services and offers both app developers as well as publishers an innovative and convincing solution.”

    About Neuhaus Partners: Neuhaus Partners GmbH is one of the leading venture capital firms in Europe. It invests primarily in companies in information technology. Since its founding in 1998, it has entered into 53 investments – with 47, Neuhaus Partners was a lead investor. Track record: two IPOs, eighteen trade sales, three buy backs, ten insolvencies. Neuhaus Partners is currently investing its third fund. (www.neuhauspartners.com)

    About Connected Life and Work Fund: The Connect Life and Work Fund is managed by T-Venture, the venture capital entity of Deutsche Telekom. The goal is to support the Products and Innovation Department at Deutsche Telekom in the implementation of its objectives. The investment focus is on companies in the Internet and media segments. For more information, please visit: www.t-venture.de.

    About the KfW Banking Group: KfW finances and supports, among other things, business start-ups, small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) as well as investments in economic growth and employment projects in Germany. The ERP Start-up-Fund, administered and co-financed by KfW, offers equity financing for innovative, technology-based enterprises with excellent growth prospects. The fund finances research and product development as well as the launching of new products, procedures and services. KfW always cooperates with a lead investor and exclusively adopts market conditions. Since 2004; the 470 Mio. Euro ERP Start-up-Fund has so far allocated 300 Mio. Euro to emerging technology-based companies.  (www.kfw.de)

    About apprupt: apprupt (www.apprupt.com) is the first affiliate network for mobile applications. Through its affiliate platform, apprupt enables app developers to market their apps on a on a pay-per-download basis to specific target groups of users within its network of wide-reaching publisher partners – app marketing becomes transparent and performance-based. apprupt enables publishers such as WEB.DE Mobile, FT Germany or Men’s Health through a white label app shop to offer their own users a relevant preselection of apps as well as to monetize mobile traffic through app sales on a transaction basis. The corporate headquarters are in Hamburg, Germany.

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    Carnival of the Mobilists at Volker on Mobile

    Posted on May 4th, 2010 by admin

    The week’s best mobile blogging, including our post on mobile affiliate networks is over at Volker on Mobile this week.  Volker Hirsch has a collection of great posts including Msearchgroove on Appstore marketing and news of the excellent Mobile 2.0 Conference in Barcelona so go check it out.

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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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    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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    Carnival of the Mobilists #217

    Posted on March 31st, 2010 by admin

    The Carnival of the Mobilists 217 is out at Indigo120 featuring a Mobyaffilliates post on iphone and affilate marketing. There’s a lot of other good posts this week so go check it out.

    Affiliate marketing – the new business model for mobile app developers?

    Posted on March 23rd, 2010 by admin

    The dominant business models for app developers at present are user payments or display advertising, however, affiliate marketing could be a new and potentially much more lucrative way of monetising many apps.

    User-payment driven models can be very lucrative for hit applications, especially games.  Howevever, there is increasing that application prices are suffering from downward pressure towards free.  New types of payment models such as subscriptions or in-app payments are promising although not all application types are suited to these approaches.

    Display advertising can pay the bills on free apps if there is sufficient scale of usage.  Using ad networks like admob or potentially integrating mutliple ad networks using a mobile ad optimizer such as smaato or mobclix can deliver significant revenues for some apps.  However, the growth in mobile inventory, and falling click-through rates mean that it is becoming harder to make this model work.

    Affiliate marketing is an alternative revenue stream to user payments and display advertising that is just opening up on mobile and is creating a big opportunity for mobile app developers.  Affiliate marketing is already a major category in the online advertising world and its now moving onto mobile.  Unlike current mobile advertising which is typically sold on a CPM (cost per thousand) or more usually a CPC (cost per click) basis, mobile affiliate programs payout based on a CPA (cost per action) basis in a single payment or a revenue share.  In some cases the payments for particular actions (e.g. in the mobile casino space) can be very high – up to $50 in some cases.  As a result, with the right approach affiliate marketing can be more lucrative for mobile application developers than traditional mobile advertising or mobile payments from users.

    A number of players are now offering affiliate programs for iphone apps including William Hill, Offerpal and  Allslots/ Brightshare.  In addition, the iphone appstore affiliate program run by linkshare has also been extended to work on mobile.  Android-compatible affiliate programs are also emerging, taking advantage of the more open nature of the android appstore ecosystem .  Developers on other platforms such as Java, Symbian, Blackberry and mobile web can typically choose from an even greater range of different mobile affiliate programs and networks.

    There are also opportunities for application developers to use APIs from online shopping services to build affiliate-revenue driven apps.  For example, apps could be developed for specific dietary requirements around online grocery APIs or to aggregate affiliate feeds from a range of retailers into a single app.

    Another approach is to link mobile applications to the massive growth in vouchercodes.  For example, the UK-based vouchercloud iphone app is a mobile-focused way of grabbing a slide of the discount voucher market.  Whereas there is little room for new players on the web, vouchercloud has been able to build significant traction by being the first to market with a high quality voucher-driven iphone app.

    Finally, the ability for mobile applications to interact with real world retail stores presents another affiliate marketing opportunity.  Services like the shopsavvy iphone app allow users to scan a product barcode in a store and get pricing information from online suppliers.  The affiliate potential of such applications is potentially enormous.

    So – application developers need to look seriously at the opportunities presented by affiliate marketing, and consider this business model right from the intial concept stage in the design process.

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    Mobile one of big ecommerce themes for 2010

    Posted on March 19th, 2010 by admin

    Rob Smith from blueleaf digital posted up on the excellent Carsonified blog a post on “5 Important E-Commerce Themes for 2010″.  The third theme was “Mobile” and Rob says:

    “I know, it’s been coming for years. However it’s widely believed that smart-phone adoption will reach a critical mass in the next 12-18 months. What does that mean for us? Customers will have access to the internet or at least a much richer media experience via their phones. People generally always have their phones with them. On the train in the car, the office, at home on the sofa. Many more people have phones than laptops.

    What does this mean for e-commerce? Will people really shop and look through entire catalogues to order? Maybe not. Will they bob on their phone to track their order? Maybe. It’s all about context and how they are using their phone to communicate with you and your service.

    Some companies are already striving ahead. Pizza delivery companies like Dominoes and Pizza Hut are doing well in the space creating applications and mobile focused websites to help with ordering. It’s important to note that we don’t mean iPhone applications here. It’s a combination of applications and mobile focused websites that are the key. The iPhone is still not a massive % of the mobile space.

    Other notable successes in this area are Amazon and Interflora. Some notable failures are Tesco (UK supermarket chain), Sainsburys (UK supermarket chain) and play.com (online entertainment retailer) – all without a whiff of a mobile site on my iPhone.”

    Of course here at mobyaffiliates we completely agree and expect things to change rapidly this year as mobile commerce goes mainstream. For example, the success of Ocado in developing an iphone app means that Tesco is sure to follow soon.   One thing to note is that Amazon is not that mobilef-friendly – they have yet to open their affiliate program to mobile devices.   One thing is for certain – the more e-commerce there is on mobile, the bigger the opportunity for mobile affiliates!

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    Mobile link exchange

    Posted on March 18th, 2010 by admin

    One of the most difficult issues in mobile is promoting your mobile site or application.  Mobile search is still not very effective and appstores are increasingly saturated.  So what’s an independent publisher or developer to do?  Well, historically a key traffic driver for independent sites and apps has been link exchanges but these can be time consuming to set up and it is hard to manage the relationship – how do you know the other party continues to send you sufficient traffic to keep up the link?

    Simon Judge is an independent mobile developer and author of the very excellent Mobile Phone Development blog.  Here’s what he’s been working on:

    In my spare time, as a hobby activity, I have been working on a mobile link exchange. It allows text links to be placed on mobile web sites or within applications. Each request for ads returns two ads. Showing someone else’s ad gets you a credit for displaying ads on yet someone else’s site or application. So, for every view by your end user, you get up to two ads shown on other sites or applications.

    I am looking for a few people to try it out. It works on wml, xhtml, iPhone, Symbian, Android, Blackberry and Windows Mobile. In fact, it’s possible to swap ads on one platform for ads on another. It’s also possible to target ads by country and network operator.

    The system supports static mobile web pages, via javascript, where end users have javascript available. Alternatively, I have examples for use from php, cgi (perl), jsp, classic asp, c# (.NET) and vb (.NET). I also have tips how to integrate into the various mobile platforms or use the HTTP GET or POST API.

    I’ll post another time on how it was built. I had to think carefully about supporting lots of requests per second as well as serving ads very quickly. I wasn’t able to use CGI (php or perl) nor conventional databases.

    Meanwhile, if you are interested in being one of the first people to give it a try, free of charge (the final service will also be free), then please contact me at simon@simonjudge.com explaining who you are and a bit about your mobile site or application.

    This sounds like a great project so please drop Simon a line and help to get it off the ground.


    Mobpartner – leading the way in mobile affiliate marketing

    Posted on March 15th, 2010 by admin

    In the emerging world of mobile affiliate marketing one company stands out at the moment and that’s mobpartner.   They have pioneered affiliate marketing on mobile and have built up a massive base of mobile afffiliates and a good range of different programs from various different merchants.  They have also spent a lot of time developing a robust platform which can be accessed over both web and mobile web.  So if you want to learn about mobile affiliate marketing – learn about mobpartner.

    Luckily mobpartner have put a couple of presentations about their service online which are well worth reading.  The most recent was given at MWC 2010 just a short while ago:

    MobPartner Mobile World Congress 2010

    This is an older presentation made at Mobile World Congress the previous year:

    TexoMobile MobPartner : Mobile Affiliation Platform

    We’ll be covering more about mobpartner here at mobyaffiliates so watch this space.

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    Carnival of the Mobilists 215 #cotm

    Posted on March 15th, 2010 by admin

    Welcome to the Carnival of the Mobilists touching down here at Mobyaffiliates. Last week Mobithinking hosted a very successful Carnival after having had to call for more posts during the weekend. We’re already seeing the benefit of their rallying call with a nice group of posts this week in the Carnival inbox…

    Post of the week is a tough one – am going to give joint honours to Terence Eden and Tomi Ahohen – Terence Eden’s post is such as brilliant detailed review, with loads of screenshots whilst Tomi Ahohen really brings a challenging and alternative perspective to the Silicon Valley, iphone dominated view of the mobile world. Congrats guys!

    Carnival regular and mobile-industry LEGEND Ajit Jaokar provides a thoughtful post on lessons we can learn from the success of Skype on mobile app stores. Ajit says that appstores are acting in a very disruptive way – forcing operators to allow new types of services such as VoIP onto their networks.

    Another BIG HITTER in the mobile world is Chetan Sharma and he brings a write-up, including video of a new event – Mobile Breakfasts. The next event is on June 18th focused around mobile startups.

    The always excellent mobithinking crew have a post on Mobile social networking statistics – it seems that social networking is EVEN BIGGER on mobile than on the PC – with services like twitter and facebook totally dominating mobile internet usage.

    Terence Eden runs a very good personal blog at shkspr.mobi which is well worth checking out for posts including the fantastic “bad mobile advertising” series. Terrence has submitted a post reviewing the speech-to-text voicemail service Ribbit. This is a really detailed review packed full of screenshots and well worth checking out.

    The Wireless Industry Partnerships (WIP) crew are kicking up a storm right now and their post over at WIP Connector introduces the Intel Atom Developer Program and the amazing fact that there will be 139m notebook computers out there by 2012.

    Still THE BEST blog covering mobile internet, Dennis over at Wap Review has a post reviewing Opera mini 5 on Android – as usual this is a great post breaking down how the new browser interfaces with new technologies like HTML 5 and multi-touch. It seems that Opera Mini is struggling a bit on the new generation of devices compared to on feature phones and old style Symbian handsets where the native browser is so bad it is easy to improve on it.

    Meanwhile, Tsahi from Radvision is talking ipads and specifically – “Why the ipad wont have a front facing Camera” – a great analysis that cuts through the mac rumour mill with the real facts – great post.

    Antoine J Wright brings a thought-provoking and original look at sustainability in mobile and the longevity of mobile handsets.

    A late entry from Mobile Guru Tomi Ahohen – a really great post that bursts the bubble of the location services hype a la Foursquare et al and argues for services based on simple technologies such as SMS, basic mobile internet – cracking post.

    That’s it for this week – next months Carnival hosting appears to be free – so if you have written a piece included in this carnival maybe you’d like to volunteer for it? Otherwise it may be over at the excellent msearchgroove where PeggyAnne the Queen of the Carnival blogs.

    Offerpal pulls affiliate offers from iphone – the curse of the Crazy Frog returns?

    Posted on March 15th, 2010 by admin

    Offerpal runs an affiliate and lead generation network that mainly operates on facebook games and the like – linking developers with monetisation via affiliate programs, virtual goods and so on.  They have also moved into mobile with an offering to help iphone developers monetise their apps and sites through affiliate offers.  Unfortunately, it seems that they have had a few problems with premium sms subscription services using the channel to trick people into signing up.

    Techcrunch has rapidly picked up on this and has forced Offerpal to pull the plug on its mobile affiliate PSMS offers.

    “In the interest of being conservative and wanting to operate in the best interests of the collective mobile user experience, we have immediately removed the quizzes in question and any offers resulting in PSMS subscriptions from distribution pending a further review.”

    To some extent this is the return of something terrible on mobile – scammy subscription services which brought the first generation of mobile commerce (ringtones) to its knees.  It has taken the industry nearly half a decade to build back consumer confidence in mobile to the point where people are happy to pay for things again on their phone or give their number.   The last thing we need is the return of Crazy Frog Mark 2 in a new form – this could set the industry right back to 2005 again.   The regulators need to avoid being caught napping like this – it shouldn’t be the job of techcrunch to expose this type of sharp practice.

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    Carnival of the Mobilists over @Mobithinking #cotm

    Posted on March 9th, 2010 by admin

    This week the Mobyaffiliates post on Mobile Affiliate Marketing was featured in the Carnival of the Mobilists over at Mobithinking.  The Carnival of the Mobilists is a weekly collection of the best blogging about mobile where you can find new and interesting mobile articles and blogs covering mobile advertising, mobile technology, apps and more.

    This week’s carnival includes posts from across the blogosphere so check it out.

    Mobithinking is a a great site to check out if you’re interested in mobile by the way and is packed full of interesting articles and resources.

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    Sponsormob network launches iphone affiliate tool

    Posted on February 23rd, 2010 by admin

    News just in from Peter Glaeser over at Sponsormob – a CPA network focused on mobile – they have just launched a new affiliate tool for tracking conversions on iphone apps.  In other words, they  enable iPhone app publishers to promote their downloads on a CPA basis.  Sponsormob gets paid for successful downloads only.  So far this has been possible on a CPM or CPC basis only – for example using networks like admob to drive app downloads.

    Peter Glaeser the CEO of Sponsormob says:

    “We are pleased to announce the release of our conversion tracking for Apple iPhone. Sponsormob can now also track downloads of applications for iPhone, iPod Touch and the soon-to-be-released iPad. This enables iPhone app publishers to promote their products world-wide through Sponsormob on a risk-free cost-per-download basis.

    At Sponsormob we have observed a clear trend in mobile downloads moving away from third-party content providers towards application stores run by device manufacturers. Famous examples are the Apple App Store, Google’s Android Market, and the Nokia Ovi Store. We are sure this trend will continue in the next years. So we are gearing up for the new way of content distribution to mobile devices.”

    You can find out more here

    The Mobile Platform – opportunities for the casino affiliate industry

    Posted on February 3rd, 2010 by admin

    This article was recently published in the igaming business magazine – the leading casino business and affiliate marketing publication.

    2009 – ‘The Year of Mobile’

    2009 has been the year the mobile internet took off, with the game-changing success of the iphone driving forward the entire market.   Mobile handsets have become much more user-friendly for web usage as a result of touch-screens and improved browser technology.  Network operators have finally begun to rollout flat-rate and lower cost mobile data access packages and are investing heavily in marketing mobile internet services to consumers.  The growth in ‘App Stores’ has opened up a new distribution channel for service providers and big brand mobile services like m.facebook.com are attracting mainstream users to the mobile web.

    As a result, many people in the affiliate marekting industry are now seeing mobile as The Next Big Thing.  So what are the opportunities in mobile for the casino affilate industry?

    Mobile commerce is developing

    Whilst mobile internet usage has reached the mass market, commercial transactions have been slower to develop on the mobile platform.  Spending is currently concentrated in mobile-focused areas such as downloads (applications, ringtones, games) with very limited activity in key verticals such as travel, finance and retail.

    Despite the massive improvements to mobile user-interfaces there are still barriers preventing mobile commerce from taking off.  For example, financial products such as mortgages or insurance typically involve a lot of researching and from a UI perspective usually require lots of tick-boxes, which are not well suited to a mobile screen.

    However, there are some signs that this is beginning to change.  iphone applications are showing that users will purchase goods and services using their mobiles if they are given the right user interface.  For example, Pizza Hut recently announced that it had generated $1m in sales in 3 months from its iphone application.  eBay also began to break out mobile commerce revenues for the first time earlier this year which showed that they are already generating $380m of sales over mobile in H1 2009/10.

    Affiliate marketing on mobile is not new

    Affilate marketing on the mobile web has been around in some form since the very early days of ‘wap’ with some of the first mobile adult sites developing very basic affiliate systems.  The major ringtone players such as Jamba have also used affiliate marketing heavily to promote their subscription mobile content offerings.  These were promoted mainly on the PC web, driving users to the mobile internet for content delivery.  However, following the consumer and regulatory backlash against these subscription services, the ringtone players have retrenched and are no longer leading innovation in mobile web affiliate marketing.

    The Casino sector is now leading the way

    As a result of the collapse in the subscription ringtone market, and the slow development of mobile commerce in other sectors, the major mainstream high-value mobile service category is casino gaming.  Consequently, affilliate marketing on mobile is now being lead by casino players in terms of both service development and affiliate technology.   Simon Liss from the Mobile Agency We Love Mobile says, “Mobile affiliate marketing only really works when the deal can be done via the device. The ability of mobile casinos to acquire users and take payment on device means that traffic from third parties is very easy to track and monetise – as a result the casino players are leading the way.”

    Specialist Casino Affiliate networks quicker to roll out mobile services

    A number of the specialist online casino networks have already moved to develop mobile affiliate offerings.  Typically, services are provided as downloadable applications which provide access to the standard range of casino games including Poker, Bingo, Roulette, Black Jack and Slots.  These mobile applications are linked to a credit card account enabling them to function in a similar way to an online/ PC-based service.  Affiliate payouts are linked to the download of the application (CPA) or spending by a particular user (revenue share).

    Some of the casino affiliate networks offering mobile services include:

    Tracking mobile affiliate sales requires different approaches

    PC/ online based affiliate services typically track sales using cookies.  However, this approach does not work effectively on mobile.  As a result, affiliate networks need to use alternative approaches such as server-based tracking.  To date the major generalist online affiliate networks (Trade Doubler, Commission Junction, Zanox) have not yet extended much into mobile and the major in-house affiliate APIs such as Amazon also haven’t been adapted for mobile affiliates. However, there are also some mobile-focused affiliate networks emerging that offer a range of programs, including casino:

    • Mobpartner is a french mobile affiliate network which operates across a large number of small mobile-web based affiliates
    • MPEX is an adult-focused mobile affiliate platform and site building tool that also offers casino services
    • Sponsormob is a German mobile ad network which works directly with merchants and advertisers on a CPA basis

    Traffic Generation

    For affiliates, generating mobile web traffic requires slightly different approach to on the PC-web.  Natural Search/ SEO is not yet effective on mobile, as Google Mobile Search largely ranks sites based on their PC-driven scoring, which provides little any room for mobile-only players to achieve high positions.  As a result, affiliates have to focus on paid traffic generation, but this is not easy as at present, “demand for quality mobile traffic is growing faster than the supply of it” according to Peter Glaeser from the mobile CPA network Sponsormob.

    Paid Search

    Paid search on the mobile web is effective but there is limited inventory and as a result, CPCs are high, especially for competitive keywords.  The main sources of paid search inventory include:

    • Google – easy to use, you can buy mobile search terms through the same interface used for web-based ad sense/ ad words
    • Yahoo! – highly rated by media buyers, but more difficult to deal with (their sign-up for mobile search purchasers needs manual approval)
    • Specialist mobile search services such as Jumptap and MCN

    Direct deals

    Buying advertising space directly on other mobile sites is another way of generating traffic.  Operator portals are the major place to go for high volumes but outside of these sites tracking down potential deals can be more difficult.  One issue is that there is no equivalent of the ABCe or Comscore for mobile so it is difficult to find high traffic sites.  Also, many of the big online or media brands do not necessarily have high mobile traffic.  On the other hand, “mobile-only” services such as communities and chat networks can drive huge volumes of usage, despite being relatively unknown.

    Ad Networks

    Mobile ad networks are the most common channel mobile web affiliates use to buy traffic.  There are well over 30 different mobile ad networks, the largest of which is admob, recently acquired for $750m by Google.  Other networks to try include Imobi, Buzz City, Adfonic, Deck Trade and Quattro Wireless.  Prices for particular countries or handset types can vary significantly across networks so there is a real advantage to working with multiple players.  The majority of networks sell based on a CPC basis with higher prices for specific countries and greater targeting control.  However, traffic quality on these networks can be low, and conversions poor.  There are also premium mobile ad networks which can demand a CPM-based fee for their inventory, sourced from higher-quality partners such as branded sites or operators.

    Analytics and Campaign Management

    Getting ROI from mobile ad spend requires the same level of attention to creative and campaign management as on the PC-web.  Affilliates need to track click-throughs and conversions carefully and ensure to include handset types in targeting.   A common error with many casino affiliates is not checking the types of handsets which different mobile casino services support and targeting advertising accordingly.  Similarly, with many mobile ad networks saturated by Casino-affiliate based advertising, it is important to develop strong creative, varying and optimizing banners and keyword text.

    There are a number of specialist analytics tools for mobile which can be deployed in order to track and manage campaigns.  Existing services such as Google Analytics do not yet work fully on mobile-based sites or applications, although this is beginning to change as more phones start to support Javascript.  Analytics services mobile-focused affiliates can use include Bango analytics, Admob analytics, Mobilytics and Amethon.

    Lots of opportunities for the casino affiliate marketing industry

    So, although it is still very early days, mobile does represent an important new channel for the casino affiliate industry.  The platform continues to grow in terms of adoption and usage and there is more and more activity in the market.  Success will come to players who can master the differences between mobile and online in terms of traffic generation and campaign management and continue move up the learning curve as mobile services continue to evolve.

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