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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“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.

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!

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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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

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.

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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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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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.

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

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

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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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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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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- $1.5 billion worth of goods sold via mobile phones in 2010

– over a 100% increase on sales in  in 2009 ($600 million)

- iphone app downloaded 8 m times and 1 item is bought on ebay using a mobile every 2 seconds

It is clear that mobile commerce is really starting to reach lift off.  Clearly as the money moves onto mobile, affiliate marketing won’t be far behind.

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Make money with the Platinum Play mobile affiliate program

Platinum play is available for iphone, blackberry and all types of mobiles.  Players get great bonuses with their first deposit and high quality customer support.  Games include fruit machines, blackjack, poker, roulette and more.

Network – Fortune Affiliates

Join the Platinum Play mobile affiliate program

Make money with the fortune affiliates mobile affiliate network

For the last 7 years, Fortune Affiliates has represented the Fortune Lounge Group of online brands. Fortune Lounge has eight online casino brands, an online poker room, one online bingo room and two mobile casino brands. With a constant stream of media and marketing resources at our disposal, we are well-equipped to represent this industry giant, and churn out a lifetime’s worth of income for you!

Fortune affiliates gives you:

• Lifetime income and a choice of how you earn that income
• 2-tier earnings from all Affiliates you refer
• All the resources, tools and content you need to be successful
• Innovative concepts to ensure you always offer cutting-edge promotions
• Detailed reports and advanced tracking to keep you up-to-date with opportunity
• World-class support and service

mobile affiliate programs

Royal Vegas

Platinum Play

Join the fortune affiliates mobile affiliate network

Make money with the Royal Vegas mobile casino affiliate program

The world of Online gaming awaits you at Royal Vegas Mobile, where the intrigue and excitement is present throughout your gaming experience.

Being one of the most popular sites, Royal Vegas Online Casino, has gone mobile and presents gamers with the same royal rewards and action in a mobile setting, with even more thrilling live entertainment and captivating graphic from anywhere you have mobile uses and access, anytime of the day.

Network – Fortune Affiliates

Join the Royal Vegas mobile casino affiliate program