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The best mobile advertising networks 2012

Posted on January 14th, 2012 by christopher

best mobile ad networks 2012

 

 

 

So what is the best mobile advertising network to use if you’re a developer, mobile publisher or advertiser?  When deciding which mobile ad network to work with, many publishers and advertisers will be tempted to go with the most recognised names. But the truth is choosing the best mobile advertising network is a bit more complicated than making a beeline for the biggest kid on the block. Figures on which networks offer advertisers the most reach, and publishers the most revenue, are not always reliable or indeed available. In fact, because of the scarcity of verifiable figures, no one really knows which network is even the biggest.

So when choosing an ad network your best bet is to look at the differentiators and assess what network is the best match for your requirements. Are you looking to target an Asian audience? If so, then you need to know which networks cater best to Asian territories. Is your app iPhone-only? Well, you’ll need to know which network serves the most ads on Apple’s, rather than Google’s, platform.

Luckily Mobyaffliates is here to lend a guiding hand! Below are what we believe are the best mobile ad networks in some of the most relevant categories for publishers and advertisers. Hopefully our recommendations can help you make a more informed decision on what mobile ad network is right for you.

The best mobile advertising network for…

 

Android

 

Airpush

Given the – quite frankly – frightening pace at which Android has taken over the smartphone market it’s no surprise that the last few months have seen a strong interest in targeted ad solutions for Android users. Enter Airpush, a mobile ad network that deals exclusively with Google’s little green robot. Airpush makes a bunch of eye-catching claims on its website, such as offering developers 10 to 30 times more ad revenue than non-Android-focused rivals. As we mentioned above, you need to take ad network boasts with a pinch of sale, but Airpush does have a nifty trick up its sleeve that makes such a revenue surge plausible – push notification ads. Say goodbye to all those inactive app users, now you can reach them from the comfort of their own notification tray!

 

Video ads

 

Greystripe

Mobile video ads are still very much in their infancy, but with 38% better completion rate than desktop-bound online video ads (according to eMarketer), it won’t be long before they become ubiquitous. One of the most recognised early proponents of mobile video ads is Greystripe, who have won numerous awards for their rich media solutions. Greystripe now boasts that its the market leader in terms of full screen rich media ads, with a 75% share of the market, delivering big name brand campaigns from the likes of Sony, Burger King and HP.

 

iPhone

 

AdMob

 

Oooh, a Google product besting Apple’s own solution – who would have thought it! AdMob may not offer the highest eCPM anymore, and there’s plenty newer ad networks out there who’ve surged ahead in terms of innovation, but by most estimates it serves more ads to iPhone users than any other network. AdMob has a strong fill rate across pretty much all territories and, according to many developers, outperforms iAd when it comes to CTRs – despite Apple’s emphasis on rich media and despite the supposed warm fuzzy trust engendered by its branding….

 

Demographic targeting

 

Adfonic

 

UK-based Adfonic has made a name for itself by offering advertisers highly detailed, real-time, reporting and robust demographic targeting, which includes age, location, time of day, language, operator, device and OS. Adfonic also offers keyword tagging, which help squeeze-out that extra bit of contextual relevancy with publisher content.

 

Fill rate

 

MobPartner

 

With its advertiser-friendly Cost Per Action model (advertisers only pay when, for instance, a user downloads an app) it comes as little surprise that Paris-based MobPartner can offer developers an 100% fill rate. It also means that developers can draw on a range of big name campaigns and can be a bit more picky about the brands they want to promote. Of course, MobPartner’s CPA flavouring is great news for advertisers looking to boost app downloads, but while more brands means better targeting for developers their bottom line may suffer when compared to CPM and CPC-focused networks.

 

European traffic

 

MobFox 

 

MobFox is a relative newcomer to the mobile network party, but over the last year it has built-up a strong reputation with a number of innovative features, such as eCPM controls, the ability to pull ads from rival networks, and strong demographic-targeting. While its Asian inventory is lacking somewhat, in our recent MobFox review, we found that European publishers were experiencing very strong fill-rates and high eCPM. The Vienna-based start-up is increasingly looking like the network of choice for advertisers and publishers who want to target continental smartphone users.

 

Big brands

 

Jumptap

 

When it comes to offering a robust data-driven platform for advertisers Jumptap has been top of the list for sometime now. Founded back in 2004, the award-winning network indulges big brand advertisers with its tapMatch solution, offering keyword-targeting and a traditional media-buying model. The network has also recently been one of the strongest proponents of rich media ads to increase ROI and claims to offer advertisers the largest open rich media platform. It’s no surprise that some of the biggest brands have jumped on-board with Jumptap.

 

Asian traffic

 

Buzz City 

 

With smartphone penetration rocketing toward saturation in The West, growth will undoubtedly begin shift toward emerging markets in the East. India, Indonesia and Vietnam, among others, are already showing signs of a mobile ad boom (Vietnam experienced a 223% increase in ad impressions in 2011 Q2 alone). Based in Singapore, ad network Buzz City has capitalised on the lack of attention paid to the Asian market by other ad networks. The network’s biggest markets are Indonesia and India, with over 3 million ads served to users in India and almost 2 million in Indonesia throughout November alone.

 

Adult

 

Adultmoda

 

There’s not much debate in this category, when it comes to ad networks that exclusively target the adult market Adultmoda is pretty much the only show in town. Owned by London-based parent company MobVision, Adultmoda serves some of the world’s biggest publishers of x-rated content (as opposed to its family friendly sibling Admoda), such as Brazzers, Reality Kings and YouPorn. Due to its market, Adultmoda exercises quite strict quality controls on which publishers it works with to ensure its advertisers are kept happy, while publishers enjoy some of the highest renumeration rates around.

Conclusion

As you can see there’s a great deal of diversity on offer when it comes to choosing a mobile ad network. Advertisers need to think carefully about what they’re trying to achieve with their mobile ad campaign and nail the fundamentals (CPA? CPC? Blind? Premium?) before they let themselves get beguiled by the ad networks’ invariably impressive claims and boasts. When it comes to publishers, they may find that shopping around and experimenting with a number of networks is the best tactic to maximise revenues – especially if you have a broad portfolio of apps and sites. As with most things, it’s about understanding your own aims and doing some research, but hopefully our above guide has put you on the right track!

For more check out our mobile advertising network directory

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Mopub

Posted on January 8th, 2012 by cormac
MoPub – Mobile monetization platform for Android, iOS and mobile web - MoPub

 

 

 

Mopub offers a three piece platform for mobile publishers. It allows you to choose between monetising between direct ads, ad networks or the companies real time bidding system. This all allows unmatched transparency and makes sure you are maximising advertising potential without sacrificing the user experience.

Founded by app developers who appreciate the use of an open source SDK, mopub scales to serve billions of ads every month.

Mopubs offers excellent analytics and control and gives you real time controls to monitor and see how to maximise your revenue. It also allows you to access more sources for ad revenues and run direct sold campaigns. Ad integration is also that bit easier with mopub and it allows you to see what is going on and suit your apps to fit.

You can also run cross promotions on your apps measure impressions, clicks and installs to drive traffic from one app to the other. It works on all HTML browsers and supports any size of ad on screens, phones or tablets and mopub optimises ad networks so you maximise clicks.

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AdMob vs MobFox

Posted on January 4th, 2012 by christopher

mobfoxvsadmob

 

 

 

It’s a testament to mobile advertising’s rapid growth that AdMob is considered the grand old statesman of the ad-network world, already vulnerable to the disruptive innovation of nimble upstarts. Indeed, the last 12 months have seen a number of rival ad-networks appear on the scene, bringing a raft of new features, and making a range of boisterous claims, leaving Google’s recent acquisition looking a bit old hat.

One of the most prominent of these upstarts is the Vienna-based MobFox, which has been gaining serious momentum on the back of its boast to boost eCPM by 300%. So we thought we’d pit AdMob and MobFox against each other in a head-to-head review. Which network comes out on top – the challenger or the current champ? Read on to find out.

 

In the red corner – AdMob

 

 

Richer ads

Google turned a few heads back in June when it announced that AdMob would pull-out entirely from the mobile web space and focus its efforts exclusively on apps. Now you might say that this is taking a step backwards (especially with HTML5 just around the corner), but it does mean that AdMob can now focus on delivering much richer in-app ads (leaving the mobile web to AdSense). We’re already seeing this move bear some fruit, with Google recently unveiling its in-house ads feature, which allows developers to mix their own rich full-screen ads into inventories – great news if you’re a developer who wants to cross-promote apps.

 


Android

In case you’ve been hiding under a rock recently (or under a pile of discarded Symbian smartphones), you will already know that the Android mobile OS is carving-up the smartphone market at a astronomical pace. Google owns Android. Google owns AdMob. Theoretically AdMob is therefore in a unique position to offer a more robust and integrated service to developers. Obviously such equations don’t always work out and, judging by the complete lack of innovation coming out of AdMob since Google’s acquisition, the search giant may be in danger of acting complacently in the face of plucky young upstarts like MobFox. Nevertheless, Admob currently reigns supreme on Android, with an 89% share of the market. That has to count for something right?

 

Tablet focus

Google clearly sees a strong future ahead for tablets and at the moment AdMob appears to have the edge over MobFox when it comes to offering tablet-optimised ads that are rich in content. MobFox does offer iPad-optimised banners, but its focus appears much more on the mobile side of things. Sure, it’s still too early to tell whether or not tablets will go the way of netbooks, but we’re betting with Google on this one.

 

In the blue corner – MobFox

 

 

eCPM Control

One of MobFox’s biggest wins over AdMob is its ability to allow developers to set a threshold for CPM and CPC. So if you only want to eliminate low-paying ads and only pull ads that pay say over $0.12 per click or $2 per thousand impressions then Bob’s your uncle. This feature, used in conjunction with MobFox’s ‘Backfill’ tool (explained below) has the potential to reap big rewards for publishers, but advertisers may not be so enthusiastic!

 

Backfill

With MobFox’s Backfill feature you can essentially, revert back to your old ad-network if you don’t like the ads currently doing the rounds in MobFox’s inventory. So if you already have an account with AdMob and there’s a high-paying ad you want to pull then you can do so. With eCPM Control activated, MobFox can automatically pick-up ads from AdMob that meet your payment threshold if there’s none available on MobFox.

 

Targeting

MobFox claims that it has one of the most robust demographic targeting features available for advertisers. The ad-network says it has demographic information for over 75% of its inventory, including gender, age, family size, ethnicity, income, religion and relationship status. If true, that’s a pretty impressive feat considering the lack of targeting offered by AdMob.

 

The bottom line

 

In terms of innovative features, MobFox has the edge over AdMob. But for publishers, the bottom line is what counts. MobFox makes a number of rather bullish claims in this department, the chief one that MobFox users get up to 300% higher eCPM than AdMob users.

From our own research, it does appear that MobFox users are enjoying a higher eCPM, but the difference doesn’t seem to be as high as MobFox claims. Accounts from publishers who have switched to MobFox range from eCPM’s doubling or tripling, to dropping way below previous levels before the switch.

The general consensus is that in Europe and – to a slightly lesser extent the USA – MobFox is making publishers more money than AdMob. However, when it comes to Asia, AdMob appears to have the edge, with MobFox struggling to meet requests or serving up low paying ads.

 

Ding, ding! Verdict

 

Given its commitment to innovation, and given AdMob’s apparent stagnation over recent months, MobFox definitely looks like the biggest non-Apple rival to AdMob’s crown. However, while internet chatter points toward increased revenues for MobFox users in general, the ad-network does make some rather inflated claims, and its Asia inventory may still be left wanting in comparison to AdMob’s. Nevertheless, MobFox’s Backfill feature and eCPM Control is a compelling combination and, if you ask us, it’s enough to warrant a try for most publishers.

 

New mobile advertising networks taking on admob

Posted on July 10th, 2011 by admin

*Special Offer* – sign up to mobile ad network mobfox and get a 10% bonus for life on all ad revenues or ad spend 

When google acquired admob for $750m it looked like the mobile advertising industry had been sewn up.  Admob was by far the largest mobile ad network, and combined with google would have huge power in the market.  At the same time, Apple, having acquired Quattro, another big mobile ad network, was rolling out its own iAds format, picking off the high end of mobile advertising.  The only question was how quickly the remaining independent ad networks (Millenial Media, Inmobi etc) would be snapped up.

Fast forward to today and the market looks very different.  There are a load of new exciting players operating in the mobile ad market, some of them making admob / Google look very much like a slow incumbent.  New models such as affiliate/ CPA, incentivised downloads and direct sales are being used to bring much needed innovation into the mobile ad space.

Here’s a quick run down of some of the more interesting new mobile advertising networks:

Mobfox has been making a lot of waves recently – it was founded by a 17 year old high school student but has achieved some great traction of the back of some innovative features.   The network promises to achieve much higher CPM than other networks such as admob, and it appears that they frequently manage to deliver this, according to app developers and publishers that have trailed them, at least in the portion of inventory that they can fill.   The user interface is very clean and similar to admob.  The added features mobfox offers include:

- eCPM manager – this allows publishers to set a minimum floor price for ads

- direct sales – publishers can use Mobfox as an ad server to sell ads directly and get to keep 100% of the revenue

- App Boost – offers a ‘guarantee’ of a top 25 place in the appstore by driving downloads through ads on their network

Features like these show that it’s the smaller, newer competitors that could be driving innovation in the market, not the big guys like Google/ Admob.

Mobpartner was launched only a couple of years after admob in 2008 however it’s only relatively recently that it has started to really take off.  Mobpartner operates on a CPA/ affiliate model paying publishers for specific actions such as completion of a form or download of an application.  The network recently raised a round of funding and is rapidly expanding.  The advantage mobpartner provides is the ability to offer a 100% fill rate to publishers and monetise any inventory across virtually any country.  As mobile commerce takes off and higher value affiliate offers come online (travel, retail, finance) mobpartner is well place to open up huge new revenue opportunities in the mobile sector with massive earnings potential for the rights apps and sites.  Again, for publishers and developers looking to make serious money, it’s new players like mobpartner, not the increasingly commóditised admob that provide the most promise.

tapjoy

Tapjoy is another really interesting player in the mobile monetisation space and again offers a totally different model to the incumbent mobile ad networks.  Tapjoy‘s model is based on providing incentives for users to download apps via a virtual currency.  So, for example, a user playing an iphone game and wanting to buy an extra level or unlock new features can download an app as an alternative way of payment.  Whilst these so called “incentivised downloads” or “offer walls” have recently been banned by Apple, they are still very much growing and operating on Android.  Tapjoy has also taken steps to ensure that they can run their ads on apple by changing some of the policies and approaches.

Tapjoy have just raised a big round of funding so we can expect a lot more innovation and new models linking mobile advertising and virtual goods from them going forward.

burstly

Burstly is another ad network launching some innovative features.  Similar to mobfox it allows publishers and developers to use its platform to sell directly to advertisers.  Burstly then aggregates this inventory and makes it available on an individual, named site basis.  This is the sort of targeting that had previously been confined to the premium CPM based networks such as Microsoft Mobile Ads and Fourth Screen Media.  This is great for advertisers who want to be able to target certain types of users or inventory rather than use the ‘blind’ networks of the likes of admob.

liquid wireless

Liquid Wireless focuses on offers based on a cost per lead (CPL) model.  For example, satellite TV, consumer panels, educational institutions and so on will all pay for leads (typically a name and number/ address).  Liquid Wireless has also developed a pay per call lead generation model.  Again this is totally different from the way admob or most of the other mobile ad networks currently work.  Liquid Wireless also work very closely with their advertisers to optimize landing pages and so on for data capture.  They are rapidly gaining traction and another network to watch for the future.

So there’s five examples of different approaches to the mobile ad network model.  Clearly, just as in the PC/ online ad market there is going to be room for lots of different approaches and many different players in the mobile advertising ecosystem.

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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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