The opportunities of online advertising are triggered in the mobile environment due to the immediacy provided by smartphones and tablets and the increased use of these devices to perform more and more operations and activities. Among the different modalities that are contemplated within mobile marketing, in-App advertising is presented as a solution with advantages for all parties involved: developers, advertisers, and users.
Thanks to this advertising model, developers can offer their applications for free and monetize the time and effort invested since developing an application requires knowledge and work that deserve to be rewarded.
For advertisers, the categorization of mobile applications is an interesting scenario since, thanks to this, they can direct their mobile marketing campaigns to a more segmented audience, which helps them refine the location of potential supporters.
Finally, users also win with in-App advertising because they have access to a wide range of mobile applications that provide content or services for free. Taking into account the constant attempt of brands to locate their audiences, advertising served through mobile applications and mobile marketing tries to be more and more successful with users since the more related the advertising to the user, the more this will be receptive to her.
The users are consumers and every consumer likes to find an offer of what they are looking for, discover new products that fit their lifestyle or be aware of promotions in upcoming activities that they want to do so, at the moment in which The content of an advertising message is interesting for the user, in-App advertising will be enriching the user experience through the application. M-commerce is also gaining strength here. To mediate between these parties involved mobile marketing networks come into play, which offers attractive revenue for mobile application developers, good support for advertisers, and respect for users.
Advertising in an Application, how we get advertisers
You will always see companies interested in displaying advertising, people will pay more or pay less, but that space, those users that you have achieved, have a value and if not they tell it to Facebook or Google, which are perhaps two of the largest companies They live exactly from advertising.
How do we show ads in an application, how do we get to show ads, how do we get advertisers? I see that we have three possibilities.
Get users
The first is the modality used by large corporations, to achieve a huge mass of users, but when I talk about large there are not hundreds or thousands; I speak of millions and millions of users.
Having millions of users and having information about those users, you have gold in your hands, you can offer your ad platform. Simply a system through which companies or individuals can go to your app and advertise according to certain information that you keep from your users.
In a few words and said clearly, you can sell the information of your users, which is basically what platforms like Facebook do, we have already commented on it in an earlier chapter and also does not want to repeat me now, but every time you add something to Facebook It is very valuable information for which advertisers and very valuable for Facebook itself.
Do you think that when you travel and go to Facebook, you see ads related to the site where you are by chance? Well obviously not, either you have made a plan post feel relaxed on such a site, or Facebook has somehow seen that your location is not what you normally have.
If I had an app “know Venice” to say something, I would surely create a Facebook campaign for people who are currently traveling in Venice and this with Facebook you can do it without any problem.
The fact is that if you consider having this mass of users and somehow obtain useful information, which can be used in marketing campaigns, you could get to implement this model.
That said this case is within the reach of a few. Rather, very few, so let’s leave it here and go to other more use cases for people in this world.
Create a market niche
The second strategy would be to achieve a considerable number of users, but with something in common. What comes to be a niche? If you manage to create an application of say: hiking trails and you have ten thousand users, you have a niche of ten thousand people interested in hiking.
Think that you have ten thousand people, all of them are supposed to be interested in hiking because they have downloaded that application and what happens? Well, who may be interested in this, you may be interested in brands of hiking clothes, shoes, etc…
What you could try to do would be to reach an agreement with a brand or store that might interest you to go out in your application, something of the kind, I have ten thousand users who enter “x” times a day and I offer you advertising space in my app in such format for “x” euros per month are you interested? Simply what you would have to do, would be to program it, add that little advertising inside your app, reach an agreement and that’s it.
Then you could put some analysis system, take the user to the web when clicked, you could improve it, doing better. What you could gain with this technique will depend on the number of people who see the ad, the format you offer and especially the niche of people you have.
It is not the same, what people spend on coffee than mobile phones, for example. And of course, it will also depend on what you manage to negotiate with the interested company.
Show ads through Networks
And finally, the third ad strategy and what you can follow and what we will be talking about during the rest of the episode is to show ads through the so-called networks, companies that are dedicated to finding you the advertisers, what does this consist of?
Well, if you do not have a sufficient number of users to create your own advertising company, as we have said in the first option, nor do you have a smaller number of users but segmented enough to interest a specific company or brand, you only have resort to someone providing you with advertisers, an intermediary.
These networks are dedicated on the one hand to capture advertisers and on the other, applications where to show ads put in contact with each other.
The advertiser will be told things like: look where you want to show your advertising in applications of this category or the other in this country or the other; at this time or this other time. On the other hand, it will have many affiliated applications, many small applications, we could say, they have all that potential for the advertiser.
The network, the advertising company, will have applications in all countries, in all categories, etc. You simply have to show the ad in the application you touch, on the other hand, you as the owner of the app. What it will do is sign up to this network, program the system to show ads within the app for which you will need a programmer if you do not know how to do it, and finally configure on the network website things like what type of ads you want, theme or format it is understood?
Benefits of displaying ads
What benefits does this option of displaying ads have? It’s simple. This is its great benefit, with just one or two hours of programming, you can have your application ready to show ads and start earning revenue.
Nothing to look for advertisers, nothing to program an entire advertising system, nothing to reach money agreements, etc. On the other hand, as you know, everything has its good things and its bad things. In this case, the great disadvantage of the system is that you are going to enter less money than with the other models.
The networks or networks of advertisers (call it what you want) we have already said that they are intermediaries and as an intermediary, they do their part of the job. Some will do more and others less and in return, they will take their share of the cake, in this case, they will take a commission from what the advertiser pays. All this means that to obtain a decent income through network advertising, you need a large number of users or rather a better amount of traffic in your app.
Negotiate the correct metrics
There is a wide variety of performance-based metrics that advertisers and developers use to share revenue, such as clicks, CTR (click-through-rate) and the cost per lead generated. The challenge with these metrics is to get development companies to receive reasonable compensation for their inventory when an ad is not attractive or if the advertiser cannot conduct purchases for reasons beyond their control. Metrics that guarantee a base payment should be considered, so as not to unfairly assume responsibility for the design and quality of advertisements or other factors that are beyond your control.
That said, we can see that it is advantageous for developers to look for ads that offer high performance. Broadcasting attractive advertisements from reputable companies can decrease the likelihood of users activating advertising blockers while increasing user satisfaction, participation, and traffic. This, in turn, can increase the perceived value of an inventory and the eCPM that advertisers are willing to pay.
