In today’s world, people spend over 6 hours daily on their smartphone, So, delivering Ads via mobile advertising platforms can be a huge opportunity for companies to advertise brands.
But what sort of ads are you able to deliver?
There are numerous ad types, but the foremost popular ones include:
Google search ads
Facebook ads
Mobile in-app
All the ads mentioned above are mostly delivered by using a mobile advertising platform, also known as a mobile ad network. Two of the foremost obvious choices include Google Ads or Facebook.
A mobile ad platform works like a sort of broker between publishers and advertisers who are trying to find advertising opportunities on popular apps.
In our article today, you’ll find out how mobile advertising platforms work, discover a good number of the best mobile advertising platforms, what they all have in common, and the way to choose the proper platform for your business.
What is a mobile advertising platform?
In simple terms, mobile advertising platform stands as an “intermediary between mobile publishers and advertisers.” Also put, a mobile advertising platform is simply a place where advertisers can easily buy ads that are delivered on mobile websites and apps.
A mobile advertising platform makes provision for the facilitation the monetization of web sites and mobile applications through targeted advertising channels designed to realize revenue from the traffic of mobile users.
Most of the best platforms (e.g., Google and Facebook) provide an advertising management panel that permits you to create an account and manage ads yourself. With this platform, you do not need to advertise directly, and you can easily view your data on impressions, click-through-rates, conversion etc. as all these data is being tracked by the ad platform.
These mobile adverting platforms work two-ways. First, they permit publishers to sell ads (and earn advertising revenue) and secondly, they permit advertisers to serve ads to their potential customers and thereby showcasing their brand.
Mobile advertising platform include things like video ads and mobile website display in-app ads. The mode of operation of mobile ad (as a private device) involves a customized approach which concentrates on targeting advertisement campaigns in order to get return on investment. Also, a lot of mobile advertising companies have emerged to support this trend.
Features of Mobile Advertising platforms
The list below highlights most of the features of every mobile advertising platform:
Programmatic, managed and self-service options
Dashboards for running campaigns
Ad budgeting display
Meditation, targeting and retargeting of ads
Placement display option for search results, mobile apps, mobile websites, push notifications, and SMS
Multiple ad formats display: native ads, video, interstitial ads, offer-walls, banner ads
Tools for creating ads or uploading ads content
Mobile advertising ids
Supported by Android and IOS mobile operating systems
Protection against fraud
Performance analytics and ad campaign tracking
Mobile Advertising Formats
We’ve many types of mobile advertising platforms as defined by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (aka IAB), among them are:
• Banner ad – This is an animated image of the number of sizes defined by IAB, placed on an internet site or inside a mobile app
• Interstitial – a full-screen graphical ad display that covers a whole website or mobile app interface. This requires an internet site visitor or a mobile app user to take an active action to either click-through or close to continue interaction with a mobile app or website.
Offer-wall – This is an option that offers a screen that gives mobile users rewards or different incentives in exchange for specific actions taken like downloading an app, registering in app and more.
Video ad – a brief, 10-25 second length video clip that advertises a selected ad on a mobile app or an internet site.
Native ad – a sort of paid media ad where and ad mimics the natural form and performance of a mobile app or website interface.
Social ad – This is a displayed on social media sites or via audience networks related to them (for instance – Facebook Audience Network).
There are so many business models that different mobile advertising platforms make use of in order to serve both advertisers and publishers. Below we’re going to presenting the foremost widely accepted ones.
Mobile advertising business Models
All the major mobile advertising platforms provide users with several sorts of business models to run ad campaigns with. These mobile advertising business models have 5 major types – CPM, CPC, CPI, CPA and CPV.
CPM (cost-per-mile) – With this type, an advertiser is charged whenever his or her ads is shown up to 1,000 times (so-called ‘a mile’). This is the best business model for publishers, because it permits them to make money whenever an ad is displayed. If they need a stable predictable traffic, this mobile advertising model permit publishers to forecast their revenue. The down side is that they’ll lose some extra revenue, if their app or website audience is basically curious about a product or service they advertise. For that case CPC model would allow them to make extra money.
CPC (cost-per-click) model – With this type of model, an advertiser is charged for every click made on his or her mobile ads. This particular model works better for advertisers, because it permits them to pay just when an interest to their product or service is made (their ads were clicked) and, as mentioned above, in some case they can be beneficial to publishers also. For a publisher this mobile advertising model always presents a certain form of risk when serving many ad impressions for free of charge.
CPI (cost-per-install) – With this type of mobile advertising model, advertisers are charged based on a click on their ads resulted into an actual mobile app install. It’s a selected case of a more generic CPC business model. Cost-per-install price has become one among the foremost important metrics for mobile app marketers to be able to measure and keep track of their impressions. This is because essentially it represents a price, they pay to accumulate customers and hence it should be a factor in calculating ROI.
CPA (cost-per-action) – This type of model is more like an advanced version of CPI, because an advertiser is charged for specific action (sale on in-app, subscription, form submit, check in and more) users take inside an app that’s advertised on a mobile ad network. Publishers are presented with many opportunities to monetize their inventory on one hand and more options for advertisers to grow their business on the other side.
CPV (cost-per-view) – This type of mobile advertising platform provides advertisers with video ad campaigns. With this model, advertisers are charged for every instance their video mobile ad is viewed. With the present pace of video advertising growth, this model is gradually becoming popular.
Factors to consider when choosing a mobile advertising platform
Below is a list of things to think about when choosing a mobile ad platform for your business:
- Choose based on type
Firstly, choose a mobile advertising platform that offers a spread of advertising with applications from the developer that displays ad, keyword search ads and many others. Go ahead and settle for the advertising platform that is based on this.
2. Geography
Advertising platforms for mobile devices have a selected limited geographic area where they need complete access.
If you’re looking to target users in a specific location, confirm that the mobile advertising platform that you simply prefer to use can deliver in the areas where you’re looking to target.
Doing some background research will assist you to determine the first marketplace for each platform you’re looking to consider.
3. The types of networks
Mobile Advertising platforms vary depending on the network they choose.
- Blind network: Your ads are going to be displayed on various small sites and apps.
- Premium blind network: This Displays your ads on websites with higher traffics
- Premium network: you’ll handpick the places where you would like to display your ads. This is a more expensive choice to consider.
4. Impressions
Mobile advertising platforms are mostly classified under three (3) types of impressions:
- Pay Per Click- Under this, you pay whenever someone clicks on your ad
- Pay Per thousand impression- This is based on the number of viewers who view your mobile ad, you pay a flat rate. It doesn’t matter whether the viewer has clicked your ad or not.
- Cost per acquisition- Within this feature, payment is merely done whenever someone has signed up to be your customer or have downloaded and installed your mobile app.
5. Network reporting for mobile app
Data reporting on an advertising campaign’s performance is one among the key components that’s crucial for its success. Most outstanding mobile advertising platforms all have a detailed reporting network that you simply can access in one easy look at the dashboard.
Every user wants to ascertain reports about their sales performance, which includes the number of impressions, clicks, installs, video ad views, platform, country, ad format, and others.
Having insights allows you to see how your advertisements are performing and to also make decision on whether to change it or not. Maybe you’re doing better with one advertising type than another, so you’ll know to modify your advertising types.
Top best Mobile ad platforms for you
We’ve carefully selected the best mobile advertising platforms for you. Below are a good number of them:
- Google ads
- Facebook/Instagram ads
- Admob
- Millennial media
- Bing ads
Google Ads
This is one of the most important names in the digital world, but did you recognize their ad platform extends to mobile apps too? Yes, you got that right. Device targeting is an option when it comes to displaying ads. Counting on your strategy, it’s possible to showcase ads in browsers, Google search results, and even within apps. If you’re using display ads, be sure that you’ve set the targeting to either display ‘smartphone only’ or ‘smartphone and tablet.
If your intention is to reach out to your customers with mobile devices in hand, you’ve got a couple of options. You only don’t get to have a standard text/image ads, but you can also create an image/video app promotion ad. On the other hand, you would possibly need a True View ad for a full campaign.
It’s simply obvious why Google is one among your best options: it’s the foremost used program in the digital world and it grants access to many people. Who wouldn’t want their ad to be displayed to such a good number of diverse audiences?
Google mobile advertising platform has all its features incorporated in order to integrate high performing ads like native ads, banner ads, video ads and others.
Facebook/Instagram Ad
Another two foremost mobile advertising platform is Facebook and its partner Instagram. These two (2) are among the most popular social media platforms with millions of users. Making them one of the best mobile ad platforms to advertise your app.
These two social media platforms offer advertising campaigns for any budget. Furthermore, you’ll be able to narrow down the audience using demographics like:
Location
Age
Gender
Relationship status
Education
Job
Likes and interests
The ad types used in these two platforms include: image, video, video poll, carousel (up to 10 images). Slideshow (short video ads), collection (mobile only to feature five products). Instant experience (full-screen ads that load quickly), lead (signups).
Setting up a mobile advertising campaign is simple, with a couple of steps. You’ll need to define your objectives. Find out your demographics, select ad format and placement. Choose a budget that fits your need, schedule and then create your ad.
As you’ll see, Facebook and Instagram offer you many options for mobile ad and app monetization.
AdMob
This mobile advertising platform is owned by Google. It’s the mobile version of Google AdSense. If you’re new to ad marketing. AdMob can be an excellent place to start out because it’s simple and easy to use.
This mobile platform allows you to advertise using formats like text, images, video, or interactive media. And the amazing part is that you’ll choose what ad format you would like to feature. All ads are custom to present ads associated with your app, so you can make more money from them.
Ads can be placed using automatic artificial intelligence (AI). Which simply means that you can add one line of code to your app, and ads are automatically generated. Otherwise, you can do it manually, which means you can choose and place ads where you would like them.
With Admob, you get to advertise using the following:
Banner adverts
Video ads
Interstitial
Reward ads
Native adverts
This mobile advertising platform offers ad mediation if you would like to link to other mobile ads networks. And you can easily track your campaign performance by connecting to Google Analytics.
This ad platform has features for beginner and advanced publishers designed to assist them in maximizing profits.
Just like every other Advertising platform, AdMob has its own limitations on ad placements. And these includes not having one visible at a time during scrolling.
Millennial Media
This mobile advertising platform is all about monetizing a mobile app. One of the important features of this platform is that it offers a standard banner ads and mobile video.
Another advantage of choosing Millennial Media is that they also encourage 360 degrees. Just like those before it, there’s a chance to delve into deep targeting with options like location, demographic, and behavior.
Its not necessarily for large company to enjoy Millennial Media.
For small companies also, they can still use the self-service solutions. In addition to managing in-house ads, it’s also offer impressions to third-party networks.
Another feature it uses to hook advertisers is the great flexibility it offers when it involves mobile ad. You can easily assign traffic across the specified network based on the percentage of revenue.
Bing ads
Even though Bing is smaller than Google as a search engine software. It doesn’t mean we should always ignore their mobile advertising platform.
Consistent with some statistics, Bing Ads are cheaper than Google Ads by over 65%. Considering this is often still a search engine software that gets billions of searches monthly. We say it’s still worth the investment.
In order to reduce cost, Bing Ads also offers users more control over scheduling, language, and location.
They even have an excellent feature that permits businesses to feature their social media links under their ads.
We should always note that there’s added benefits to picking Bing. For instance, their default program for those that have a Kindle Fire device.
Conclusion
So, there you’ve got it, Five (5) of the best mobile advertising platforms. Whether it’s monetizing your ad or reaching more people (or both!). You can find help with one among these tools we’ve mentioned.
In terms of selecting one, you shouldn’t have a negative experience with any. Since they need experience and a positive reputation in the digital advertising industry. They’re going to allow you work towards your goals.
However, we recommend writing down a detailed list of your own needs before then comparing them to the features of every service. You can choose the platform that best matches these needs!
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