Mobile Advertising Guide

Authors: Ralph Ruckman & Ryan Gray

Owners: IMGrind | Revived Media | iMobiTrax

THE CONTENTS OF THIS MANUAL REFLECT THE AUTHOR’S VIEWS ACQUIRED THROUGH HIS EXPERIENCE ON THE TOPIC UNDER DISCUSSION. THE AUTHOR OR PUBLISHER DISCLAIMS ANY PERSONAL LOSS OR LIABILITY CAUSED BY THE UTILIZATION OF ANY INFORMATION PRESENTED HEREIN. THE AUTHOR IS NOT ENGAGED IN RENDERING ANY LEGAL OR PROFESSIONAL ADVICE. THE SERVICES OF A PROFESSIONAL PERSON ARE RECOMMENDED IF LEGAL ADVICE OR ASSISTANCE IS NEEDED.

WHILE THE SOURCES MENTIONED HEREIN ARE ASSUMED TO BE RELIABLE AT THE TIME OF WRITING, THE AUTHOR AND PUBLISHER, OR THEIR AFFILIATES, ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THEIR ACTIVITIES. FROM TIME TO TIME, SOURCES MAY TERMINATE OR MOVE AND PRICES MAY CHANGE WITHOUT NOTICE. SOURCES CAN ONLY BE CONFIRMED RELIABLE AT THE TIME OF ORIGINAL PUBLICATION OF THIS MANUAL.

THIS MANUAL IS A GUIDE ONLY AND, AS SUCH, SHOULD BE CONSIDERED SOLELY FOR BASIC INFORMATION. EARNINGS OR PROFITS DERIVED FROM PARTICIPATING IN THE FOLLOWING PROGRAM ARE ENTIRELY GENERATED BY THE AMBITIONS, MOTIVATION, DESIRES, AND ABILITIES OF THE INDIVIDUAL READER.

NO PART OF THIS MANUAL MAY BE ALTERED, COPIED, OR DISTRIBUTED, WITHOUT PRIOR WRITTEN PERMISSION OF THE AUTHOR OR PUBLISHER. ALL PRODUCT NAMES, LOGOS, AND TRADEMARKS ARE PROPERTY OF THEIR RESPECTIVE OWNERS WHO HAVE NOT NECESSARILY ENDORSED, SPONSORED, OR APPROVED THIS PUBLICATION. TEXT AND IMAGES AVAILABLE OVER THE INTERNET AND USED IN THIS MANUAL MAY BE SUBJECT TO INTELLECTUAL RIGHTS AND MAY NOT BE COPIED FROM THIS MANUAL. Copyright 2013 Internet Marketing Grind LLC Foreword

Dear Mobile Marketers,

I'll be upfront and straight to the point here. If you have not read our Mobile Marketing Guide, you will likely be completely lost here.

I wrote the Mobile Marketing Guide this year to share the knowledge and experience I've learned in mobile marketing. It's 189 pages long and there is no other guide like it in the world. It's generated millions of dollars for mobile affiliate marketers.

Since the release of the mobile marketing guide, our Mobile CPA Network, Revived Media is now producing over 2,000,000+ Million monthly mobile leads and recently we crossed the 1,000,000+ Million monthly app installs mark.

Do I need to say anymore? Our mobile guide has produced mobile affiliates from all over the world whom have generated over $100,000.00 a month and a ton of mobile affiliates who generate over $1,000 daily.

In the Mobile Industry, we have introduced the most robust mobile marketing forum inside the IMGrind Private Forums, the fastest growing Mobile CPA Network in Revived Media, and the most efficient Mobile Ad Tracking Technology in the world with iMobiTrax. Our technology is currently awaiting approval from the US Government on our Patent.

I don't tell you this to boast. I don't tell you this to inflate my ego. I really could care less. I tell you this so that you understand – I know what I'm talking about. I tell you this so that you can gain quickly from it. Since the release of our mobile marketing guide, our companies have experienced EXPONENTIAL growth. So much so, I'm finding it harder and harder each day to keep up with our Forum Members, Blog Readers, Advertisers and Tracking Clients.

So with that said, I'm going to lay it all out on the line in this document. This document has been written in a step-by-step format. These steps are not a “suggestion” for you. These steps are REQUIRED.

Step 1. - download the mobile marketing guide. (Link below) http://www.imgrind.com/mobile-marketing-guide/

Step 2. - Follow the mobile marketing guide to a “T.” Every single person who has downloaded that guide (currently over 3,500+ people) and has applied what they learned step-by-step in that guide has been making making in mobile. Some over $100,000.00 a month with Revived Media and many over $1,000.00 daily with Revived Media. If you follow it, you will succeed. Stray off the beaten path by not applying just one step in that guide – You're on your own. I'm not a babysitter. I don't make successful Entrepreneurs. I help Entrepreneurs become successful.

Step 3. - Follow this entire guide from top to bottom. I'm going to explain and expose some pretty disturbing truths in mobile advertising. Now that we have our own mobile ad network, I'm going to expose how the backends work. The information you are about to read will save you money and make you money.

Again, if you do not follow it step-by-step, you're on your own. Below is a snapshot of what I taught in the mobile marketing guide. So, I think you'll see why I'm telling you to download it. Without understanding what's in the mobile marketing guide, I can almost guarantee you won't have a clue as to what I'm going to tell you in this mobile advertising guide.

Click Here To Download The Guide

Now, let's get started. You and I are about to go on one heck of a ride here into mobile advertising, mobile traffic, and mobile ad networks. Tablet Of Contents

Chapter 1. Mobile Advertising Chapter 2. Mobile Ad Networks Chapter 3. Mobile Ad Networks Don't Like You Chapter 4. Mobile Self-Serve Advertising Chapter 5. Mobile Ad Network Technology Chapter 6. Mobile Click Discrepancies, IP'S & Adservers Chapter 7. Mobile Landing Pages Chapter 8. Testing Mobile Offers Chapter 9. Mobile CTR & Optimization Chapter 10. Airpush & Leadbolt Chapter 11. Tapit Campaign Setup Chapter 12. The Future

If you have questions or would like to reach out to me, feel free to shoot me a text on my cellphone or skype me:

Ruck 620.803.2215 | Skype: RevivedMedia Chapter 1. Mobile Advertising To be blunt, I don't want to spend a bunch of time explaining what mobile advertising is. As I've already said (numerous) times, you should have read the mobile marketing guide because I've already covered it. But...

What you need to know is this.

When I refer to the term “mobile publisher” throughout this guide, it could mean 1 of 2 things. There are two types of “mobile publishers.”

1. Mobile Websites – These are mobile publishers whom run mobile ads on their websites. They are also referred to as “WAP Publishers.” 2. Mobile Apps – These are mobile publisher whom run mobile ads within their mobile apps. Also referred to as “APP Developers.”

It's important that you know and understand the two. The reason being is because there are two standards types of mobile advertising options available. On-Device However, in these two types of mobile advertising options, there are MANY WAYS TO ADVERTISE. These are called Mobile Ad Types and are often referred to as Mobile Ad Units

1. On-Device Mobile Advertising – Also referred to as On-Deck. 2. Off-Device Mobile Advertising – Also referred to as Off-Deck.

On-Device Mobile Display Advertising - On-device display ads take forms that have immediate analogs on the PC-based Internet, and include formats such as:

➢ Text ads (either static or clickable) ➢ Graphical banners (either static or clickable) ➢ Graphical banners with associated text links ➢ Video preroll ➢ Traditional TV Commercials at standard lengths Outside of mobile video ads, these formats are generally clickable or otherwise interactive, as with ads on the PC-based Internet. However, the results of a “click” can range beyond just taking the viewer to a landing page, and include initiating a text message or call, depending on the capabilities of the device being used. On-device display ads can serve the same spectrum of functions as display ads on PCs, ranging from pure brand building to pure direct response.

Off-Device Mobile Display Advertising - In addition to delivering display advertising on the device itself, mobile interactivity is uniquely able to activate traditional offline advertising (e.g., outdoor, live event, television, etc.), or even PC-based ads, with an interactive, measurable call-to-action via SMS, MMS and/or WAP push.

Mobile display advertising generally takes two major forms: display ads delivered on the device itself (within a mobile Web browser or some other phone-based application), or display ads in other media that feature a mobile call-to-action (typically sending a message via text messaging shortcode).

Advertisers tapping into mobile interactivity for offline display media view the mobile phone as a “mobile mouse” allowing the consumer to self select and activate traditional media and drive a new interactive channel. Examples of this “offline interactive” capability include:

➢ Mobile coupons to help drive to POS ➢ Mobile PINs to help drive to Web ➢ Mobile ticketing to help drive to an event ➢ Mobile option to onward-going CRM

It's critical you understand these basics of mobile advertising because mobile ad networks differ in the types of advertising they provide. The mobile ecosystem has a diverse array of intermediaries that all have a role in delivering a marketer’s message to its intended audience. The easy way to explain this is to actually show you a visual from the IAB:

Mobile display ads and sponsorships are sold using pricing models that are familiar to anyone who has bought advertising on the PC-based Web. Depending on the publisher, carrier, or ad network, advertisers can make mobile ad buys in any of the following three main ways:

CPM (Cost per Thousand Impressions): Buying based on impressions delivere. CPC (Cost per Click): Buying based on the number of viewers who click on the ad. CPA (Cost per Action): Buying based on some other action by the consumer beyond the click. On mobile, “cost per call” this allows viewers of the ad to automatically initiate a call with a call center.

Today, CPC and CPM models are both common for mobile display. Types Of Mobile Advertising

Mobile Display Ads – Just like PC-based Web ad inventory, mobile display ads are typically banners that appear on a mobile web page or mobile application. Display ads can also be full page or interstitial, occupying the entire screen and running for example before a mobile web page loads, in between pages of a magazine app, or between levels of a game. Both mobile web and mobile apps are important ways to reach smartphone consumers.

Typically, a brand or agency buys mobile display ads for increased exposure of a product or service. Banner inventory is generally purchased based on impressions (e.g., CPM) or sometimes for direct response campaigns on a cost-per- interaction (e.g., taps, expands, etc.) basis. Important factors to keep in mind involve: (1) where your ad will appear on a mobile web page or in a mobile app, (2) the size of mobile screens, and (3) rich-media capabilities.

One of the major advantages to advertising on the smartphone is the degree of interaction the platform allows on touch screens. Video – Mobile video ad opportunities are quickly developing as mobile devices become perceived and used by consumers as video players. Faster, “4G” data networks and devices connecting via wi-fi facilitate video viewing. However, data price increases by three major mobile carriers in 2011, and the decline of flat-rate unlimited mobile data in the US may hinder the growth of mobile video, if consumers rebel against paying for the connections used to deliver video advertising.

Branded apps – Rather than buying ad inventory or sponsoring an app, marketers can build their own apps and offer them for download in a smartphone app store. Media, chain restaurants, retail, and travel and hospitality are all categories that have embraced branded apps.

Self Plug: I recently built our branded app for the Android and iOS Platforms. Our App is availabe in the Google Play Store and Appstore. That means you should download it, because you love me. :-) Location Based Advertising – This type of advertising utilizes the handset’s GPS or other geolocation technologies to serve advertising based on a consumer’s location in relation to a merchant’s retail location. Location-based display ads can be served on the mobile web or within mobile apps, and feature all the abilities of other mobile display ads.

Mobile Rich Media - On the PC-based web, rich media ads are synonymous with Adobe’s Flash, which has a huge installed base and giant developer community. In the early days of mobile rich media, the absence of Flash on many smartphone platforms (including Apple’s iOS) was a source of frustration for advertisers. However, the industry has accepted this reality, and indeed Adobe is no longer developing or supporting Flash on mobile platforms.

Buying advertising on the mobile web and in-app is similar in some ways to buying display advertising on the Internet. Graphical, interactive display ads are the predominant ad unit. As previously stated, in most cases mobile display ad impressions can be purchased on a cost per thousand (CPM) or a cost per interaction (CPI) basis.

Some operators and publishers that have mobile properties sell mobile ads directly, while others allow their inventory to be sold by a third party, either as premium inventory or as part of a mobile ad network.

Today there are two parallel interactive inventory buys: PC and mobile. A fairly common error among novice buyers is to simply take creative built for the PC-based web and shrink or crop it down for mobile screens. When buying PC and mobile inventory the key is not to simply try and implement the same creative execution into PC and mobile media types but extend the idea to the mobile space with mobile-specific execution of the idea. This is where most of the web-based marketers and advertisers whom I've worked with have stumbled. They simply think “close-minded” and try to port over successful web campaigns into mobile advertising.

Don't do this. I strongly suggest you change your way of thinking.

Another issue advertisers should consider around planning and targeting is that not all smartphone users are created equal. Different devices or OS platforms may have different user characteristics and capabilities. While mobile web ads will generally run seamlessly across devices, for in-app buys in particular it may be worth considering targeting a specific operating system or device as the audience for the campaign, both because that can simplify and speed creative development, and because it may be a way to roughly target a demographic or psychographic of interest.

One of the other significant differences between buying mobile display ads and PC web display ads is that mobile ads are not generally sold by unit size. Because the sizes and resolutions of mobile phone screens vary, the way the ad creative looks on mobile phones will also vary. Therefore, unless it is targeted at a single handset model, and particularly if it runs across both feature phones and smartphones, any given mobile campaign will likely require multiple sizes of mobile web banners.

For in-app advertising, there is even less standardization in sites and features. Even “full page” ads will vary in size from device to device or even publisher to publisher. In-app ads facilitate creating rich media ad units that allow a user to interact physically with the creative. However, one publisher may allow and encourage shakeable ads, while another will not support that capability. Additionally, advertisers should realize that apps are a different user experience than the open mobile web, so they should think carefully before forcing a user to leave an app to go to a mobile landing page. Chapter 2.

Mobile Ad Networks Mobile advertising spend is expected to grow from $3.3 billion to $20.6 billion by 2015 (according to Gartner). A major component in this projection is the staggering number of users moving to smartphones who are quickly growing more comfortable with mobile apps as well as their mobile browsing experience.

With those users spending even more time on their mobile devices, advertisers are itching to get their attention, and the best way to do it is through mobile ad networks. Just like the advertising giants on the web like Yahoo Network, Real Media, AdBrite, and Google Ad Network, mobile has spawned a new host of major players that include InMobi, Jumptap, Millennial Media, Tapjoy, and others. Of course, we've also watched the big guns enter the race, including Google, which purchased AdMob, and Microsoft, which created Microsoft Mobile Advertising.

The two main reasons mobile advertising is exploding are:

Mobile ads are highly targetable -- enormous amounts of information are available about smartphone users, helping you to determine exactly which demographics you need to target.

You can reach customers at the point of purchase. Reaching out to customers as they are actively making purchase decisions gives marketers an incredible opportunity to convert them.

However, it is important to remember that advertising in this mobile space is relatively new, and no one really knows where it is heading. For example, is it more efficient to drive users to install your mobile app or to send them directly to your shopping cart on the mobile version of your website? If someone clicks my ad because it was required for them to get a badge or move up a level in a game, is that user still valuable to me? Marketers around the world are still working to solve questions like these, and it's important to keep in mind that we are still in a very early stage of mobile advertising. I won't be surprised at all to see completely new advertising methods take shape over the coming year, completely tailored to the mobile user experience.

Finding the right mobile ad networks

The most important factor in deciding to work with any ad network, mobile or otherwise, is what type of traffic you are looking for. Are you just building your brand and wanting more eyeballs, looking for more clicks to your site, or maybe you need more users to install your mobile app or purchase a product. Each ad network has unique strengths and weaknesses at this point, but you can narrow most of them into a few categories.

Blind networks

These networks usually have access to a large quantity of smaller publisher sites and applications. They don't really give you insight into all the publishers you're working with. Depending on how qualified your new users need to be, blind networks can be an excellent answer to getting some volume pumping (e.g., AdMob, InMobi, Adfonic, BuzzCity).

Premium blind networks

These networks focus on medium-sized level publishers and above, but still don't show you who you're working with. If it doesn't matter which sites are sending you traffic as along as they are premium sites, these networks work really well. These networks often have pay per click (CPC) and per install (CPI) options (e.g., Millennial Media, Jumptap). Premium networks

Mobile ad networks that just work with a few, really high quality publishers. These are often huge destination sites or even mobile operators, and you will often need to pay like you would a display network (CPM) (e.g., Microsoft, AOL, Nokia).

Incentivized networks

Incentivized ad networks encourage users to install a mobile app or complete an advertiser-defined action in exchange for some sort of virtual currency. The traffic may be blind or transparent from these networks. This type of advertising is performance based, usually cost per install or cost per action (CPA) (e.g., OfferMobi, SponsorPay, Tapjoy).

Right now, there really is no clear winner among mobile advertising networks. In fact, new networks are developing every month, showing incredible numbers, and there is no definitive way to know the quality of a network without trying it for your specific business model. We're still waiting for a study that can reveal more, but in the meantime it is important to go with the style of network you feel comfortable with and test the quality of the traffic yourself.

If you're still a little unsure of your specific requirements even after you've determined your broad business objective on mobile, you can spread advertising dollars around to multiple major ad networks and monitor results. You have to do the same thing with new web-based advertising methods such as Facebook and Twitter, but I can almost guarantee that with mobile ad networks, you'll get more bang for your buck across the board. Now, before we go any further, I have to strongly recommend you use the resource I'm about to give you. It's a mobile ad network news aggregator of more than 250+ Mobile Traffic Sources.

You can see it and bookmark it here → http://imgrind.com/mobgrind

I built this mobile news aggregator so that I could map and follow all the mobile traffic sources I come across. It updates in real-time as a mobile ad network blogs or tweets. Talk about awesome huh?

And yes, I'm the only person in the world who has something like this available for people all over the globe. I built it for myself as a go-to information resource but have now shared it publicly. HUGE Tip To Save You Money Advertising On Mobile Ad Networks

With over 700+ clients utilizing our Proprietary Mobile Tracking Platform here at iMobitrax, and over 500+ Mobile Affiliates using our Mobile CPA Network at Revived Media, I’m constantly asked the same question over and over again – “Ruck, how do I tell who is a good mobile ad network and who isn’t?”

I’m now going to attempt to answer that question publicly but it isn’t going to be a “cut and dry” answer, and most likely, you probably won’t like what I have to say.

But, I know my answer can save you money if you pay attention to what I say and use this to your negotiating advantage when it comes to dealing with mobile network representatives.

No Mobile Ad Network Is The Same: All of them differ in some way. All the way to who they employ, how many employees they got. I’ll give you a specific example of what I am talking about. Behind the scenes, we have been building our own mobile ad network. Believe me, it’s incredibly simple. We’ve integrated and used iMobiTrax with over 100+ Mobile Ad Networks and direct sources over the last 6 months, and we’ve learned alot. It only made sense to start a mobile ad network on our own.

There really is no difference in how mobile ad networks operate in comparison to online ad networks. In the simplest way to understand it, mobile ad networks basically aggregate ad inventory and match it with advertisers just like online networks do. Wow, that is mind-blowing. Not.

Mobile ad Networks soak up, acquire and trade mobile ad inventory. They then analyze the potential of it (the real players do anyhow) and then sell it based upon the needs of advertisers. Now in mobile though, Ad Networks do serve a pretty important purpose. The audience/users in mobile are EXTREMELY fragmented across a ton of devices and publishers (whether those publishers are apps or mobile websites). Mobile Ad Networks serve their purpose by rounding up those fragmented audiences into a centralized marketplace to serve ads to them.

However, here’s a big secret that really isn’t a secret at all (if you are connected and know some key players) – Near every mobile ad network has the same inventory or the ability to access the same inventory. I know, it’s mind-boggling isn’t it (Sarcasm)? The reason for this is because a lot of mobile ad networks buy this publisher supply of inventory from wholesalers.

In many cases of buying mobile advertising for us, we’ve marked down large mobile websites whom we’ve wanted to go direct with because we have found that we were serving mobile ads to that publisher across more than one network at a time. Basically, we were competing against ourselves for the ad inventory.

Now, like I said before, this isn’t the case with all mobile ad networks. The real players in this space are the ones with actual sales teams that are out their signing new direct publisher and advertiser relationships. However, when I say “real players,” there (unfortunately) isn’t very many of them compared to the actual amount of mobile ad networks in existence. Pretty shitty huh?

Now something important that I would like to point out about all of this is, is that I’m excluding Mobile Exchanges and Mobile Demand Side Platforms (DSP’s) from all of this. At least for now. I’m not addressing those just yet because they are different when compared to mobile ad networks. Yes, you obviously can buy mobile ads from exchanges and DSP’s however the difference here is that with DSP’s you typically get much more transparency (as an advertiser) to the ad inventory available.

With DSP’s being more transparent, the educated mobile advertiser gets a bit of an “upper-hand” if you will at optimizing their campaigns on a real- time basis and also buy up inventory in real-time across more publishers.

With mobile ad exchanges, the mobile ad process is much more automated and computed. Exchanges basically take the mobile publishers and connect them to multiple ad networks. Now, typically exchanges serve as SSP’s (Supply Side Platforms) serving mobile publishers the opportunity to connect with multiple ad networks and increase their fill rates and earnings. This is important to understand if you do actually work with an exchange and purchase inventory as an advertiser. It basically boils down to mobile publishers wanting more bang for their buck and doing anything they can to make that happen. These mobile ad exchanges are also fueling the ad inventory side of a lot of mobile ad networks out there. That’s why you’re getting a lot of the same inventory.

Now this is just a very broad overview of mobile ad networks, but hopefully it does clear up the question of who is a good mobile ad network and who isn’t. I’m not going to list who I know is good and who I know is bad.

That information is gold. It’s priceless. That’s for you to figure out on your own, much like we have. However, this should give you a bit more insight into what you need to be asking mobile ad networks before depositing your advertising dollars into them. 1 Tip To Avoid Crap Mobile Traffic

Did you catch the mobile click fraud chapter in the mobile marketing guide?

If you haven’t, you really should before reading this so you understand where I’m coming from. You see, mobile click fraud is rampant. Like, seriously, it’s the fucking plague of the mobile advertising industry. With so many ways to game the system, it was only a matter of time before we saw the explosion in mobile ad networks that we have seen from 2010 – currently.

It seems like a new network pops up every single week! Or at the very least, one gets bought out and a merger happens. What you don’t see is some of the bullshit behind the scenes. Catch yourself up on mobile click fraud so that you can use this tip to your full advantage the next time you approach a mobile ad network to buy traffic from.

Here’s the tip, you ready?

“Premium”

That’s it. Simple.

When approaching a mobile ad network, you never want to approach as an affiliate marketer. Matter of fact, I don’t suggest doing that anywhere honestly.

Represent yourself as an advertising agency with a variety of clients whom are looking to buy only “premium” mobile traffic from. You already know how to represent yourself as an agency because I taught you how in the mobile marketing guide. :-) You see, “Premium” is a code word in the mobile marketing and advertising industries that really means:

“Don’t send me shit. Only send the good stuff.”

Self-Service VS Managed Campaigns

Now, I'm going to briefly covered how mobile ad networks handle mobile campaigns throughout their organizations. It's pretty simple here. You can either serve yourself (Self-Serve) or have someone serve you (Managed Campaigns).

I know I already covered this in the Mobile Marketing guide, but I thought I would go ahead and put together a run-down of differences for Self-

Service VS Managed Mobile Campaigns.

Self Service - The advertiser (that's you as a mobile affiliate) creates and manages your mobile campaigns through a self-service enabled ad platform (a mobile ad network)

Managed Campaigns - Managed campaigns or campaign management is a process of creating, executing and tracking the performance of the campaign by an external entity - network or agencies to meet the advertiser expectations. Self Service

➢ Advertisers manage the entire campaign execution by themselves ➢ Campaign execution options are limited but visible to advertisers ➢ Advertisers can quickly create, schedule, execute and track mobile campaigns by themselves ➢ Advertisers can measure the campaign performance and adapt services if necessary ➢ Advertisers gain exposure to customer centric info, which can be used in segmentation and targeting

Risks In Self Serve

➢ Lack of expertise to handle campaign related issues ➢ The company may under-utilize the potential of mobile campaigns, while giving more importance to the other forms of advertising ➢ Advertisers may not be equipped with information related to inventory allocation or mobile publishing techniques ➢ Advertisers might not be well versed in appropriate ad positioning techniques

Managed Campaign Model

➢ Follows the ad agency model ➢ Executives, acquire specific inventory, according to campaign requirements ➢ A dedicated campaign management execution team, manages the entire campaign ➢ Monitor the campaign closely on an everyday basis ➢ Optimize campaign, based on performance The Campaign Management Process goes like this: Campaign Planning, Campaign Initiation, Performance Tracking & Reporting

Campaign Planning Overview

➢ Identify the campaign objective ➢ Calculate the optimum traffic required ➢ Calculate the daily budget limits, if any ➢ Set the campaign duration

Campaign Initiation Overview

➢ Create customized ads to reach the target audience ➢ Set the campaign targeting requirements ➢ Provide suitable ad placement on the publisher sites ➢ Verify the landing page for the ads ➢ Allocate the required traffic

Performance Tracking & Reporting Overview

➢ Campaign performance is closely monitored through detailed analytics and reports ➢ Campaign performance is constantly enhanced, by refreshing ad creatives, revised positioning and ad mechanics ➢ Advertisers are regularly updated with campaign budgets, status and performance ➢ Non-Performing ad traffic may be routed to other campaigns ➢ Non-Performing ads may be removed and new ads may be refreshed So what is my advice? While self-serve is simple to get approved on and start running, almost every mobile affiliate will flock to these types of platforms. Why? Because as I've stated, they are easy and people in general, like to take the easy route versus getting in contact with Ad Reps and establishing a solid line of communication.

If you're new to mobile advertising, it might be better that someone else does the campaign management for you.

Also if you have already run campaigns and the CTR is dropping, or the results aren't satisfactory, then managed campaign might be able to provide better results. However, the decision is really up to you and what you are looking to achieve.

Now I've already taught you the importance of representing yourself as an Agency to mobile ad networks. Seriously, if you aren't willing to have the confidence to work with Ad Network Reps, you are going to lose money. It's just that simple.

With that said, I'm going to provide you my Ad Network Checklist that I use when approaching a new mobile traffic source. As I've stated, I'm going to assume you have followed every step from the mobile marketing guide up until this point. If you haven't, don't bother me. This is gold.

Questions To Ask Your Mobile Ad Network:

➢ How do you determine Carrier traffic? ➢ Do you use 3rd Party Database providers to determine Carriers? Who? ➢ How do you determine device detection? ➢ Do you use your own proprietary database of ip's? ➢ How often is your databases updated? Per country? ➢ Do you use 3rd Party Device Detection/Identification? If so, Who? ➢ How do you determine traffic quality type? Premium Versus Remnant? ➢ How do you separate WIFI versus Carrier/Operator traffic? ➢ What's the policy on delivering traffic outside of what I target per campaign? ➢ What is your policy on click fraud? ➢ Do you separate app traffic versus mobile web (WAP) traffic? ➢ Are all the websites you serve mobile ads on mobile optimized? ➢ How do you determine publisher mobile website quality? Have a policy? ➢ What Campaign Optimization Features Do You Have? ➢ Can I exclude non-performing apps? Websites? Channels? Categories? ➢ Do you offer campaign scheduling? Certain Days/Hours? ➢ Do you offer frequency capping? ➢ Do you offer Day/Week Parting? ➢ Can I pause my ads if they are not performing?

(Pause on your own, not with an Ad Representative having to do it.)

I am using the Proprietary Mobile Tracker "iMobiTrax." I have the ability to automatically track all incoming mobile traffic clicks by:

✗ Subids ✗ Timestamps ✗ Date/Time ✗ IP Address ✗ Referrers ✗ User-Agents I have the ability to automatically track all incoming clicks from mobile devices by:

✗ Manufacturers ✗ Device Name ✗ Device Model ✗ Manufacturer Specific: Name/Model Combination ✗ Device: Marketing Name ✗ Device Type: EG: Smartphones, iOS, Android, Tablets, Feature Phones,

I have the ability to automatically track all incoming clicks from:

✗ Carriers ✗ ISP ✗ Country Code ✗ Country Name

Alternatively I have the ability to track with your ad network provided tracking:

✗ Parameters ✗ Tokens ✗ Macros

What are your click tokens? Macros? Parameters?

➔ What Type Of Targeting Do You Offer? ➔ Geographic Targeting? Country? Region? City? Zip? ➔ Channel Targeting? Category Targeting? Specific Content Channels? ➔ Demographic Targeting? Examples: ➔ Gender ➔ Age ➔ Education Level ➔ Family Size ➔ Lifestyle ➔ Income Levels ➔ Relationship ➔ Language

➔ What is your traffic breakdown (Total Reach) per unique individual per country? Non-duplicated audience? ➔ What is your Wifi traffic breakdown per country? ➔ What is your operator/carrier traffic breakdown per country? ➔ What is your iOS traffic breakdown by country? ➔ What is your Android traffic breakdown by country? ➔ What is your smartphone traffic breakdown by country? ➔ What is your feature phone (aka basic phone) traffic breakdown by country?

➔ What is your iPad traffic breakdown per country? ➔ What is your total tablet traffic breakdown per country? ➔ What is your in-app advertising breakdown per country? ➔ What is your mobile web (WAP) traffic breakdown per country? ➔ Who are some of your top publishers per country?

They should have log data that provides this. If they don't, instruct the mobile ad network they are severely behind the competition in the mobile ad network space.

➔ What are your minimum bids per country? ➔ What are your total ads served per country? ➔ What are your recommended bids per country? ➔ How many daily impressions per country do you have available daily? ➔ Was is a competitive CPC (cost per click) in each country? ➔ What is a competitive CTR (click through rate) in each country? ➔ What is a competitive daily budget? Weekly? Monthly? ➔ Do you have a refund policy? (For un-targeted, bad traffic) ➔ What is your initial deposit? ➔ What funding sources do you accept? ➔ Do you accept pre-pay, pay as I go, or post-payments? Now turn the tables and see how knowledgeable they are of the competition:

➔ Why should we consider working with your mobile ad network? ➔ How do you differentiate yourself from all the other mobile ad networks out there?

One of the most simple but essential questions to ask of your ad network. While vendors will be eager to provide a wealth of data and inventory options, it is important that this question can be answered clearly, concisely, and articulately. "When asking this question, we are looking for ad networks to tell us more regarding the areas of inventory, data sources and privacy.”

➔ Is your inventory acquired directly through publishers? ➔ Via third parties? A combination of both? ➔ Are there costs above and beyond the media itself (e.g., serving fees)? ➔ How can you ensure transparency? ➔ How will you best optimize my mobile ad spending?

This should do the trick. Be confident. Show them you're for real. Because you're about to find out why these questions are important. Chapter 3. Mobile Ad Networks Don't Like You This Chapter is short, but critical. Pay attention.

Tip #1 - Mobile Ad Networks Hate You

Yes, unfortunately it's true and to be honest, almost every traffic source in the world hates you. Whether it be web-based or mobile. It don't really matter. For one, you're little $100-$500 a budgets a day are a real killer when these networks are dealing with premium advertisers committing to $1K-$10K prepays.

If you're an affiliate and/or performance marketer, typically you're at the bottom of the barrel, covered in shit and ad networks would really like it if you stay there. That's one of the untold magic bullets in this business. The better at communicating who you are, what you do and then doing it, the farther you will get. If you need a good example of this, take a look at how many questions you see me asking in this forum, versus answering them. It's really that simple.

Tip #2 - Mobile Ad Networks Don't Understand Performance Marketing

Typically they really don't. Some do though. But listen, you are going to have to literally work your ass off communicating with them. You are going to fail with some and this is going to burn you out. You can either give up or keep trying, it really comes down to that. An example of this is that I just got a Performanced Based Ad Account on the Agency level with mMedia's Self-Serve platform.

But guess what? I had to go clear out to California and speak with their higher ups at the AppsWorld conference to get it. I had presentations ready on my iPad. I had my references down in my ipad to give them. I had screenshots of campaigns, recommendations from my advertisers (so that I could in fact be represented as a REAL Agency).

So you see, there's a lesson there, as harsh as this may sound. While you might think you're working your ass off to contact ad reps on skype, email, linkedin and/or the phone, let's use me as an example here.

Let's say that a Mobile Ad Network has to choose between you and I to work with. Who are they going to work with? In the way that I make myself known online, all the blogging and writing I shoot out for people to read, the fact I'm willing to get on airplane, meet with them face to face, show them presentations, show them my references, show them my case studies.

Do you really think you have a chance sitting behind your computer?

Now that isn't meant to be offensive, unless of course that's what it takes for you to understand that.

There's a reason why I practice and learn all I can when it comes to communications. There's a reason why Mr. Gray, took communications in college.

Buying traffic is the easy part. Getting treated right, fair and helped, well that's the tough part. That's also the part most people/affiliates won't work on.

For some reason, which I will never understand, there's a ton of people who get into this business but stick to the "herd mind mantra." Stop doing that. Tip #3 - You Are Not Going To Buy Traffic Directly, So Stop Thinking About It

Let me make this very clear right now, and this may take the wind out of some of your sails, but it's very, very clear, you simply will not going to mobile traffic sources and work directly, buying their ad inventory. When I say that, that applies to 99% of you. It's much tougher than you think. If it was easy, everyone would do it.

The fact is, you most likely don't stand a chance, filling a mobile publishers fill rate (either on the mobile web, or in-app) so they simply are not going to bother with you. Let's add the fact, they are not going to work with you on a CPA basis. It's going to be CPC at the very least, but most likely on a CPM budget, and you're gonna get bent over.

Unless you are very well established, work with people in an organization, erase this thought from your head right now. If you are thinking about doing this, you better be able to take on at the minimum, 25-50K impressions daily and serve up ads that are at the very least, at a competitive CPM as 3-4 ad networks at time.

Trust me, 99.99% of the people who even try advertising directly on mobile sites are gonna get bent over and more importantly, you are going to embarrass yourself.

If you have not conquered self-serve, RTB, DSP's, Exchanges, Push Ads and In-App advertising, you have no fucking business sticking your nose in the direct mobile media buying space. I'm not saying this to be mean, I'm trying to save you money, resources and over-thinking. Stay out of it, period. Tip #4 - If You're Not Social, Don't Expect Them To Be

Want to know one of my secret weapons for getting ad networks, reps and people in general to respond to me? I've already taught you what you need to do on LinkedIn. I'm actually disappointed though in the mobile marketers here who haven't put 2 and 2 together. It's → twitter.

http://twitter.com/ruck

Setup a damn Twitter account. OMG, I wish someone would have caught on or at the very least, asked me about twitter. You have to expand your mind a bit here. If I'm telling you to create a Linkedin Profile and you see the social networks in my signature here, common sense should tell you, you probably outta get a Twitter account. Durp. http://imgrind.com/mobgrind

^^^ This resource above has a lot of mobile ad network twitters and blogs on there. You should be reading that everyday. I built that for myself and shared it publicly, but I wouldn't be surprised if 99% of the members here don't read it everyday. That's a shame, because there's a REALLY LARGE SECRET to getting what you want out of mobile ad networks by reading that aggregator, once a day.

I'm not going to tell you the secret. If you would read it daily, you would have already figured it out.

Using twitter, I can monitor keywords like "mobile" which has opened up a plethora of resources for us. Matter of fact, most International Mobile Ad Networks don't have a blog, but they have twitter accounts. That's all I'm going to say there, because honestly, that golden nugget is priceless, we'll see if anyone bites. Tip #5 - CPC's Are Priced According To Premium Advertisers

Alright, if you don't know what a premium advertiser is, it basically means, an advertiser who can knock the living fuck outta your budget. Yes, the big boys. The branders. Ones who don't have a fucking clue what the term "ROI" means much less, care about it. You see, this isn't their money out of their pockets going into the ad budgets. It's coming from their organizations and companies who are funded, typically have "burn budgets" or in layman's terms - money to blow for no other reason than to get some eyeballs.

Mobile Ad Networks cater to these advertisers because they are not a hassle to deal with. The money is coming in no matter what, typically at high amounts without stopping. So if you're $100 a budget is constantly being paused, stopped, optimized, interrupted, whatever.....what do you really expect?

Seriously, you are going to have to work harder than anyone else out there when it comes to advertising. I've seen so many people come online to become affiliate marketers, advertisers or whatever else type Entrepreneur and the biggest thing I see lacking - Social/Communication skills.

The web and mobile landscape is not what like it was 2 years ago. That's 24 months, 730 days, 17,520 hours ago. It might seem long when you say 2 years ago but let's say you worked 17 hours a day, 7 days a week (ha, not likely) then that leaves you with 12,410 hours of working online. Still, that isn't a lot of time, but reflect back on all the changes, restrictions in those last 12,410 hours and then ask yourself, if so much has changed, adapted and so new to you, why are you still a fucking cave man that isn't soaking up every bit of knowledge and trying everything you can to get ahead? Chapter 4. Mobile Self-Serve Advertising The first thing I want to cover exactly what self-serve advertising really means. Self-serve advertising means exactly what those two words say - "Self-Serve." Now, if you experience anything better than what I'm going to tell you below, consider that a bonus.

Here's what NOT to expect:

Don't expect the Ad Network Reps to be much help. Their job is to sell mobile advertising and with or without you, they are make money "hand- over"fist" selling mobile ads. No matter how large your budget is, you simply do not matter to them.

Some will treat you better than others. Some will not pay attention to you at all. Someone will treat you like a King/Queen by spending money with them. It's really a toss-up.

Do not expect what these mobile ad networks allow you to target (mobile targeting options) to actually be accurate with what type of mobile traffic they actually deliver to you. Their technology is simply innaccurate at best.

Now, I've already told you exactly what you need to do as far as representing yourself online. If you do not have a business website AND a LinkedIn Profile, then to be quite honest, I hope these mobile ad networks treat you like shit. If you don't have the confidence and work-ethic in you to truly represent yourself and your business online, then you deserve to be shit on. By everyone. Including me. Nobody wants to work with someone who doesn't have the confidence to represent themselves in a honest, upfront and confident way.

By not representing yourself like I have taught you in the mobile marketing guide, you are literally asking these mobile ad networks to take your money. So pay close attention. Self-Serve AKA Blind Networks:

Are usually the largest in terms of publishers, advertisers and impressions. They serve a high volume of advertising to an extensive base of mostly independent mobile publishers (mobile sites and applications), supplemented by premium publishers’ unfilled inventory.

They offer plenty of options for targeting such as by country and content channels (news, sports etc), but do not (usually) allow advertisers to choose specific Websites.

Performance advertising is the norm, paid for by cost per click (CPC) – this is for marketers who want an active response to their ads such as clicking through a banner to the advertiser’s site, click to download/call etc. The CPC varies with supply and demand, determined through a self- service auction system. The cheapest option is run of network (RON) adverts (i.e. no targeting), which in some countries may start at US $0.01 CPC.

Some blind networks also offer brand advertising, on a cost per thousand impressions (CPM) model – i.e. you pay X for every 1,000 devices that visit/download the page – this is for marketers that want exposure, perhaps to create awareness of a new product.

You see, most mobile ad networks (Blind Networks) allow almost anyone to signup and start advertising. There is for a lack of a better explanation – nobody to regulate them and the mobile ad networks are full of ad representatives (whom I'll refer to as dipshits) that are literally there just to get you signed up and start serving ads and paying the damn mobile ad network. Here's what you need to watch for when advertising with these mobile ad networks:

Carrier Versus Wifi Traffic:

The first thing you need to be aware is the difference between mobile operator (Carrier/ISP) traffic and Wifi traffic. Wifi traffic is generally frowned upon by most advertisers, that's because of a variety of reasons. I don't want to get into them right now because our mobile tracking solution solves that. For now, just know that when you go to the mobile ad network of choice, you better ask them if they will be serving you Carrier traffic or Wifi traffic.

So in the simplest terms, mobile phones get their signals (or internet connection) from 1 of 2 places – From their network (3G, 4G, signal etc...) or from a wireless router somewhere (Wifi).

Premium Versus Remnant Traffic:

When approaching a mobile ad network, you never want to approach as an affiliate marketer. Matter of fact, I don’t suggest doing that anywhere honestly. Represent yourself as an advertising agency with a variety of clients whom are looking to buy only “premium” mobile traffic from. You see, “Premium” is a code word in the mobile marketing and advertising industries that really means: Don't send me shit, only the good stuff.

Typically you cannot buy premium traffic from mobile ad networks because representing yourself as an affiliate “the little guys” is a lot less impressive to ad network reps versus representing yourself as “an advertising agency with a variety of clients” with deep pockets, looking to run a test on the ad network’s “premium” mobile traffic. Premium Traffic – Typically the highest quality type traffic. It's usually more expensive. Remember – you get what you pay for. Usually, you can get really early impressions and your campaign fire up quick. There's usually less mobile click fraud however mobile ad networks are typically more restrictive with types of campaigns.

Remnant Traffic – This is the traffic from other mobile networks, exchanges etc...It's usually the cheapest and can be loaded with mobile click fraud. Usually you can promote all kinds of campaigns and there's lots of volume. Better have great tracking!

As I've said before, not all mobile ad networks are alike. So in short, I couldn't possibly begin to explain the many targeting options each network offers. However, on the basis of simplicity, you should be looking for mobile ad networks with granular mobile targeting. The more targeting options – typically is better.

➢ Mobile Carrier/ISP Targeting ➢ Mobile Operating System Targeting ➢ Country/GEO Targeting ➢ Device Targeting ➢ Manufacturer Targeting ➢ Demographic Targeting (If you can!)

Other broad targeting options that mobile ad networks may have include:

➢ Publishers/Sites ➢ Categories/Channels ➢ Multiple Ad Groups Per Campaign ➢ Multiple Ads Per Adgroup ➢ Text Ads ➢ Banner Ads ➢ WAP Traffic ➢ App Traffic ➢ Wifi Traffic (Be Careful!) ➢ Smart Phones ➢ Feature Phones ➢ Ad Dimensions ➢ Optimization (Tracking Tokens/Parameters/Macros) ➢ Ability To Cut Non-Performing Targets ➢ Scheduling ➢ Adult/Non-Adult ➢ Proxy/Opera/Mobile Browser Type 8 Mobile Self-Serve Ad Networks Ok, here we go. I'm going to cover 8 of the top Self-Serve Ad Networks out there. There are more than this but honestly, these 8 are most of the top ones, ones we've worked with, and ones I feel everyone has the best chance of mastering. Pay attention to the outline I provided for each network. I list resources, what you need to do exactly, who you need to contact and other helpful information.

➢ Google Mobile Ads ➢ Jumptap ➢ Inmobi ➢ Madison "Adfonic" ➢ Millenial Media "mMedia" ➢ Mojiva Ads ➢ Admoda ➢ Komli Mobile Google Mobile Ads - By far has the most volume for mobile that we've ever seen and nearly over-looked by most mobile affiliates. Most likely because they have had their accounts banned before because of stupid shit they have done. Get a new account. Do whatever you need to because they have the most volume in the world for mobile. Period.

The resources you need to read and study (Yes, there's a lot.)

Driving Performance with mobile ads - Includes their ad types. Building Brands with mobile ads - Includes their rich media ad types. The Mobile Playbook - Google's Guide to winning with mobile. Our Mobile Planet - Data research tool. It's amazing. I use it FOR every campaign. It gives you great insight into the countries that Google is serving mobile ads too. If you're not using this before running a campaign on Google Mobile Ads, then you deserve to lose. Period.

Get Mobilize d - Great resource that will teach you everything you need to know to get setup and start running mobile ads on Google. Every tutorial and resource you need is there. Watch every video and click each link to study the content. Google Mobile Search Ad Formats - Everything you need to know to run mobile search ads. Google Mobile Display Ad Formats - Everything you need to know to run mobile display ads and also the other Rich Media ad formats available from Google. Google Mobile Insights - Excellent resource that Google has provided from their own data including: understanding smartphone consumers, smartphone user infographics and how smartphones and tablets influence customer purchasing. Google Mobile Ads Videos -An absolute ton of mobile videos to watch and learn from. There is no point in me talking anymore about Google Mobile Ads. Google is the largest source of mobile advertising and honestly, most affiliates are too chicken-shit to bother with them. They have massive volume. Likely, more volume than you can handle. If affiliates would pull their head out of their ass and work just with Google, a lot of the headaches they face with these other mobile ad networks would be non-existent because we know how much volume Google can send on mobile.

However, you can't teach a man to fish, so I'll keep going with more networks here. Everything you need to know about Google Mobile Ads is linked out above. It's everything I use. Those are my personal bookmarks. The only thing separating you from me in terms of succeeding with Google is I am using them, and likely you are not.

Jumptap - There's been more discussions in the IMGrind Private forums about Jumptap than almost any other ad network. So, I won't repeat myself. If you want the holy grail of knowing Jumptap, it's up to you to go to the IMGrind Private Forums and do a search for "Jumptap."

If you aren't working with them though, you can contact them at: [email protected]

Jumptap Creative Guidelines - Everything you need to know about their ads and formats. Jumptap Ad Gallery - Nice visual gallery of mobile ads. Great to get some ideas from. Jumptap Mobile STAT Report - Get on their email list. This resource is gold. Every month, Jumptap releases a report regarding traffic on their mobile ad network. Jumptap Campaign Setup - Everything you need to know to run ads on Jumptap. Most of the questions I've seen from affiliates can be answered there so don't be lazy. Go through their entire Support documents because it's all there. Jumptap Contacts - Their LinkedIn Company Employees page. You should never ask the question "How can I get a Rep." All of their employees are on LinkedIn and I've already taught you this.

Inmobi - Enormous mobile ad network. Tons of people from India work there so if you wonder why a lot of your ads get clicks from India when they first start, it's because a lot of their ad approvals are outsourced to India. Sucks. Inmobi Insights - Everything from Network Data, Consumer Research, Whitepapers and their Blog is listed here. Again, most Affiliates won't even read this so take the opportunity to get as much knowledge about Inmobi as you can if you are advertising with them.

Inmobi Campaign Ads and Overview - Everything you need to know about running ads on Inmobi. Inmobi Creating Campaigns - Everything you need to know to create campaigns on Inmobi. Inmobi Advertiser Starter Kit - A helpful list of videos to get you up and running.

Inmobi Contacts - Their LinkedIn Company Employees page. You should never ask the question "How can I get a Rep." All of their employees are on LinkedIn and I've already taught you this. Adfonic - Enormous mobile ad network. They are pretty strict on here too so watch out what you advertise. They are moving towards becoming a premium mobile network geared towards brands since bringing their Mobile DSP - "Madison" which you can learn about below.

Adfonic Developer Wiki - A pretty good amount of information on advertising with Adfonic. You can see they are geared towards app developers so you should pay close attention to this. If you are wanting mobile display traffic instead of in-app traffic, better watch your campaigns closely.

Adfonic Contacts - Their LinkedIn Company Employees page. You should never ask the question "How can I get a Rep." All of their employees are on LinkedIn and I've already taught you this.

" Madison ” - This is a division of the popular mobile ad network Adfonic. It offers self-serve mobile advertising but you will have to contact them to get on the platform. Contact: [email protected] Ad Unit Specs - Overview of all ad formats supported.

One thing about Madison that you need to understand is that it is self-serve mobile advertising but their mobile inventory comes brokered from the larger mobile RTB (Real Time Bidding) Exchanges out there. Some of their partners whom their inventory comes from are listed below: mMedia - Millenial Media Self Serve ads. Millenial Media is one of the biggest Premium Mobile Ad Networks in the world.

mMedia Resource Center - Everything you need to know to work with mMedia is listed here. They have video tutorials on how to get started, tracking, creatives, campaigns, targeting and reporting.

Millenial Media Advertiser Media Kit - Download this PDF (Right Click Save AS) - It pretty much covers all of their ad specs and what you need to know to get started.

Millenial Media Creative Solutions - Different types of creatives available to run.

mMedia Overview Video - Just watch the video. Simple. Millenial Media Contacts - Their LinkedIn Company Employees page. You should never ask the question "How can I get a Rep." All of their employees are on LinkedIn and I've already taught you this.

Millenial Media SMART Reports - Millennial Media’s Scorecard for Mobile Advertising Reach and Targeting (S.M.A.R.T.™), launched in March 2009, delivers monthly insights on key mobile advertising trends for brands and agencies. Report findings are based on Millennial Media's platform and campaign data.

Millenial Media Mobile Mix Reports - Millennial Media’s Mobile Mix™: The Mobile Device Index, launched in March 2010, highlights key mobile advertising market trends, focusing primarily on mobile manufacturers, devices, operating systems, connected devices, and developer trends. Report findings are based on Millennial Media's platform and campaign data. Mojiva - Another large mobile ad network with a lot of distribution in Europe. They can be pretty strict with what's advertised on their platform. I expect them to become a premium mobile ad network before too long.

Note: Mojiva also has a tablet only mobile ad network - Mojiva Tab

Mojiva Mobile Insights - Contains a lot of mobile advertising information, mobile research, their mobile marketing blog, press releases, monthly mojiva newsletter and weekly mojiva mobile memo.

Mojiva Mobile Ad Formats - Their mobile ads by type and vertical available. Rich Media Ads.

Mojiva Advertiser User Guide - This is the motherload right here. It's their advertisers WIKI. Study it because everything you need to know is right here.

Mojiva Contacts - Their LinkedIn Company Employees page. You should never ask the question "How can I get a Rep." All of their employees are on LinkedIn and I've already taught you this.

Admoda - Just another large self-serving mobile ad network. Read their site to learn more. Note: Their generic contact email is [email protected] Note: They also have a mobile adult traffic network as well - Adultmoda Note:Admoda doesn't have a lot of helpful information on their site. However, inside their interface lies the gold.

Admoda Banner Ads/Ad Specs - All of their ad unit types available. Admoda Category Guidelines - What's available and what's not allowed. Admoda Campaign Planner - This tool is awesome. Use it as suggestion based only but it gives you an idea of the operator/carrier breakdown traffic by country from Admoda. Komli Mobile - Another huge self-serve mobile ad network based out of Australia. They used to be Zestadz Mobile Ad Network.

Komli Mobile Ad Options - Everything you need to know to get started advertising with Komli.

Komli Mobile Ad Units - A list of available mobile ad units.

Note: Generic Contact information for Komli Mobile is: [email protected]

Komli Mobile offers Channel Targeting, GEO/Carrier Targeting (Specific Countries), Device Manufacturer and Model Targeting, Device OS and DMA Targeting.

Not a lot to say about them except they have a load of distribution in the APAC region. You are going to have to get into contact with someone over there just like we did to get anywhere. Also, you will need to add funds to your account before you can even begin setting up a campaign.

Komli Media/Mobile Contacts - Their LinkedIn Company Employees page. You should never ask the question "How can I get a Rep." All of their employees are on LinkedIn and I've already taught you this.

For now, this is more than enough to get you started. The most important thing to remember with EVERY source here is -

CONNECT AND NEGOTIATE.

If you just signup and start running ads, you're on your own. I've done my best to stress the importance of networking. Why Most Mobile Marketers Fail With Self Serve Mobile Advertising Part 1

I wrote about a month ago, we’ve had literally an astronomical influx of mobile affiliates join us here at Revived Media to get up and going in the explosive and extremely lucrative mobile advertising Industry. You cannot have growth without failure though. Failure is the experiences we learn from that make us stronger in our businesses and I’ve been a witness to many of them over the last month.

You see every mobile affiliate that comes to me is a unique individual. I make no assumptions about anyone, I assume they are as green as the grass, because to be honest, the only other daily 6-figure mobile affiliate I know in this is space is Mr. Gray – my partner.

We’ve met and worked with some $XX,XXX.XX a day mobile affiliates (only one of which is not a mobile advertising network, SSP or DSP. and/or App Developer).

We have a few dozen mobile affiliates generating over $X,XXX.XX a day with us at Revived Media that we have been working with very closely to try and get them to that next level (5-Figures), but there are three major things that I keep seeing over and over so I thought I would try to put them out there for other mobile affiliates to recognize and maybe take some value out of my answers on how to get over that hump.

First and foremost, 99.99% of mobile affiliates out there are going to gravitate to Self-Serve Mobile Ad Networks when they first start out. This is human nature at it’s finest. I say human nature because as humans, most of us will always take the short-cuts through life and in business. Jumping onto a self-serve ad network takes very little work and with as many as there are popping up these days, you can literally signup with a handful of them right now and be approved to run mobile ads by this afternoon. It really is the “Wild West” in mobile advertising right now.

Over the next week or so, I’m going to cover some of the reasons why mobile marketers fail with self-serve mobile advertising but for today, I’m going to cover the BIGGEST reason.

#1 – Cash Is King

Above all else, cash flow is king in ANY paid advertising Industry. The same rings true in mobile but right now ESPECIALLY in mobile advertising. Why? Quite simply, as I stated before, it’s literally a “shooting ducks in a barrel” type environment for mobile ad networks right now. They are pulling down revenue hand over fist. Someone is going to pay for those mobile ads. Mobile is so new, so hyped up (with good reasons, if you know what you’re doing) and EVERYONE is curious about it.

It’s the LARGEST unique mass media opportunity to ever hit the world. With television and Internet you have the ability to reach mass audiences all at once. In mobile though, you get to be very personal by reaching people one at a time, uniquely, on their mobile device.

With that said, Mobile Ad Networks have no shortage of advertisers, despite what you may hear. We know this because we are fully integrated with over 100 mobile ad networks either on the mobile tracking side with our mobile tracker iMobiTrax or on the mobile ad serving side with our mobile agency here at Revived Media.

Yes, we cover ALOT of ground in mobile. Affiliates just starting out will immediately gravitate to self-serve mobile ad networks because of simplicity. The human mind is designed to solve problems with the easiest solutions and signing insertion orders, speaking with Ad Representatives and explaining your business models to Premium Mobile Ad Networks just seems like a big ole hassle.

Affiliates think that with self-serve they can go and test $50-$100 a campaign and figure out what works with that budget.

You are being mislead. Or, you simply just don’t understand.

You see most mobile ad networks just have a “self-serve” division meant for the “small-timers.” By allowing mobile ads to be self-served to advertisers, there really is no backend work involved for the ad network.

Follow along here:

➔With self-serve, they can simply broker alot of inventory from much larger exchanges. Ohh, and boy do they. ➔They don’t have to offer much advertiser to representative support. That’s the point of “self-serve” ➔They don’t pay close attention to their traffic quality they deliver, because honestly, they don’t have to. Someone is going to buy the inventory. That’s why you get a load of wifi traffic when targeting operators on a lot of these self-serve networks. ➔If you don’t have the budget, obviously you aren’t going to get the love. How do affiliates spending $50-$100 a day have a chance when you have organizations like us spending over 5-figures on self-serve? That’s the difference between tons of people ASKING questions in mobile versus us — who are ANSWERING them. Self-Serve networks are basically the “low-hanging” fruit of the mobile ad industry. Despite what any of them say. We know this, because we work with or have worked with nearly all of them and it’s the same old song and dance with every one of them.

Most affiliates are extremely apprehensive when it comes to losing money. That’s the difference between the successful ones and the duds. Successful affiliates know and understand that it takes money to make money. The duds of course are fooled into the “allure” or “hype” from the successful affiliates and then when shit doesn’t go there way on $100 spend, they give up.

Eventually, what these dud affiliates end up with is 10 campaigns tested at $100 spend with an overall loss of $1,000.00. That’s the weird thing about money. It can accumulate or dissipate quickly.

If you don’t have the cash to lose in the beginning or the patience to lose it gathering data to optimize, 99% of the mobile marketers will STILL try their hand but fail miserably. That’s the thing about people in general.

You can TELL THEM ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING but in the end, they are still going to do whatever THEY want to do. It’s really pretty sad because this is a problem that has plagued almost every marketer I’ve ever known.

Work on getting yourself a sizeable testing budget on self-serve so that you can have the room to make calculated and precise decisions.

Doing it the right way FIRST will get you closer to success faster than doing it the wrong way OVER and OVER, even though it might take a little longer. Why Most Mobile Marketers Fail With Self Serve Mobile Advertising Part 2

So we covered the the first reason – Cash. Pretty simple right? Also, it’s probably pretty damn frustrating for starting mobile affiliates with little bankroll. That’s the way of the land. Sorry.

Moving on though, we have another set of Mobile Affiliates who face a different type of struggle when it comes mobile advertising on self-serve networks. This one is going to be over a LOT of affiliates heads. I’m not talking down on you. I’m being firm in my statement here. This little problem is so rampant among affiliates in mobile that it has literally changed the course of our business here at Revived Media. It’s so bad, and so neglected it requires us to consistently optimize our active affiliates.

The affiliates who “get it” have done and will continue to do great things on the self-serve networks while the lazy ones, the ones whom will read this post and go about there day as if they didn’t even the slightest clue as to what I’m talking about will continue to burn cash and of course – plague the marketing forums, facebook and everywhere else with there “I’m getting destroyed by the mobile ad network pity.”

The second reason why most mobile marketers fail with self-serve mobile advertising is simple… You don’t follow directions and bring ZERO value to the table.

It’s as easy that. But, to break it down for you. I’ll sum it real simple here. Let’s do a quick exercise. A comparison of business models and organizations if you will. I’ll compare the affiliate who has nothing to bring to the table and use as leverage with self-serve mobile ad networks against myself and my organization. That’s the simplest way to do this.

Regular mobile affiliate: Will sign up with the self-serve network. Most likely will continue their communication (should they even try to contact a Rep) by email. The regular affiliate assumes that setting up a campaign with certain mobile targets such as Carrier, manufacturers, operating systems, maybe even specific handsets (device models) will receive this traffic they targeted. The assumption here is that 99.99% of the time, you’ve already lost the money before you’re traffic even started.

If you think that a mobile ad network owes you something, or is going to deliver whatever it is they have written on their website in terms of traffic quality and targeting, then go ahead and slap yourself now. Everything, right down to the last fucking penny in this business is about the almighty dollar. Specifically, when we are talking about mobile ad networks with zero regulation right now and literally popping up monthly by the dozens, it’s the wild west and you know what happens in the wild west?

Robbery. Why is this?

It’s a failure to follow precise directions. Here’s a comparison in it’s simplest terms when it comes to bringing value to leverage with: The regular affiliate goes up against myself and my organization. However, I along with our team have been building for well over a year in preparation for this lucrative opportunity. We’ve been traveling to trade shows meeting with the people whom are associated with these traffic sources. We’ve been going to their offices.

We’ve been building our own mobile ad agency to deal with them on a professional level on behalf of our clients. We’ve even gone ahead and created our own mobile tracker in iMobiTrax so that we could dissect, segment, identify and ultimate profit from the traffic these mobile ad networks have promised to deliver.

The regular affiliate has nothing to bargain with. What a budget? What else? What value do you bring the mobile ad network? I’ve seen and discarded so many tunnel visioned mobile affiliates over the last year it’s almost sickening.

Discarding them isn’t the sick part. It’s telling these affiliates EXACTLY what to do yet, the same thing always rings true with people. No matter what you tell them, people are going to do whatever they want to do. You can lay out a clear-cut plan. Step by detailed step and people will still fuck it up. I’ve seen it countless times. •“I’ve got a better idea” •“I’ll try this instead” •“No, I’ll do it my way” So far, the mobile affiliates who think this way are getting their shit pushed in. Not a little bit either. I’ve witnessed mobile affiliates spending their last $500 to their name. I’ve seen affiliates literally go in debt. For what? “That better idea.” All you got to do is exactly what we say. It’s not fucking rocket science. Matter of fact, it couldn’t get ANY FUCKING EASIER but as people, especially affiliate marketers with those creative juices flowing through the brain, have attention spans of a fucking ant on meth. So set aside you’re pride for a minute and start following the directions we’re giving. Do you know anybody else laying it out step by step in an easy to understand format? Between the IMGrind Forums, Revived Media (and all the tools and guides we offer) plus the mobile tracking platform we provided, you really have to have a fucking screw loose to fuck this up. Start paying attention and do what you’re told. Or take you’re next great idea and watch how much it costs you. Chapter 5. Mobile Ad Network Technology In mobile advertising, the rules of the road change with different combinations of device, wireless operator, and operating system. There are few shared protocols and standards, so mobile lacks the technical consensus that enables ad targeting, delivery, and measurement to work fairly seamlessly across the desktop world. As the mobile ad industry matures it will likely become more streamlined and simple, but for now there are innumerable actors interacting with one another and attempting to find a niche.

The simplest way to describe mobile ad networks is: Mobile ad networks aggregate advertising inventory and match it with advertisers, much as online ad networks do. Networks soak up ad inventory, analyze its potential, and sell it by matching it to advertisers' needs. Ad networks play an important role in mobile [because the] audience is fragmented across a large number of devices and publishers. There are many [networks] all at different stages of their evolution, some stronger and more robust.

Want to know what the stupid secret is? It's rather simple actually. It's that "networks all have the same inventory," which they buy from wholesalers aggregating publisher supply. So, If you are running on three ad networks, you could effectively be bidding against yourself for inventory and impressions. Where networks differentiate is in value-added services, such as aggregating buying power to strike better deals, or improve targeting. The largest ad networks have their own sales forces reaching out to advertisers, as well as their own campaign optimization technology. That's just the way it is right now in regards to Mobile Ad Networks. A ton of the inventory is simply brokered from the big boys to the peons and the peons simply markup the inventory to advertisers. Pretty messed up huh?

Understand That Geo-Targeting On Mobile Ad Networks Is Dismal One of the things I see over and over is the lack of education in mobile advertising with mobile marketers collecting mobile data and not being able to interpret it correctly. Today, I’m going to clear up one of the truths in mobile advertising, specifically towards mobile ad networks which seems to have mobile marketers pulling out their hair. The operating assumption is that all mobile networks can equally geotarget and give marketers the kind of local precision that matches the phone’s GPS capabilities. In other words, because the phone can tell what’s nearby and pinpoint user location, advertisers assume they can equally access that level of targeting for their mobile ad campaigns.

No. No sir, you are incorrect. In the mobile advertising space only five to 10 percent of all mobile ad inventory has true GPS-generated latitude- longitude data. Many ad impressions in fact are powered with less precise geographic information: zip codes, metro area, carrier IPs, etc. Also, even ad inventory with latitude-longitude information isn’t always what it seems. That’s because some ad platforms will take the rougher location data like a zip code and translate it into a latitude-longitude format. For example, ad suppliers can generate a “centroid” — the GPS centerpoint of a zip code, metro area, or user cluster — and use that coordinate to geo-tag their available inventory, or they can randomize to distribute users across the same area. Now, that’s messed up right? In practice “geotargeting” on mobile display networks can be highly variable. It typically means DMA or city level targeting. Most of what mobile marketers get access to is no better than IP targeting, which can be very imprecise. Some networks or publishers may claim to be able to deliver lat-long precision but they’re usually misrepresenting what’s available, in the same way that online ad networks misrepresented that they could target by ZIP for years, when they were really just doing IP sniffing. Mobile publishers have access to the location information they ask of their users. This location data could be as general as a city, or as specific as a request to capture their exact location at any given time. The more exact the location, the more valuable it is both to an ad network and to a mobile advertiser. Latitude/Longitude (lat/long) is the most accurate location data currently available, yet it’s estimated that only 10-15% of smartphone traffic has true lat/long. Targeting consumers based on a set radius around any given point – be it an exact address, zip code centroid, etc. – is often called “geo-fencing.” This well-known targeting method is used to better reach the most relevant audience base related to an advertiser’s goals and needs. Ads are targeted within a neat little circumference and any consumers that happen to fall outside that virtual fence are excluded from ad placement.

Yea, but the only problem here is that people on their mobile devices are constantly on the move and usually they are capture in large numbers which result in a lot of people not even wanting mobile ads delivered to them. As I’ve said before. Their really is only a handful of true “players” in the mobile advertising Industry and these are the ones who get it right, or at the very least, are trying too. The others are just coat-hanging ticks looking for their piece of the pie by plugging into the major players, marking up their original traffic prices, arbitraging it out to advertisers whom know no better. So in short. Track everything.

Get Ready For The Knowledge Bomb Grinders, Revivers, iMobiTraxers,

What you are about to read is worth millions of dollars. Some of it is proprietary information, some of it has been transcripted from Mobile Ad Network owners, techs, reps etc.. Some of it I've acquired from traveling to trade-shows around the world. Some of it is from private publications which I'm a part of.

I'm going to do my best to provide you an overview of the mobile ad network advertising landscape.

First off:

Don't put mobile ad networks on a pedestal. Seriously! If you want the short version of how a mobile ad network supplies their targeting options (Eg...Carrier, Manufacturer, OS etc..) then it goes like this.

A Mobile Ad Network will approach a mobile publisher. A mobile publisher can be that of a mobile website (WAP) or a mobile app (APP). Now, mobile publishers have 2 options to determine the users on their mobile site or app

1. They can use a service provided or custom coding to retrieve informations such as IP's, Manufacturers, Operating Systems, Devices etc... 2. They can use supplied codes from Mobile Ad Networks (often called SDK's) which will allow them to database the information they want about their mobile site/app users and relay this information BACK to the mobile ad network. Then

The mobile ad network typically has an IP Intelligence Provider (such as Maxmind or Nuestar) with solutions such as enormous --- ENORMOUS databases of IP's, Zip Codes, Latitude/Longitude etc..

Note: Not all Mobile Ad Networks use the same backend providers. Not all mobile ad networks have very good SDK's for mobile publishers. This is the MAIN factor that separates the good Mobile Ad Network targeting options for us to run campaigns with versus the Shitty Mobile Ad Networks.

Now

Mobile Ad Networks will have an IP Intelligence solutions with a database or different types of databases (these cost money and are commercially available) - You would be surprised by how many companies use Maxmind and Nuestar.

Ok, so companies like Maxmind and Nuestar - one of their core types of customers to THEIR business are Advertising technology companies such as Mobile Ad Networks. In all actuality, mobile ad networks represent just a fraction of these IP Intelligence companies customer base.

With that said, Maxmind and Nuestar make their pitches to these mobile ad networks and offer them: ➢Solutions to target by Geography - local or regional ➢Organization - Colleges, medical offices, etc ➢Technographics - speed, technology used

Once a mobile ad network partners with an IP Intelligence company, they can offer "targeted" advertising solutions. To show you how that translates from Mobile Ad Networks to advertisers, here's a visual of how they "pitch" it:

Now before we even think about going any further down the rabbit hole here, I'm going to outline exactly what you need to Know and UNDERSTAND about IP Addresses.

What is an IP Address? An internet Protocol (IP) address is a numerical label assigned to devices participating in a computer network. The IP address provides an indicator to the approximate geography of a particular connection, along with various additional network characteristics associated with that connection. The IP Address carries no individual user characteristics, but offers unique and valuable insight for marketers to effectively target audiences online.

What is IP Targeting? IP targeting is the method of determining the geolocation of a website visitor and delivering different content to that visitor based on his or her location, such as country, region/state, city, metro code/zip code, organization, IP address, ISP or other criteria. Online advertising benefits greatly from this technology by ensuring that relevant visuals and messages reach a relevant audience in a relevant location at a relevant time.

What is an IP Audience Network? An IP Audience Network allows marketers to target audiences across the Internet with display, mobile and video advertising based on the various data attributes of a user’s connection to the Internet. Purchased inventory is matched across various exchanges and published directly based on the IP address.

Now, to give you an overall example of how an IP Intelligence Company pitches mobile ad networks, they will tell them something like "You can reach people where they live, work and play." Our IP Intelligence tools have the ability to target campaigns while users are:

➢Surfing the Web at home ➢Researching at work ➢Using WiFi at an airport ➢Drinking a cup of Joe at Starbucks ➢Staying at a hotel for business or pleasure (think what a competing hotel could do ...) ➢Attending an event at a convention center (restaurant, events,hotel.) ➢Working at a small business in a U.S. metro area ➢Students access their account via college campus connection ➢Getting a checkup at the doctor’s or dentist’s office ➢Stationed at a military base ➢Using their tablet in Central Park ➢Working in a government office ➢Shopping online for local offers ➢At a specific company (think recruiting, promoting local businesses, potential partners)

Understanding IP Address Data Elements

When a computer is connected to the Internet, it is assigned an IP address by an Internet Service Provider (ISP). The IP address helps one computer or network device find another computer over a network. In all there are approaching 2 billion publicly routable IP addresses recorded in five major global registries. An IP address block might be associated with a major Internet backbone, ISP, large enterprise or a public institution. A given network block can then be sub allocated, sometimes down to the individual IP level, possibly to a location that is different than that found in the registry. This is why simply using registry information to discern user location is inherently inaccurate, because many organizations operate on a multinational scale.

Although registry is an important piece of evidence that should be assessed, it truly is only part of the equation. Active sensing techniques and human reasoning must also be applied. Neustar continuously monitors the Internet and captures terabytes of data it feeds into patented algorithms that are constantly monitored and improved by human analysts who have years of domain knowledge. The data is distilled into geographic information about the IP address including continent, country, region, state and city. It also offers derived information for use in different client applications including representative time zone, postal code, and latitude/ longitude information.

Here's a little visual to clarify that long ass explanation:

Now, where the IP Intelligence company makes their pitch to mobile ad networks, they sell them a database. In the case of Neustar, it's called a GeoPoint Database.

They claim it's the most accurate source of location information for IP Addresses. It's the central repository for all of the Internet geolocation data gathered by Neustar and contains up to 30 valuable geographic and network attributes for approaching 2 billion routable and addressable IP Addresses.

In mobile advertising, they pitch mobile ad networks that they can identify Cellular and Wifi Connections. Wi-Fi is a method of wirelessly connecting to a local area network (LAN), and is independent of any IP address that might be assigned to that LAN--a Wi-Fi connection could be made to a wireless router that is connected to a dial-up, broadband, or commercial modem, or a cellular connection ("portable hotspot"). It's not possible to identify a connection that uses Wi-Fi with only the IP address. A cellular IP address is one assigned by a cellular carrier (Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, etc.), and the connection is made via the cell tower itself. These are also sometimes referred to as 3G or 4G connections.

However, there's a 1-2 punch here. Typically, it's two databases. One database identifies the Cellular IP Address while another database identifies who the carrier is. (Write this down - It's worth MILLIONS)

Now, to be completely transparent with you here, these databases are not 100% accurate. Nothing ever is in technology. There are just too many rapidly changing variables. The database that identifies the cellular IP address typically ESTIMATES the connection speed of visitors based on their IP Address. The database usually identifies dial-up, cellular, Cable/DSL and corporate connection speeds.

This database can provide a wide rang of location and other data associated with IP Addresses and return "accuracy" and "confidence" factors that can enhance your use of the data --VOILA TARGETED ADVERTISING. Some of the data these databases hold include:

➔Country Code ➔Country Name ➔Region ➔Region Name ➔City Name ➔Latitude ➔Longitude ➔Metro Code (US only) ➔Time zone ➔Continent ➔Postal Code (US only) ➔ISP Name ➔Organization (Netblock End User) ➔Domain Name ➔AS Number Netspeed ➔User Type ➔Accuracy Radius ➔Country Confidence Factor ➔City Confidence Factor ➔Region Confidence Factor ➔Postal Code Confidence Factor ➔Error

Note: These huge databases are typically updated on a MONTLY basis. That means latency issues in real-time update databased information as well as real-time updates from the database to the mobile ad network.

Now to give you an example of a good mobile ad network targeting option suite versus a shitty one, you really need to understand one simple thing -- The mobile ad network with more data, has more targeting options.

YES IT'S THAT SIMPLE - DO NOT OVER-THINK OR OVER-COMPLICATE THIS

For example, let me point out Webmoblink. Do you know them? They are a mobile ad network who uses IP2Location on their backend.

Here's a sample of the databases that IP2Location offers commercially in which Webmoblink uses some of them (I'm not sure which, I don't own Webmoblink) BTW - Do not ask me which mobile ad networks use which providers. I have this databased on about 50 mobile ad networks and I've had to work my ass of to get this information. I'm leading you to water, it's up to you to drink.

Tip: If you are wondering why all the hassle in mobile with IP tracking, it's because cookies are either widely unreliable in mobile or they don't exist. Also, if you're wondering why IP Tracking is the standard because it's simply not personally identifiable, then YOUR RIGHT! However, it's what we got to work with...for right now.

So now you should understand why some mobile ad networks are good and others suck. Most of them in my opinion are middle men. I apologize, I simply cannot tell you which ones are and which ones aren't. That's called testing.

Now, to give you an example of a mobile ad network that uses their database to offer custom IP targeting, just take a look at Buzzcity (you have to ask for this option in your account, sucks huh?)

Custom IP targeting allows advertisers to define their prefer IP range(s) along with the telcos and may apply them selectively in any of their campaigns within the account.

This give them full control over which IP ranges they prefer to target and maximize their spending on the campaigns. One Custom IP Targeted campaign can target a single country at any one time. Max. of 10 Telcos can be targeted within a country. Each predefined or custom Telco name can support up to a max. of 20 IP ranges.

For group of IP ranges that cant be group under a predefined telco name, you may define your own telco name. For every country, Advertiser can only have up to max. of 3 custom telco names.

At this moment, custom IP targeting is only available to selected BuzzCity partners.

The operating assumption is that all mobile networks can equally geotarget and give marketers the kind of local precision that matches the phone’s GPS capabilities. In other words, because the phone can tell what’s nearby and pinpoint user location, advertisers assume they can equally access that level of targeting for their mobile ad campaigns.

NOPE → Location Precision Is Highly Variable

In practice “geotargeting” on mobile display networks can be highly variable. It typically means DMA or city level targeting. In fact only about 5 percent to 10 percent of mobile ads gain access to a lat-long. Most mobile ads don’t get ZIP-level targeting either.

Most of what mobile marketers get access to is no better than IP targeting, which can be very imprecise. Some networks or publishers may claim to be able to deliver lat-long precision but they’re usually misrepresenting what’s available, in the same way that online ad networks misrepresented that they could target by ZIP for years, when they were really just doing IP sniffing.

Here's a close visual representation of how location data is collected: Now, on to another example of another mobile ad network backend. Let me explain the structure of what a mobile ad network really thinks about on their backend as in terms of generating revenue:

Advertisers: The ad providers aim to reach a specific groups of users based on requirements such as sex, age, interests and location. They provide the ad texts, targeting information, bidding budgets and potentially a landing page for the clicks.

Network Operator: The network operator provides the infrastructure for disseminating the ads, collecting reports and locating users. In return they receive a share of revenues.

Content Provider: Content providers, such as news sites and blogs, provide online services and materials which are of interest to users. Alongside their main content, they provide ad boxes where personalised ads could be displayed to the user. Social networking sites such as Facebook are a particular type of publisher, with access to more detailed profile information on their users.

Ad Provider: The ad providers are the interface between the advertisers, operator and content providers. They gather ads from advertisers, provide ads for the users in the publisher websites, collect view and click reports, bill the advertisers and compensate the publishers and the network operator.

Profiling Agent: The agent gathers relevant information for profiling the user. It also downloads and filters relevant ads, displays them to the user at appropriate and convenient times and prepares click and view reports for billing purposes.

Visually, this is exactly what's going on here: Advertisers such as local businesses wish to sell their products or services through ads. Content providers (e.g., news and review websites, personal weblogs, mobile phone applications) provide opportunities to view ads, for instance by providing space for ad banners. Clients are the users of the handset.

Ad providers (e.g., Google or Microsoft) bring together advertisers, publishers, and clients. They provide ads to users, gather statistics about what ads were shown on which publisher pages, collect money from the advertisers, and pay the publishers. In traditional advertising systems, the advertisers specify their ads and bids (how much the advertiser is willing to pay for views and clicks of the ads) to the ad providers.

When a publisher provides banner space to the client on a web page, a request goes to the ad provider asking to fill in the banner space with appropriate ads.

The ad provider makes the decision as to which ads to place based on a number of criteria such as the keywords for the web page, personalisation information about the client (usually based on persistent cookies on the client machine), the keywords of the ad, and the bid associated with the ad. It then delivers the ad to the client, informs the advertiser of the ad view and clicks, and charges the advertisers and compensates the content providers accordingly.

By using detailed profiling and data mining technics in addition to the user location, the mobile ad network provides new opportunities for localised and personalised advertising. $MILLION DOLLAR VISUAL of the backend of a mobile ad network: (Your Welcome) While I'm at it, why don't I just show the backend of an Operator Network as well (Your Welcome)

And of course that brings us back to the overall mobile advertising ecosystem which I showed you to begin with: Chapter 6. Mobile Click Discrepancies, IP'S & Adservers 1 Big Reason Mobile Ad Networks Have Click Discrepancies Over the last year, if you are at all familiar with me, then you know I’m a managing partner of the IMGrind Forums (Huge Mobile Marketing Training Section), the Revived Media Mobile CPA Network and of course here at iMobiTrax, our Mobile Tracker.

What you may not know about is the millions of dollars we’ve spent over the last 18 months in mobile advertising.

We’ve worked with nearly 50 Mobile Ad Networks, DSP’s, Exchanges and even Proprietary platforms and have almost worked ourselves to the bone on learning the ins and outs of every platform.

Also, we’ve been working on our own mobile ad serving platform as well to go along with the mobile education & training, mobile offers/campaigns and mobile tracking solutions we’ve provided brought to all respective Industries.

So today, I decided to dig down and show you something that is likely going to save you some money if you are running mobile ads on mobile ad networks. Pay close attention.

This stuff isn’t something Einstein had to figure out. It just took me a lot of hours, research and grunt work to get everything lined up all nice and neat to present to you.

Now, I’m not going to finger point at any one specific mobile ad network, because honestly, this is a very tough aspect on the backend of mobile ad servers and distribution to combat and keep up with. Besides, there are too many networks to point at and not enough fingers. :-) It’s called IP Tagging.

It’s been around for a long time in web-based ad serving and tracking but with mobile advertising literally blowing up over the last year, everyone has jumped on the bandwagon of hype and not researched the ins and outs of mobile ad servers. So, I guess I’ll do it for you.

IP tagging has been around for a long time. VSI Alliance was one of the first standards organizations that looked at IP tagging. It started out as the Virtual Socket Interface Alliance. They had a number of initiatives they were addressing. One was the on-chip bus specification. They also did the quality IP specification, they started the encryption standard, looked at IP transfer, defined the list for standard deliverables.

The goal was to facilitate IP re-use between design groups, between companies and between vendors and customers. Tagging was one of those efforts, and it really was intended to provide some security around IP.

Now the backend of mobile ad networks aren’t rocket science, but they are science.

First off – Most mobile ad networks (unless they are proprietary and build their own) are using a simple 3rd Party IP Intelligence and ISP Database Service. We've covered this already, but pay attention because I explained their technology, now I'm going to teach you about “Latency”

Popular ones include:

➔Maxmind ➔Quova ➔IPInfoDB To give you an example, Maxmind offers databases like this: ➔Country – maps the IP address to a country ➔Region – maps the IP address to a specific state/province within a country ➔City – maps the IP address to a specific city within a country. In the US, we are able to map many IP addresses to specific postal codes. This database also contains latitude, longitude, and time zone data. ➔Organization – maps the IP address to the organization which was assigned the IP address’s netblock. ➔ISP – maps the IP address to the ISP which owns the IP, including wireless carriers. ➔Netspeed – maps the IP address a particular network speed. ➔Domain – maps the IP address to a domain (not a hostname).

With that said, some Mobile Ad Networks will have ties to companies whom are tied into Carriers/Operators who can provide Carrier/Operator specific IP Ranges. This isn’t uncommon. Advertisers and publishers who also record Carrier/Operator IP’s also report these to mobile ad networks as well. VOILA, now you have IP-based geolocation targeting. However, the main problem is that with the rapid adoption of smartphones, these smartphones connected to cellular networks are increasingly being used to access Internet-based services. Let’s toss in the fact that there are a lot of countries and Carriers/Operators throughout the world and all them do not operate alike.

Mobile Ad Networks have to constantly update their systems to stay up to date with all the IP’s. To give you a break-down of why, I’ll summarize in bullet-points: ➔In some cellular networks it’s common to find NAT “Network Address Translation” ➔Carriers/Operators can and do differ. Some of them assign public IP Addresses to some devices and private IP Addresses to other devices. ➔There is always room for errors when you are dealing with country and continent distances ➔Mobile Ad Networks using 3rd Party IP Intelligence and ISP Databases are at the mercy of their providers. How well the network performs on delivering accurate Carrier/Operator traffic is great relied upon how well their 3rd Party IP and ISP Databases provider handles their business.

Now even though 3rd Party IP Intelligence and ISP Database Providers have enormous lists of IP prefixes to location matches, you have to remember that there is still room for errors based on the facts of dynamic assignments of IP’s, IP Address blocks can and do become fragmented, and the use of “middle-boxes” make IP-based geolocation even tougher.

Now Mobile Ad Networks are in the business of selling ads. That’s their purpose. So you have to understand that it’s highly-likely they don’t pay much attention to the fact that a lot of 3rd Party IP Intelligence and ISP Database Providers might claim they have accuracy down to a certain level (such as country) when in fact, that company is actually working harder in some countries versus all countries.

The problem will continue to grow to. With the explosion of smartphones, IPv4 address space is becoming increasingly scarce. Do you know what this means? Basically, it means that mobile operators are going to be more likely to move towards NAT (Network Address Translation) solutions. Now consider the fact that when a mobile ad network is using more than one source for their entire IP Carrier/Operators solutions, you will get over- lap and errors. Basically, if they are using Maxmind and receiving IP Data from certain Carriers/Operators, there’s a good chance that a percentage of IP’s (which will be clicking on your ads, these are users) will show up in the mobile ad network stats different than what they really are. Some mobile ad networks may have IP addresses in their system as Wi-Fi because that’s how they received the data but in actuality it’s a carrier/operator IP Address. This is what causes quite a few click discrepancies with mobile ad networks delivering mobile ads.

I know it’s probably a lot to take in, but there’s a lot to understand in what’s going on here. Basically, there is no system, no database, no solution and targeting technology in the world that is 100% accurate and it never will be. There are just too many things in technology, the world and universe that are constantly changing for any one thing to be absolute. However, hopefully this has shed some light specifically in how mobile ad networks have click discrepancies. One VERY IMPORTANT thing you should understand is this: When an ad server delivers line items that are hosted by a third party, reporting discrepancies between the two systems will occur, and it is common to see campaign variances of up to 20%. Overall, when there is 3rd party tracking involved, there will always be some level of discrepancy, but the goal is to minimize this as much as possible. How DART and other popular tracking systems account for clicks is often measured by a pixel firing once the landing page has fully rendered. How ad serving platforms account for a click is simply when the user clicks on the banner, regardless of the outcome of the action.

This means that if there are any factors that prevent the landing page from fully loading, such as bad 3G/4G connection or accidental click or any general interruption from the click to the landing page, that the 3rd party tracking will not record the click. Often times this is the most common reason for click discrepancy, as the tracking methodologies are different and there is no opportunity for the ad server to know when a click has led to a fully rendered landing page. Another issue that might cause a click discrepancy is if there is no cache buster implemented within the 3rd party tag. A cache buster is a piece of code that prevents the reuse of an ad that has already been served or cached and helps minimize discrepancies. This typically is a random number, but often times are used as the timestamp function of the click, which is always unique. When comparing 3rd party stats to ad server stats, it’s also important to make sure you’re comparing these figures within the same time zone. For example, if the 3rd party reporting is based on EST time zone, but the ad server is on UTC time, there will always be a discrepancy as these time zones are not the same, thus reporting will yield different numbers. At the end of the campaign, more often than not, the figures will be more aligned, but if you’re comparing day to day reporting, this will be discrepant. If you are able to get a view by hour in the ad server reporting, you can re- format the figures to match whatever time zone you need to give you a more accurate view. A quick overview on how an ads request system works for publishers from a mobile ad network: First understand - This is a typical setup. No mobile ad network is the same! However, this will give you some education in understand the backend of a mobile ad network and serving ads to publishers:

➔Your page rendering will not be affected by any network latency between your servers and ours ➔You can serve more than 1 ads per page to maximize your earnings ➔You are able to serve country-targeted ads, as well as ads targeted to specific carriers/telco, regions or specific handset-capabilities This integration requires a high level of technical expertise. You are also expected to maintain up-to-date IP mapping and User-Agent feature- mapping databases. This is so that you can accurately determine the country, carrier/telco, region and handset-capabilities of your visitors.

What do you get from that information above?

1. You can have a lot of discrepancy if the publishers are using more than 1 ad network. (They do)

2. You can have discrepancy from mobile publishers if they do not maintain their IP Mapping and User-agent mapping databases.

3. You can have discrepancy from the mobile ad network side in regards to them retrieving this information from the mobile publishers on a timely basis.

There are typically usage requirements for publishers to such as maximum 5 times in 60 seconds to request ads. It gets worse as the Adserver is likely not based in every country that it's serving ads to. If you want the blunt truth, 10-30% Click Discrepancy is natural across the board in mobile. When mobile publishers are requesting ads from mobile ad networks, the mobile publisher has to typically identify a set of criteria from their mobile audience, users, etc... ➔Phone maker and model ➔User telco and country associated to the user IP address Some mobile ad networks will have integrations for mobile publishers to use as well that will help identify: ➔iplookup - to identify telco base on IP address, ipmap to return all IP ranges registered in our system ➔ualookup - to identify maker and model of a given UA, uamap to return all device / UA information registered in our system ➔customipmap- to identify customized telco base on IP address I'm going to continue here on some mobile click discrepancies and shit that goes down behind the scenes in adservers/networks.

If you’re using 3rd party tracking, understand that there will be discrepancies: in a perfect world, mobile tracking solutions and ad servers would always match up 100% of the time. However, this is not the case as mobile tracking solutions like DART, Atlas, etc. track clicks on a different methodology than ad servers. In the mobile tracking world, when a user clicks on the banner, they get re- directed to a landing page and only when the user fully renders the page will the tracking pixel fire to denote that a “click” has happened. However, ad servers typically attribute a click right when an user clicks on the banner as they have no control over any information on when and if an user actually fully renders the page. This means, if a user accidentally clicks on a banner and exits out before the re-direct, the ad server will count the click, but the mobile tracking solution will not because the pixel has not fired. Anything within a 20% variance is common and to ensure the proper delivery of a campaign, it’s best to communicate the agreed upon variance with your sales rep before a campaign has gone live.

Mobile internet speeds are not the same as desktop speeds Any latency will start to negatively affect you. At any point the user could close their mobile browser before your page fully loads, or the request could time out. This means fewer clicks, impressions, and conversions tracked.

You can combat this by using a fast tracking server and software. Make sure your landing page is mobile optimized and as small as possible, reduce image sizes, combine css into one file, limit the number of 3rd party scripts on your page.

No standard capabilities on mobile devices and in the mobile browser space. It's bad enough keeping up to date with cross platform browser issues in the desktop world, but in mobile it gets worse. You have to deal with multiple types of WAP browsers and smartphone browsers all of the with varying capabilities and support for javascript, iframes, cookies, storage space etc.

➔What do you think happens to your cookies when a mobile device with limited storage runs out of space? ➔How about if you are using javascript or meta redirects and the mobile device doesn't support js or meta redirects? If you are cloaking your campaigns in mobile, you are slowing them down, it's that simple. Remember that, because affiliates seem to forget it. Cookies crumble, especially on mobile. For example mobile safari is automatically set to block 3rd party cookies by default. This could cause issues with cookie based conversion tracking. For example our global postback pixel uses cookies to figure which subid converted. Once a network places the image pixel on a conversion page, it becomes a 3rd party pixel and won't fire on mobile safari browsers.

Make it standard to always use server 2 server postbacks.

Ad Network Response Time

Ad network response time is another important factor for maximizing real time ad optimization and interpreting click discrepancies.

Publishers obviously want to ensure that the user experience of their mobile app or mobile website is not interrupted or hampered by slow banner display loading time from ads being routed via ad networks, ad optimizers or in house ad servers for that matter.

In an effort to maximize the average advertising revenue per user, the likely scenario is that multiple sources of mobile advertisements (ad networks, ad optimizers or in house ad) are sequenced in a chain to maximize fill rates. If the chain includes several ad networks that are sorted only by expected price, but the performance of the first ad source is impaired by slow response time, then the publisher risks an empty ad impression altogether. These are just some of the reasons for click discrepancies. To list them all, would be near impossible. Besides we built our own Proprietary Mobile Ad Tracking Platform to combat this very issue. To reveal all the discrepancies I know about wouldn't be good for my business. :-) If there is one thing we know about buying nearly $8 Million dollars in mobile advertising over the last twelve months, it’s this: Mobile Ad Network Click Tokens Are A Waste Of Freaking Time I mean seriously, if you’re a newbie/greenhorn who can’t afford accurate mobile tracking then I understand, every mobile marketer has to start somewhere. I know when we first started out with Prosper 202 and CPVLab it was a freaking nightmare gather click tokens and setting them up. That’s one of the main reasons why we set out to build our own mobile tracker. Any serious mobile marketer who buys over 7-figures a month in mobile ads isn’t using those options. If they are, I have to commend you but I simply wouldn’t expect there are any. Over the last year, we analyzed over 100+ Mobile Ad Networks, Mobile App Exchanges and even working directly with mobile website owners on accurately identifying their incoming mobile traffic. We also spent (like I said above) a size-able mobile media budget as well as handle multiple 7- figure budgets for mobile advertisers through our Mobile CPA Network – Revived Media. First off, mobile ad network click tokens are dismal – at best. If you’re taking a mobile traffic source’s “word for it” then you’re simply an idiot or just aren’t spending enough to realize how bad you’re getting screwed over. Now, with iMobiTrax, you can use mobile ad click tokens if you like but you simply don’t need to. It’s a complete waste of time. Here are 16 tracking metrics that iMobiTrax automatically tracks from your incoming clicks. It doesn’t matter which mobile ad network or even mobile traffic source for that matter, we track these automatically. Here’s a quick snapshot and then a brief explanation: Here are the 16 automatic tracking metrics iMobiTrax records and reports back to you:

✔Device Manufacturers - Manufacturers of the mobile devices such as Samsung, LG, HTC etc…

✔Device Names - The exact name of the phone/tablet

✔Device Models - The exact model number of the phone/tablet

✔Device Combined Name – The exact name/model combination of the phone/tablet

✔Device Marketing Name – Sometimes the mobile device/tablet will have a different actual name compared to it’s name on the market

✔Device Type – Feature Phone, Smartphone, Tablet (Android/iPad/Google Nexus 7) etc…

✔Device OS (Operating System)

✔Device Display Size – You should know, mobile ROI always comes down to the device. Here’s the simple way to explain that. Let’s say you’re targeting a certain Carrier, Manufacturer and OS. Inside that combination could be a bundle of say 20 phones. Do you think all 20 of those devices have the same display size? Nope.

✔Device Resolution – Same as above. Different phones have different screen resolutions, now you will be able to see which ones.

✔Device Data Speed – Data Speeds differ all over the world. Now see if the phones you’re making ROI from are on 2G, 3G, 4G etc…

✔Referrer – Simple mobile display website referring urls (I use this to purchase mobile traffic directly and cut out the networks)

✔IP Address ✔Carrier/Operator – Depending on what country you run ads in, this will be either named Carrier/Operator

✔ISP - (Internet Service Provider)

✔Country

✔Test (Customize Token Options)- This is another reporting metric that you can utilize for custom tokens. Let’s say you are capturing names, emails, phone numbers, zip codes etc through your custom token options which I’m show an example of below:

Now if you had your campaign link setup for C1-C10 values and were capturing names, emails, phone numbers and zip codes, ad creatives, states etc..(Whatever you want!) then iMobiTrax will automatically display that in your reporting. We actually use iMobiTrax for all of our web-campaigns too because we simply insert the Google and Bing (keyword) tokens and can track all the same.

That's enough gloating about iMobiTrax. In short, we know what we're doing when it comes to mobile traffic. Chapter 7. Mobile Landing Pages I'm really going out of my way here with this chapter. However, I know that 90% of the affiliates out there either don't know how to create landing pages or simply don't want to. Well, (LOL) it's even worse in mobile. So, what I'm going to do here is throw you a bone. 5 Mobile Landing Page Creator Tools With mobile being all the rage these days, every marketer needs a good resource for clean, fast-loading but simple mobile landing pages. Well, I have just the solution today! Actually, I have five solutions for you!

Google sites is a free mobile landing page and mobile site creator. With Google Sites, you can build a professional mobile landing page in just minutes. Google’s mobile landing page builder is completely free to use and boasts Google Analytics integration, though it’s not the most feature- packed solution out there. However, if you are on a low budget or new to mobile marketing, Google sites is a very easy to understand mobile landing page builder.

Convrrt is another hot mobile landing page builder on the market. It’s super simple to use as well. Simply, start off by creating your campaign by giving your campaign a name and typing your company name/title. From there, you create a headline that will grab your customer’s attention and add in your supporting action words that will drive customers to your business. You can add graphics, video and add customized call to action buttons inside your mobile landing page.

Spark Page is a very cool up-and-coming mobile landing page creator. Not a coding expert? Not a Problem! No need to learn HTML, their page designer allows you to drag, drop and publish! They also have advanced features which will allow developers delve deeper into the code too. They also have a variety of designer tools, templates, metrics and testing options for you to try out. Atmio allows you to create, target and optimize mobile rich media ads and mobile landing pages. Atmio’s Do-It-Yourself Mobile Advertising Platform empowers Performance Marketers and Affiliates to generate high quality leads via mobile – for fractions of a cent per visit.Atmio empowers you to create mobile MRAID compliant rich media ads and landing pages in minutes using your web browser.

Jaemobi is a much larger suite of mobile landing page creator tools. Focuses on marketing landing pages and campaigns, as well as multi–page mobile websites, Features an easy-to-use drag and drop interface. They have a lot of tutorials and a wiki on their site too so check them out.

Now, I'm going to share what the entire team at IMGrind, Revived Media and iMobiTrax codes landing pages in for Smartphones:

Jquery Framework

Some of you may or may not be familiar with the jQuery framework. Basically it is a JavaScript Library that simplifies HTML document traversing, event handling, animating, and Ajax interactions for rapid development. It's likely you've seen this in action and just haven't realized it. Recently they've developed very powerful mobile framework that allows you to build dynamic interfaces that adapt to a large range of mobile devices.

This all sounds complicated, but in Layman's terms, jQuery allows you to create a very simple, mobile optimized, landing page that can aid you to driving massive amounts of mobile conversions. Here's A Sample LP: HTML Code: Internet Marketing Grind Mobile Optimized

Internet Marketing Grind Mobile Optimized

Page content goes here.

Page Footer

That wonder work of coding art produces this simple mobile LP: You can preview this page at this link. (try it on your phone)

For those of you that are somewhat familiar with HTML you'll realize this is SIMPLE! Taking things one step further let's take a look at a landing page that links to a second page (which could be used as your Contact page):

HTML Code:

Internet Marketing Grind Mobile Optimized

Landing Page

The content for your landing page would go here.

View internal page called Contact Us

Copyright © 2011

Contact

This is where you can put your contact info.

Back to Landing Page

Copyright © 2011

You can preview this page at this link. (try it on your phone).Now just as with any HTML web page you have simple items such as:

Your header: HTML Code:

Internet Marketing Grind Mobile Optimized The body: HTML Code:

Internet Marketing Grind Mobile Optimized

Page content goes here.

Page Footer

The jQuery Mobile Framework handles all the sizing and layout options for you. All you have to do is format your text and go! Starting to click how powerful this can be? We all know there is a ton of mobile traffic out there, and with very little advertisers actually taking advantage of it, it's relatively cheap. I'm going to do a few more posts on mobile landing page development so go ahead and read up on some of the framework, practice, and come back with questions! Chapter 8. Testing Mobile Offers A lot of the offers we bring on to Revived Media are offers that are dead simple to promote. In mobile, marketers tend to over-think and over- analyze offers. What you should be concentrating on is traffic. I'll explain why. First - We concentrate on "batched" offers. That means at Revived Media, we tend to go after larger Advertiser Clients whom have many offers and variations to choose from.

Now, the benefits of the way we do our business development means a great deal to you as a mobile affiliate partner of ours. You see, we run nearly every brand internally or with a mobile ad network directly.

We are fulfilling inventory on 20 mobile ad networks, so we can cover ALOT of ground per brand.

In an effort to maximize the available inventory on all of these mobile ad networks, we have to have a lot of offers on a per country, per carrier basis. For instance, let me walk you through an example.

For our Client whom owns the Mozzi Brand, we are (currently) advertising their offers in 13 countries. In these countries, we have bundles of carriers.

You can take any Mobile CPA Network in the world, I can guarantee you that we have forgotten more about marketing mobile offers than they will ever learn.

What I am going to do here is a simple walk-through of how to test offers at Revived Media. In mobile, it's very simple so don't over-complicate or over-think this. Here's an overview of the Mozzi Brand: Now, the reason why we have more than one LP per offer/per country is that we are constantly fulfilling publisher mobile inventory 1 of 3 ways:

➔Internally from our own marketing and advertising ➔Through one of our mobile ad network partnerships ➔Through one of our affiliate partners = You.

We have over 500+ mobile affiliates and media buying partners currently active on the Revived Media Mobile CPA Network. If we were to bring one offer on per brand, per country/per LP scenario, we would simply not please the otherside of the spectrum which is our internal media buying team, our mobile ad network partnerships and our mobile affiliate partnerships.

Now, that I've explained that, let me explain how you are likely sitting on a pile of volume with your mobile ad networks already.

Traffic First, Then Choose An Offer

One of the biggest mistakes I see with starting mobile affiliates is that they come to us and start shopping around for offers. I believe they do this based on how the CPA Industry has been like in the past. Affiliates go to their AM's for advice on what's hot. In all actuality, this is flawed thinking. I always like to know my traffic source, type and volume expectancy before I talk to my AM.

Going to your AM and asking "Which offer should I run?" shows us here at Revived Media that you are green. That's not meant to be offensive. We just know that any mobile experienced affiliate will come to us and tell us their traffic metrics and let us go to work to match an offer with their traffic.

Remember - Go to the mobile ad network. Get their traffic specs and metrics and then come to us and ask what we recommend for matching offers with your traffic type. You should have a good idea of what how much traffic is available for your country and carrier when you come to us.

If you have these metrics, we can be a lot more helpful and tell you exactly what to start testing for that country/carrier combination. Language Translation You should always, always test multiple versions of the offer you are promoting if there are more than one language translation LP's available. For this example, I'm going to walk-through:

Offer ID: 1176 - Mozzi Qatar 4 Landing Pages:

There are 4 Lp's (currently) available for this offer:

➢ Regular Love Meter English Default ➢ Regular Love Meter Arabic ➢ Regular IQ Test Arabic ➢ Regular IQ Test English

You must test each variation of the Language on a per country basis. I cannot tell you how many countless times I've recommended doing this for mobile affiliates and once they did, they saw significant volume increases. It's really common sense, but it does tend to get over-looked.

Focus, start testing in a routine type manner so that you are testing each Language variation of each lander for each campaign you run! Text Ads Banner Ads Another huge mistake I see mobile affiliates making is that they simply go and take the provided creatives and start testing them. Well, that's fine because some offers will only allow you to promote the provided creatives.

Other offers will have to have the creatives passed to us and we will pass them over to the Client for approval.

However, offers that are free reign to promote custom creatives with. You should be taking advantage of this. You should ALWAYS, ALWAYS test text ads & banner ads. Always. No questions asked. Countless times I've helped mobile affiliates increase their volume by simply recommending to setup a text ad campaign. You just don't know what the mobile publisher has available in each country through the mobile ad network.

Some websites may only allow text ads, while others may only allow banner ads or you could have a combination of both on one site. Do not neglect this because it's the number 1 reason mobile affiliates aren't getting enough volume when they come to me with their issues.

If you do not understand the technology of a mobile ad network, I'm going to make this as simple as I can and not over-complicate it. A Mobile Ad Network is typically powered by some type of auction-based advertising technology (or engine as they call it). The whole purpose of a mobile ad network is TO SERVE ADS.

That means the more ads you create, regardless of campaigns and adgroups, the better chance you have that your ads will be picked up and served into the appropriate ad slots that are requesting ads from the mobile ad network.

I personally like to test like this:

Text Ad Campaign = 10 text ads per campaign Banner Ad Campaign = 1 size banner ad (eg. 300x250) with 10 banners

Now, to break this down, if you are going to test the IAB standard mobile ad units for mobile display, you are looking at 1 text ad campaign with 10 text ads and 4 banner campaigns (1 campaign per banner size) and 10 banners per campaign. That's 4 campaigns with 40 banners total. Now, I could go into auction based algorithms and programmatic buying but that's just going to confuse a lot of people. So to make simple, take my advice or experience headaches. It's up to you.

Testing Budget The easiest way to go through this for mobile affiliates is to just do a walk- through of an example I've documented in the past with a mobile affiliate. One of the biggest questions I've gotten over the last year is “What should the size of my testing budget be?”

This is a very tough question, so I'm going to be completely upfront with you when I say that your testing budget should be as large as you can possibly make it TO receive as much data as you can.

If you are not prepared to lose money, then you are not prepared to make money in mobile marketing. It's a harsh truth, but you should know this from the beginning.

$50-$100 a day per campaign. This is old school web-based advertising mindset and it does not apply to mobile campaigns. Why? Because there are entirely variables to consider in mobile campaigns such as:

Mobile Carriers Mobile OS Mobile Devices Country/GEO PublisherSites(Adding/Cutting) Ad Creatives

These are just some of the variables you will likely change up in your testing phase. You need to be realistic here. I see way too many affiliates failing from the start on $50- $100 a/day campaign testing budgets. There's just not enough money there to return the data need to make calculated decisions.

There's been countless instances where I've encountered Affiliate Marketing being just 1 carrier, 1 handset, 1 OS, even just 1 click away from profitability.

Realize this → There's never a free lunch. Even more so in mobile marketing. Be prepared to lose money to gain valuable insight from your data. You will likely going through at least 10-12 campaigns fucking up before you “it clicks” with you. I can sit here all day and tell you what you should do but that's a waste of my time. I've already been doing this for over a year and people will still do whatever they want, despite what I tell them. So be prepared to lose, or you will never win.

Here is an example of a real-live testing phase campaign on Leadbolt that was currently talked about in IMGrind. Study this because, we saved this affiliate from making some mis-calculated mistakes. You have to be PATIENT in mobile...

Do I start scaling based on these data?

Question: I have these stats after spending close to $100 bucks for testing and collecting data.

Direct Linking Campaign 919 Clicks 16 Leads Payout Offer - $7.80

Using imobitrax, I have identified that LG and Samsung has the highest clickthrough and has clone another campaign in Leadbolt and narrow down the day parting to just Wed to Sunday for optimisation. As of now, there are 15 clicks with no conversion on the new campaign. The "FIRST" campaign that has 919 clicks has been paused.

By narrowing down to the following parameters, I "thought" and assume that there will be more conversions, but apparently not as yet.

Creating landers Bring it to another traffic source

Does 16 leads against 1000 clicks seems a good enough data to to the above 2 actions ? Other than creating and testing landers to scale this up, bring what else can I do ? Wait for another 1000 clicks?

First Answer:

You're profitable, so keep running. A solid $1,000 spend should give you the conversion metrics to optimize with.

If you're profitable at $100 spend, don't start optimizing yet. Keep things as they are and continue collecting data.

Then this marketer brought us back the following stats:

Update

3384 Clicks 63 Leads $0.10 CPC Spend $338.40 Profit $152.70 $7.80 Payout ROI 45.1% All the stats are on Direct Linking. Country CA.

Do I start to optimize and still on DL , removing non converting handsets and model?

My Answer:

A few things you can do here bud.

You're profitable - on 45% that's great man. Scale that sucker to $1,000 spend. You're thinking "ROI" in mobile.

This sir, is a mistake. A real campaign killer actually in mobile. You have to shift you're thinking from "web-based" advertising to "mobile" advertising. CONCENTRATE ON VOLUME - NOT ROI. Anyone else tells you different is a ding dong and I'll explain why and what you should do.

First - Leave this campaign alone as far as "optimizing down" You simply don't need to. You can be profitable at 45% then no reason to change it! TOOOO many affiliates immediately think "optimize" but in mobile at 45% if you were spending $1,000 a day, I think you would be pretty damn happy with that right?

Tip: You will want to get weekly payments for your advertising, if you cannot scale on that spend.

Here's what to do on this campaign currently:

1. Ask you Mobile Ad Network Rep or Source Rep to see if you can get a lower cost per click (This right here extends your ROI without changing any of your campaign targeting). 2. Ask the Affiliate Network / Advertiser for a bumped payout. (This again will extend your ROI without changing campaign targeting)

3. Split test the same offer somewhere else if you can, If it performs better elsewhere - you extend your ROI without changing the campaign much.

^^^ These 3 things could lead to Campaign ROI without changing much.

Now take your profits and split them into 25% margins.

25% to clone this campaign but CUT the non-performing handset models 25% to test out a landing page 25% to take exact campaign and try it on another traffic source 25% to hold back for a rainy day.

Also, 3,300 clicks in my opinion is not enough data. First, because you're spending $0.10 a click and only $338.40

^^^ To the untrained eye, this may seem like a proper test. Mistake man. You need to test every single hour of every single day. Do not rely on "clicks" or "spend" - it's irrelevant, no matter what anyone tells you. I just showed many examples of this in the workshop and I think a lot of our mobile guys are finally getting the hang of it.

Things to check on are this:

Day Parting - Has this campaign ran for 7 days 24 hrs non-stop? There's "profit pockets" in certain hours in mobile.

Week Parting - Has this campaign ran for 30 days at 24 hrs each day non- stop? Really bud, you've been patient so far, don't get impatient now. Hand-slap yourself on the back and read what I wrote a couple of times and before you change anything, reply back in this thread and let us know what you're plan is.

Note: At 45% Roi, just let the mobile campaign run and concentrate on getting more volume. At this point mobile marketers want to optimize. There's no reason to at 45%, just go get more volume. It's really that simple.

Bid Adjustments Another huge mistake I've seen a lot of mobile marketers make is adjusting their bids during the “cut” phase of non-performing campaign metrics.

DO NOT DO THIS

Mobile ad network targeting is obscure at best. What we've seen happen is that when you adjust your bids, this will make your ads start showing up for new placements. Talk about a real campaign killer.

Think about going into your campaign and optimizing it by cutting out all the fat and when you re-launch it, your campaign starts putting on fat again. This is what happens when you mess with your bids while optimizing. Again, this is not web- based advertising. If you do not thoroughly understand the mobile ad network technology you are working with, you are in no position to change this.

Tip: The simplest way to get around this is to replicate/duplicate/clone your optimized this winning campaign with a different bid (higher or lower) and then separately monitor how well this campaign performs. This is the right way in mobile. Ad Decay Ad decay or end-user fatigue refers to the moment when a large proportion of your segment’s end-users have seen your mobile ad creative. From that point onwards, your click through rate will decrease because most potential “clients” have been exposed to your ad.

This means you have to bid higher cost per click to get your ad shown and achieve volumes on the mobile ad networks.

In the regular mobile ad unit types, you are going to deal a lot with mobile web and mobile app traffic.

W ays to avoid or diminish the negative effects of end-user fatigue:

1. Avoid using the default ad creative provided by the merchant – these will already suffer from ad decay as affiliates and likely the merchant themselves will already have been using these creatives to promote the offer on most of the mobile ad networks. You can easily and cheaply get mobile ad creatives / banners developed using outsourcers on odesk and other freelance sites.

2. Using keyword-based networks such as Google Adwords, or Microsoft Advertising adCenter / Bing Mobile almost completely alleviate user- fatigue because of their nature.

3. Rotating creatives is important to reach all potential users

4. Spreading your advertisement across many ad networks is important. Also, I have found that putting some adnetworks “at rest” for 2 weeks can be very beneficial as it gives the inventory time to refresh and renew itself. 5. Asking the advertisers to come out with new products/landing pages.

6. Using frequency capping – some ad networks such as adfonic will allow you to limit the number of times a users sees your ad creative.

7. Choosing campaigns based on geographies can play a big role in reducing the effects of end-user fatigue. For example, if you choose to launch a US-based campaign: end-user fatigue will take much longer to reach because of the sheer size of the potential market!

Frequency Capping

Is a term in advertising that means restricting (capping) the number of times (frequency) a specific visitor to a website is shown a particular advertisement. This restriction is applied to all websites that serve ads from the same advertising network.

Frequency capping is a feature within ad serving that allows to limit the maximum number of impressions/views a visitor can see a specific ad within a period of time. For e.g.: 3 views/visitor/24-hours means after viewing this ad 3 times, any visitor will not see it again for 24 hours.

Frequency capping is often cited as a way to avoid banner burnout, the point where visitors are being overexposed and response drops. This may be true for campaigns of a direct-response nature measured by click- throughs, but it might run counter to campaigns of a brand-building nature measured by non-click activity.

Session Capping - Session capping is a term in online advertising that means restricting (capping) the amount of specific advertising sessions a visitor to a website is allowed to have. It greatly diminishes the amount of money the advertiser can earn. Here, a session is defined as the total amount of time one visitor spends on a single website, regardless of how many pages he or she visits within that time. When the visitor closes his browser, or enters an entire different website, the session ends. When the visitor returns to the website, a different advertising session can be started.

Using session capping, a specific advertising scheme can be applied to a website visit. For example, advertisements can be repeated indefinitely within a single session, or a specific order can be implemented.

In mobile – particularly with mobile ad networks, you need to speak with your mobile ad network Rep and get the specifics on their frequency/session metrics because they are very rarely talked about. Mobile ad networks are here to make money and discussing such metrics typically limits them to the amount of money they make.

Typically we like to show our ads on a 2/24 frequency, which means – we like to show our ads twice in a 24 hour time-frame but depending on your mobile ad network, what they offer and what type of mobile advertising you are running, this is going to differ in almost every instance so take it upon yourself to learn the lingo and the ad network's frequency metrics so you better understand when and how your ads are being delivered to their traffic.

Hopefully this gives you a much clearer understanding on testing mobile offers. Remember, there are so many variables and I handle anywhere from multi-million dollar ad budgets directly from Operators, Mobile Ad Networks and Agencies to Mobile Affiliates only looking to spend $50 a day. Hopefully this will help you out though. I rather work one-on-one with affiliates at Revived Media on a case by case basis with their budgets. Chapter 9. Mobile CTR & Optimization Improving your CTR is a great way of increasing your advertising revenue with CTR-based campaigns and making your advertiser happy. Below are some suggestions on how this can be accomplished along with some fundamental information about CTR.

What is CTR?

Before we go into how to improve CTR, let’s be sure that we understand exactly what it is. CTR is defined as the ratio between the number of clicks an advertisement gets and the number of times the advertisement is shown (impressions). If an ad is clicked 1 time for every 100 times it is shown, it has a CTR of 1/100 = 1%.

Anyone who has ever advertised anywhere knows that the main challenge is getting eyeballs on your ad. This is true for old school advertising such as newspapers, billboards, and TV promos, and it is just as true for digital advertising. The name of the game in digital advertising whether on the Web or mobile is CTR, click through rate.

You can advertise all you want, but if no one is clicking, you are wasting your time. Of course, traffic is also important because some campaigns are per impressions, but in any case, the assumption is, the more traffic you get to your site or app, the more impressions and the more clicks…. That is generally the case. The big question is how to increase the percentage of people that see your ad and actually click on it?

For starters, although desktop ad networks typically pay on the number of ad impressions (cost-per-thousand-impression, or CPM), most mobile ad networks operate on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis. This means that just showing more advertisements to users may not result in more revenue for you like it does on desktop, unless you can get a corresponding rise in the number of clicks. The CPC rate from the top networks is somewhere around 4-5 cents for 320x50 banner ads – although at any given time it can go quite a bit lower than this.

The revenue that you generate then is the number of impressions times click-through-rate times cost-per-click (imp x CTR x CPC). Click-through- rate can vary widely and is in fact the most important number to focus on. A good target to aim for is around 1% CTR. However, we’ve seen publishers with 10% CTR all the way down to 0.006%. Given these numbers, the resulting CPM then is around $0.50 (CPC*CTR*1000). In other words, a good target performance is around $0.50 for every 1000 ad impressions, although as we’ve seen performance can be quite a bit higher, and much much lower.

On the desktop web, a publisher can slap in an AdSense tag and call it a day (since it typically outperforms other networks). For mobile ad networks, that’s not the case. In general, I have seen that publishers with 4 or 5 networks outperform those with fewer networks set up. There are several reasons for that.

1) Mobile ad networks cannot guarantee 100% fill. There are still more mobile impressions than ad demand so using only a single network means that you will have unfilled impressions. Using several networks will guarantee that you can get as close to full fill as possible.

2) Costs per clicks (CPC) and click through rates vary over time. For a single ad network, we see that the CPC rate can vary by as much as /-20% over the course of a few days, and the CTR can vary by /-30%. This means that your expected revenue from a single revenue can drop by a half from the high point to the low. By incorporating several ad networks, you can monitor the performance and automatically divert traffic to the highest performing network. 3) Ad networks still don’t have a lot of variety. If you are using one ad network, there are cases where the fill rate is high but it’s because a user is seeing the same ads many times. Users will get desensitized to a certain ad if they see it to much. By using several ad networks, you can insure that a variety of ads will be shown to your audience in a given time.

I recommend using 4-5 ad networks at this time. If you're a newbie, start slow but I highly suggest you at least signup and get approved with some.

Once you have set up your initial ad networks, there are some things you can do to make sure you get the most out of them. The most important thing to remember is that if you are consistently seeing a low click through rate (<0.1%), the ad networks will start sending you low CPC ads. The worse your ads perform, the worse ads your users will start seeing. It’s therefore important to make sure that you are getting good click through rates and remember that in some situations it’s better not to show any ads.

Another thing you can do is limit certain ad networks to particular geographic regions.

You may be approached by a particular ad network that promises high performance. New ad networks are cropping up all the time in mobile since the ecosystem is still new. I strongly recommend that when you set up a new ad network you set up a frequency cap on that network. This way, you are able to monitor the performance of that network without diverting too much of your traffic to it, saving you a potential hit to revenue. If the network performs well over a period of time, you can remove the cap and divert more of your traffic to it.

AAP - WATCH OUT FOR THIS: This part, I'm going to write to you from a mobile website owner (publisher) and/or mobile app developer (publisher) perspective. The better you understand what they are looking for, the better mobile advertiser you will be.

Appearance - In this case, looks matter and they matter a lot. One of the reasons certain mobile devices do so well is because of their intuitive user interface. In fact, the same principle applies to mobile apps. If a user opens an app and does not know what to do within seconds, most users will close the app and probably delete it. The last thing a user or a developer wants is an ad that ruins the look of the app and the user’s experience. In-app advertising for instance, is a relatively new industry, so many of the big players in the space offer ads that are esthetically unpleasing to say the least. As a developer, before releasing an app with in-app advertising, try it out and see how the ads look. If they are not to your satisfaction, then make sure to improve them before releasing the app. The last thing you want is to lose users just because you wanted to monetize your hard work. Unfortunately, most developers don't do this, nor do they care.

Attendance - Here is the thing with mobile ads, they do not always appear. If, for example, your ad network is operational in the U.S only and someone downloads your app in Japan. The best case scenario is that the person will see an app that is completely irrelevant to them. The worse option is that they will see no ad at all. That is what is called Fill Rate and it is important to ensure that your mobile advertising company has a high fill rate. Wait, it gets more complicated. Some companies quote a 100% fill rate, but when you dig deeper, you find that 40% of those ads are house ads that are just advertising themselves. You know what that means for the developer or mobile website owner? No revenue. So not only is fill rate crucial, but making sure the ads are all revenue-generating ads is something you must pay attention to. Performance - Due to the relatively young industry, companies are still learning the ropes and the consumers are the ones suffering. If you have ads in your app that either do not appear correctly, are not optimized for the device’s display, or simply do not do what they are supposed to, you are simply losing out on revenue that could have been yours. In order to ensure the quality and performance of your ads, test them, QA them, and test them some more. When you click, does it redirect you to the appropriate location. Do all the graphics appear correctly? These are questions you must ask yourself before releasing an app with built in ads.

You shouldn’t maximize impressions, you should maximize clicks. Any ad that is shown that is not clicked actually loses value for you. The publishers with the highest click through rates (3-5%) and highest CPMs ($3-6) all have one thing in common: they use the same banner unit as the user traverses the app. Users typically fly through your menus. Trying to load a new ad for each page means that the user will move on before the ad has been loaded. If instead the same ad view is used, it will be displayed for the maximum time on screen so that the user will be more inclined to click the ad. Also, if the page is scrollable, make sure the banner ad is always shown. If a banner is off the screen, the user can’t click it and the impression is wasted.

Users typically interact with applications very differently than web sites. Most times they fire up an app because they want to get something done: check sports scores, get directions, or play a game. Placing a banner ad on a screen before the user has started a task will almost guarantee that it won’t get clicked. There is a large jump in clicks on banner ads when the user has finished a task.

Similarly, if the user is mid-game or in browsing mode, an ad will have a higher click through rate since the main purpose of opening the app has been completed. The only exception to placing a banner pre-task is if you follow rule #1 and use the same ad banner for the subsequent pages.

Increasing your CTR is something you should be able to do with a little effort. If you follow the steps below you will hopefully see your CTR rise:

Pay special attention to the content and design of your ads. The imagery and copy you use is extremely important so it is worth spending time on your ads.

Run both banners and text ads. Sometimes, for some reason, you will find that a text ad promoting a certain product gets a better CTR than a banner ad, or indeed the other way round. Golden rule - run banners AND text ads.

It is a good idea to include a call to action in your ads such as "Click Here". Do this as part of your Text Ads and as part of the text that runs under Banner Ads.

Update ads regularly - It’s a very easy mistake to make in assuming that once a banner or text ad is live that's it as far as you are concerned as an advertiser. Our advertisers with the highest CTRs are the ones who regularly update their ads. Over time a banner or text ad's CTR may drop due to the repeated exposure it gets on high traffic sites such as social networking or video sites (where one user may see it many times over the campaign period). So make sure you freshen up your ads as often as possible. Text ads you should change at least every week (as all you need to do is change the text).

Keep an eye on your campaigns - A simple way to test the effectiveness of your banners and text campaigns is to run multiple campaigns with differing creatives/text alongside each other. Keep an eye on the CTR - this will tell you a lot about the effectiveness of the banner or the text. One will most likely get a higher CTR than the other, perhaps one will have a higher drop off than the other – this is all key information that you will be able to use to make your campaigns more dynamic and effective.

Optimize ads for mobile apps, mobile-optimized web and standard web. Mobile ads have a look and feel separate from their Web-based counterparts. They are simplified, sized differently, and take less time to load. Optimizing for mobile can drive conversion rates at a lower cost. In- app advertising, gives marketers an opportunity to evolve past the banner ad to develop more creative rich media advertising.

Target by carrier and by device. Carriers and devices often have clear demographics that allow you to segment your ads based on demographics, including age, gender and income. Screen size also varies drastically from mobile devices, so it is crucial that ads are optimized for the right device. A mobile ad designed for a smartphone will not look the same on a tablet.

Leverage the opportunities mobile has to offer. Mobile allows marketers to utilize location-based advertising, behavioral targeting, weather, predictive analytics and other consumer data that may not be available or useful in another advertising medium.

Remember: To get the most out of your CPC mobile advertising campaigns, you need to think carefully about the unique demands, limitations and opportunities of the mobile advertising medium.

Here are a few ideas for how to build a better mobile ad that will attract the interest of users and achieve higher CTRs (and thus save you money on your overall CPC advertising spend): Testing: Since mobile ads are relatively small and cheap to produce, it’s easy to create multiple versions of the same basic concept and test, test, test. See what works and what doesn’t. Add different elements and combinations and tweak them until you find out which version resonates best with the audience. The most sophisticated mobile advertisers sometimes test hundreds of different combinations of text, images, targeting, and offer in an attempt to optimize their campaigns. After all, on a small screen with a limited attention span from users, and a narrow window of opportunity to break through the clutter of daily life, even the tiniest adjustment in font, text size, or type of image can make the difference between achieving a click-through and getting ignored. You don’t need a big budget to test your mobile ads, and even the smallest developer can benefit from testing.

Just remember to change only one variable at a time so that you can see the impact of your efforts. A common model for this kind of mobile advertising testing is A/B testing, where a baseline model is compared to a series of variable test samples to check for varying response rates. For example, you could try one mobile ad that compares several different versions featuring different sizes of your company logo, different font sizes, different font colors, and different taglines or offer headlines. You might be surprised at the big results that can come from minor changes.

Master the basics of ad design: Mobile advertising design is often a matter of “Keep it Simple, Stupid.” Given the small space on a mobile device screen, and the limited window of time to engage the user’s attention, it helps to have a simple call to action, use no more than 5-7 words on your banner, pick a few bright colors that represent your brand and call attention to your advertisement, but without going overboard. And again, keep testing multiple versions to see what your audience is responding to. Analyze everything: One of the biggest benefits of mobile advertising is that it gives you a great deal of visibility into the click-through data and other metrics. Take advantage of every opportunity that you have to capture data (especially conversion data). You can find out what is working, and adjust as you go along. Once again, it is better to focus on a small set of ads that you can optimize over time rather than to bite off more than you can chew and target every country with a range of ads.

Mobile advertising banners take up a small amount of space, which means that the words you choose to represent your company are more important than ever before. You have only a small space and a short amount of time to capture the attention of your prospective customer as they glance your mobile advertising banner.

Here are some ideas for how to choose the right words to maximize your chance of success.

Keep it short: Space is at a premium on a mobile advertising banner, so you have to be concise. Try to capture the essence of what your message is all about in only 5 words or less. The simple fact of the small size of a mobile device screen makes it necessary to strive for clarity.

Keep it simple: The good news is that because the space is so small, you don’t need to convey a complicated sales pitch. Just try to engage the reader’s attention, catch their interest, and make them want to click the banner to learn more.

Your landing environment (landing page) can do a more detailed job of explaining your offer and showing the person why they should buy your product or download your app. The mobile advertising banner just needs to be an inviting front door to open the conversation. Focus on your campaign goals: What are you trying to accomplish with this mobile ad campaign? Do you need more downloads, more signups, more members of your social media community, overall brand awareness? Whatever your most important goals might be, make sure that your mobile ad banner copywriting reflects those goals with clear call-to-actions. Such as, “reserve a room,” “explore your options,” “request a guide,” “play for free,” or “take a tour.”

Test, test, test: One of the most frequently encountered mobile advertising mistakes is failing to test your ads. This is puzzling, because it’s cheaper than ever before to try multiple versions of a mobile ad, and then track the results so you see what works and what doesn’t. Try multiple combinations of different ad copy plus different offers.

Mobile offers ample opportunities to marketers, but the technological differences of mobile and traditional online advertising are not yet clear. Mobile ads are not repurposed Web ads. If they were they would not be effective.

You wouldn’t put a print ad on TV so why do it with mobile & online ads?

Mobile is young, that means there is a huge opportunity for growth and innovation. Bare with it, be patient and stay focused.

Let's Do A Quick Recap: ➔A good target CTR is 1% and a typical CPC is $0.05, meaning $0.50 is a good target eCPM ➔Fill rate is still a problem for ad networks ➔For an ad network, CTR can vary by -20% and the CPC can vary by -30%, so there is not a network that consistently outperforms all other networks ➔I recommend using 4-5 ad networks to ensure maximum performance and diversity of ads ➔Ad networks will send low-performing ads to apps that have low CTR ➔Consider geo-targeting certain ad networks ➔Frequency cap new ad networks that you are testing before sending all of your traffic ➔Increase your CPC - the higher your CPC, the higher the probability of your ad showing.

Make sure you have a BANNER campaign and a TEXT campaign for EVERY campaign you are running. This way you take full advantage of all inventory, publishers from mobile ad networks have the option to run either type of ad-code (banner or text), many run both but this is not always the case.

Remove any non essential targeting.

Do your campaigns really need video streaming? Can you switch from java MIDP2 to Any Java?

The more targeting you have the less inventory you will get as you are targeting very specific users. Also remember your CPC will be increased by any additional targeting you have other than country targeting.

Run only campaigns that are performing well for you. If you have 10 campaigns and 5 are performing well, pause the under performing campaigns so the 5 that are offering a return receive more traffic.

Optimise your CTR. Ultimately with more inventory you are looking for more clicks. In mobile, concentrate on more volume, that means more clicks. Why Porting Profitable Mobile Campaigns From One Country To Another Is A Bad Idea

Often times we will get a new mobile affiliate hot on profitable on a mobile cpa offer here at Revived Media and they will immediately want to go into “scaling mode.”

There’s a lot to interpret and understand when it comes to scaling a profitable mobile offer. It isn’t like web-based advertising.

There are no cookies recording behaviors and the technology in mobile ad targeting is for a lack of a better word…dismal.

Let me describe a simple scenario here.

Affiliate 1 comes to me and has a profitable offer working for Australia on mobile. Affiliate 1 wants to take their succesful optimization metrics and basically “clone” this campaign for the United Kingdom. Why is this a bad idea?

First off, you need to understand what type of phone is more prominent in Australia and compare that with the UK.

For instance, Australia is iOS Smartphone dominant while the UK is currently Samsung Android dominant.

If you were to take over your winning AU iOS campaign with the same metrics, you should know that the most traffic in the UK region is not coming from iOS. Often times, a mobile affiliate will do this exact scenario and then come to me with “Why am I not getting traffic, I ported the exact winning formula over.” No, you ported a mobile winning formula from Australia to the UK. It wasn’t in fact, an overall winning formula.

Understanding Smartphone adoption rates in each country you advertise in is crucial. Especially, right now so early in the mobile advertising Industry.

Most countries aren’t even at 50% Total Smartphone adoption, so there is a ton of room for error as well as growth in just advertising on smartphones alone.

Second, obviously if you ported a winning Manufacturer off, but the overall dominant phone type is different (such as feature phone to smartphone ratio) or different Operating Systems within a certain phone type, then your winning handsets from the Australia campaign are likely to be wrong as well.

An example of this would be to have Affiliate A take a profitable smartphone mobile campaign from Saudi Arabi to Spain.

Well, Saudi Arabia is dominant towards the Nokia E5 smartphone specific handsets. These are consider to us as “lower end smartphones” because they still run on the Nokia OS. Data Network speed on devices also make a difference from region to region, but that’s really a whole other story together.

For the sake of simplicity, Spain is dominant towards the Samsung Android Smartphones.

The problem here is that you can isolate screen resolutions and display screen sizes for proper formatting of your ads and landing pages pretty easily towards the Nokia S40 OS (Dominant operating system in Saudi Arabia) and towards the very popular Nokia E5 Smartphones. However, if you were to port your winning metrics over to Spain and target the same elements, you should understand that the majority of the mobile traffic over there is Android Samsung dominant.

Their are multiple Operating Systems within Android and even more bundles of handset PER Operating System with Android!

That’s why I always suggest segmenting your campaigns if you are on a low budget. I live by the mobile motto “The money is in the data” because it truly is.

Far too often, I see the inexperienced mobile marketer face a traffic flow hangup because they assume that since they got a campaign profitable with a certain set of metrics on one traffic source, then it should be “easy sailing” on the next traffic source.

In a perfect world, that would be awesome, but that’s not how it works.

For this reason, I've started creating my Mobile Marketing/Country Reports and giving them away to our Affiliates at Revived Media. This shortens the “research” curve for our affiliates and allows them to spend more time scaling their businesses.

I typically do all the mobile and country research for a specific country/mobile marketing on a weekly basis and send this report out towards the end of the week. This allows affiliates a weekend to study the report and start setting up their campaigns and ads the following Monday.

I try to be as fair as possible with newbie and experienced affiliates when it comes to the Country/Mobile reports. However, if we hit on something big internally, I usually just pull one of the larger volume generating affiliates in on the gravy train. Chapter 10. Airpush & Leadbolt I don't really want to but I'm going to give out some specific mobile ad network campaign setups and examples here. However, I will say that if you decide to test out Leadbolt and/or Airpush, I really don't want to be hassled by you. Push advertising is an art and not for the weak in the pockets type affiliates.

With that said, I'm going to explain how I feel about both of them.

We're getting a TON of questions from multiple publishers regarding Airpush and Leadbolt. I decided rather than going through all the emails, IMs, Skypes, etc. individually I would just try and answer them all here. Ruck and I talk a lot about these networks to use them as examples. You all need to remember one big thing here; especially with Airpush. It personally reminds me a lot of how Pulse 360 was in 2009 (and still is today). It takes a lot of money to test to gather data to find the "sweet spot."

For example, when I first became successful on Pulse 360 I had spent exactly $50,000 cash to find where to optimize and where to scale up. At that point I was able to scale my campaigns forward. Reason for this is the amount of sheer volume that they have; it takes a TON of distribution to see the exact sites/placements/creatives that convert.

The same is really true about these PUSH notification networks. They're not the "holy grail" of mobile marketing by any means. They each take a good bit of budget to find where the ROI exists.

Internally we'll test a campaign on Airpush with around $5,000 and then examine the data to see if the campaign is going to be successful or not. These $100 - $500 tests just aren't going to cut it; they have too much distribution. Let's also remember that their ads are delivered to people that have applications installed on their mobile devices with the adware. They're not expecting your advertisement. App developers like these ads because they pay upwards of $4+ CPM (which is outstanding). This gives an overall HUGE demographic and very broad reach.

If you want to use these sources and the offer accepts this type of traffic; that's fine. But please don't come asking questions such as "why isn't this converting" unless you've done a lot of testing and have a pile of data. These sources aren't for the novice CPA marketer. There are a lot of big players on these networks and you're not only going to have to outbid them for volume, you're going to have to sort through the traffic to find your exact demo.

Inside the Revived Media interface Ruck has put together TONS of mobile traffic sources. Start branching out from "what you know" and explore traffic sources that no one else is utilizing. You'll also notice that many of the networks that we list are not self-serve. You actually have to contact them and put together a legitimate media plan to get going. 99.9% of affiliates out there aren't going to put this much effort into it so this automatically gives you a competitive advantage. That is why we are constantly preaching about having an agency website and a LinkedIn presence.

In conclusion, both of these networks can be VERY lucrative for you; but if you don't have the budget or risk tolerance to invest a bunch of money into tests then you need to start looking elsewhere. There are other self- serve networks out there that work and there are other mobile traffic sources out there that work.

If you're not prepared to spend SEVERAL THOUSAND testing then these PUSH networks simply aren't for you. Remember the user thinks these ads are "system generated" so while you may have an astronomical click through rate, a lot of times the visitor is going to wonder what the hell is going on. You have to be able to transition that into a successful conversion.

I hope this information helps as I want to see you all be successful. Just understand a $25 test at Airpush isn't going to yield you the results like a $25 test at a network that's more targeted where the user understands they're clicking on an advertisement.

A lot of people just don't understand mobile phones nor the type of company Airpush really is. I won't go into the logistics of Airpush's business practices of serving ads but I'll some it up that if you promote on snakeoil, you're gonna get bit. Case in point, Google Play recently changed some guidelines to combat companies and force them to make alternative ad units and methods.

Now, if you do understand Airpush thoroughly, a lot of what we have covered in the forum (search the forum for "airpush") then you would either A. accept this and keep your head down and continue to work with them or B. Brush up on your handset device detection education.

Example - I hate ads on the bottom of the screen, near the capacitive keys (SGS GT-I9000). Yea, it's got the Android 4.0.4 OS however, both T- Mobile and AT&T carry the phone: Which means what?

1. T-Mobile - on Android HAS ALWAYS performed BETTER for us Internally on Airpush. 2. AT&T - Handset users (IMO) seem to be a little more intuitive when it comes to bullshit on their devices.

Also - The majority of Affiliates aren't taking advantage of the International traffic outside of the Big 4 - US,CA,AU,UK on Airpush.

We know this, that's why we get 3,000+ clicks in Kuwait for $30 (Just an example of one of our campaigns)

Airpush is on the same level as spam email, spam text, junk mail, and people on the street asking you if you want to participate. Its unwanted, disturbing, intrusive, and downright annoying.

Sorry, that's the straight truth (my opinion)

If I'm an Android handset device user and If the ads are getting pushed in the notification tray when I'm not using this particular application, and doesn't go away when the application is killed, then fuck that crap.

Especially with a limited data plan.

Also, just look how the Airpush SDK operates:

Developers add the Airpush client SDK in their Android app, which consists of an ultra-lightweight JAR file like most mobile ad networks. When executed once from the main activity of an Android application, theAirpush client utilizes Android OS's AlarmManager framework to schedule ongoing server polling events a few times per day. If an ad is polled from the server it is cached until optimal display time, which is algorithmically determined by the server.

Each polling event runs as a background service very briefly, a few times per day or less, ensuring that the client has a total daily run time of only a few seconds. This ensures virtually zero effect on battery life, especially compared to other services based on push notifications which require a persistent TCP/IP connection, persistent background service, or frequent short polling intervals.

Talk about some real sleazy Android Developers....

AirPush is going to cater to the shit-heads that make horse-shit apps, and riddle it with spam. It's not worth money to buy it. So in comes AirPush and offers them buckets of gold and hot chicks - and pow, here we are. An ad app inside our android.

PS - We've taken advantage of those same very shitheads, by delivering --- IMO shit. I'm just upfront and have the balls to say it.

To sum it up - So, basically now their business model relies on on users blindly clicking OK to everything when installing/firstrun of an app? Just like they've been conditioned to do from years of desktop software? Not much of an improvement.

Push notification ads are text ads shown in the notification tray of Android™ devices. Unlike traditional mobile ads, these ads are not placed inside apps.

THE KEYWORD BEING --- unlike "TRADITIONAL" - meaning, handset users aren't used to it, which means it's intrusive. Now I'm really tired of talking about Airpush. It's like beating a dead horse talking about them. And to try and help everyone in here that uses Airpush is like leading a horse to water that won't drink. I can really only do this for so long.

"You either get it, or you don't."

I'll end this by saying one last thing. Push Notifications were designed for "Developers of android apps", not for you and I as the mobile affiliate marketer. That's pretty much the simplest reason to explain why it's such a pain in the ass for us. Of course, Airpush won't deny an "advertiser" like you and I, but understand something.

Living Social and Groupon deliver daily deals all the time to notification trays, Airpush was just EXTREMELY smart to bring this model to App Developers who wanted to generate revenue from PEOPLE NOT USING THEIR APP. To allow a revenue generating model OUTSIDE their app.

Now, if you're App is good, you have tons of downloads, people interacting, you're generating revenue. If you're app is shit, then what?

You either move on to create a better app

You try to short-cut the system with something provided to help you do that very thing.

Case closed on Airpush.

With that said, I'm going to open this up and spill what I know about both Airpush and Leadbolt. Both are extremely lucrative if you can tame them, so I'll do my best to help you do just that. Just don't harass me if you go to losing money. Enter at your own risk. One thing to note about both Airpush and LeadBolt. I am only specifically talking about their push notification advertising. Use any other types of advertising with them, you're on your own. Do it right with mobile sweepstakes campaigns and you most likely won't have to run any other campaigns for awhile.

However, you will face competition knowing this information. Against our internal operations team as well as selected publishers who get the same information contained in this guide that you did.

Now I'm also not here to teach you mobile marketing. Nor am I here to specifically teach you how to advertise on push notifications. If you pay any attention to what we write on the blogs and forums, then you should know how to do this already. Right? Right!

Take the bad with the good here. This is extremely dead simple. Was anyone around promoting ringtones back in the 06-08 days? Remember how lucrative it was? Even now they're still great to run on web based properties but with push notifications to cellphones, it's pretty much the wild west all over again.

So what you will need as an Airpush and Leadbolt account. That's if you want to get all the volume you can. If you're on a budget, do what you want here. I can tell you that if you do not put at least $1,000 in each of the accounts to fund your campaign, you are already at a severe disadvantage. That's because both of them calculate in your total budget of the campaign and give you volume based on that metric.

Remember this formula High CTR + Competitive CPC + High Balance = Happy Airpush and Leadbolt accounts. Oh, and you're dealing with our budget internally as well for volume. Here's what a push notification looks like on Android:

Push Notifications On iPhone: Here's what your Android Airpush Ads look like on the phone:

Here's what your SDK push notifications look like on Leadbolt:

Here's an FAQ From Airpush for all the ADHD Pubs. Pay attention to my tips. They are going to set you apart from everyone else. We've worked extensively with both Airpush and Leadbolt to acquire a lot of this information:

How is Airpush traffic priced? Airpush ads are priced by cost-per-click (CPC). Each push notification ad is an impression. You set a CPC bid and daily budget for your campaign.

What kind of offers can you promote? Airpush is ideal to promote several types of offers including the below. Guidelines for restrictions. ➔ • App Installs ➔ • Mobile Sites / Landing Pages ➔ • Local Deals & Coupons ➔ • Click-to-Call Campaigns ➔ • Branding Campaigns

What types of ad units are available? The ad unit is always displayed in the notification tray, however the post- click action can vary depending on the Campaign Type you choose within the advertiser portal. The current campaign types and associated post-click actions are as follows:

➔ • Airpush App: launches the Android™ Market app preloaded to a market URL you specify. ➔ • Mobile Site: launches the mobile browser preloaded to a URL you specify. ➔ • Click to Call: launches the phone's dialer preloaded with a phone number you specify. ➔ • Click to SMS: launches the phone's SMS composer with a phone number and body you specify.

Here's there tracking/analytics that are available. Please note – If you are using iMobiTrax, you won't even need this shit!

Airpush is the only mobile ad network which offers truly real-time statistics across a number of metrics. From your advertiser portal you can track the following key performance indicators (KPI) in real-time and over time: ➔ • Deliveries ('impression' equivalent) ➔ • Clicks ➔ • Conversions (you must install our conversion tracking code in your App or Mobile site) ➔ • CTR ➔ • CPA ➔ • Cost You can also examine all of the above KPI's across the following parameters:

➔ Campaign ➔ Creative ➔ Country ➔ Device ➔ OS ➔ Carrier

Tricks For Airpush & Leadbolt:

Keep budget above 1K in your account. Campaign volume is influenced by overall budget.

Airpush = Post-click. For Australia they send their daily push notifications out at 2:00-4:00 AM Central Standard Time. That I take it is primetime for Australia because it's from midnight to 6 am that we convert the best. Remember that for dayparting.

Clicks can be record up to a week after you start a campaign. Remember that if you have a low budget. Sometimes people don't click on their notifications right away. Don't run wifi traffic. Even if it's profitable for you, most advertiser's don't like it. We never run it actually. We always run network traffic.

What carrier works on what traffic source or what device. Personally, I like getting a higher ROI on a carrier than anything else because I don't give a shit. I don't get that granular. I'm in it for the big dollars, not the scraps.

If you're overall balance is high and budget is high, you'll get a lot of traffic which is what you want. Concentrate on a high CTR and you will master the traffic source. Split iphone/android campaigns up separately on Leadbolt. Now I'll just simply walk you through a campaign setup on Leadbolt. Step 1 is obviously login to your account.

Chapter 11. Tapit Campaign Setup Well I covered some tips on push advertising, so I'll cover another quick ad network setup. I don't want to go too much into setting up campaigns on mobile ad networks because they are constantly upgrading their platforms and changing shit. That part is up to you.

Look at the audience segments here: http://tapit.com/advertisers/targeting Then check out these Ad units by platform:

Real quick, there are easy to get started with and building your first campiagn is a breeze:

Step 1. Choose Create a Campaign from your Advertiser Dashboard or Navigation Bar.

Step 2. Define your Campaign Name, Budget and Type (CPC or CPM). Then choose the content category that your advertisement falls under, start and end dates and delivery method. Campaign Type: CPC means you will be charged for each click. CPM means you will be charged for each 1000 impressions served.

Daily Budget: The max amount of money you want to spend on your campaign each day. Minimum is $20.

Category: The content category that your ads fall under. This does not define which categories your campaign targets.

Start/End Date: Your campaign flight dates. By default it is set to start immediately with no end date.

Delivery: Evenly means your campaign will be served evenly over each 24 hour period based on your Daily Budget.

As Fast as Possible means that the server will try to deliver your campaign to reach its budget as fast as possible.

Step 3: Define your ad name, click action, destination URL or Phone Number and upload your creative. Rotate URL: If you want to split test multiple landing pages, simply choose "Yes" to be able to define multiple Destination URLs.

Destination URL: Enter in your destination URL here. Read our list of available macros to use.

Impression URL: Just leave blank unless you have an Impression URL. Ad Type: Banner and Tablet: standard banners and animated gifs. HTML/Javascript: third-party ad tags or rich media creatives. Text: plain text ads.

Step 4: Define Targeting and Bids. Choose your Geolocation targeting, handsets & platforms, carrier/wifi and environment (wap/app). Then choose the channels you want to target and define your bids. Geotargeting: Select the countries you want to target. To target specific Cities, click on "Target Specific Geographic Regions"

Targeting Platforms and Specific Devices. You can target specific Operating Systems and Versions, or Target specific handset brands and models: Carrier & Connection: Choose whether you want to target All traffic, Wifi traffic, or Carrier & Wifi traffic.

Environment: Choose whether you want to target All traffic, just Application traffic or just Mobile Website traffic.

Channels & Bids: Choose whether to run Run of Network, targeting all channels, or just specific Channels. Minimum bids start at 0.05 for CPC campaigns and 0.30 for CPM campaigns.

Now you might be asking yourself – How do I “track” these campaigns on push networks and mobile display networks Ruck?

My Answer: You already know how to do that because you read our mobile marketing guide and have iMobiTrax installed.

No, I didn't read it and I don't have iMobiTrax.

Me – What do you expect? I'm working with winners over here.

Leave me alone and go lose money, you'll come around sometime. Chapter 12. The Future

The future is quite simple for myself. As for you, that's on you from here on out. I've produced the Mobile Marketing Guide which is 189 pages of everything I know, learned and experienced this far in mobile marketing and now this 155 page whopper is the finishing touches to the other side of mobile advertising.

Together, that's 344 pages of everything I've learned, experienced and know. But, there's so much more. Mobile is in it's infancy. Are you working with the right people? Nobody has ever produce what I have for the mobile Industry, I doubt anyone really can. That's not boasting, I'm just putting it the way it is.

After I wrote the mobile marketing guide, I was flooded with new members at the IMGrind Private Forums. So much, we shut down public registrations. We only accept members who contact us directly and prove they are serious about working together with us in learning how to achieve financial independence online.

We were also flooded with over 600+ iMobiTrax clients using our mobile ad tracker and growing daily. On top of all that, we acquired over 400+ new mobile marketing affiliates and mobile ad networks because of the mobile marketing guide. Just imagine what I will get from this guide?

I strongly encourage you to work with us either over at the IMGrind Private forums if you need to learn more. Or over at Revived Media for mobile offers, mobile campaign giveaways and offer guides. Or at iMobiTrax to handle your mobile tracking needs.

If not, then I wish you success in whatever you do. - Ruck