The growth in number of smartphone users have opened up a new space in mobile advertising. With the curve rising upward, we can now see plethora of app advertising platforms cropping up to tap the potential. Ad networks offer full-fledged infrastructure for both publishers and advertisers to buy ad spots on mobile websites and apps. These mobile advertising networks are equipped with tons of exclusive features designed to serve advertisers and publishers a better and improved monetization experience.
Mobile Advertising Business Models:
Mobile ad networks provide several advertising models to run campaigns. Advertisers and publishers may choose one as per their business preferences. Here are the different advertising models these ad networks provide:
CPM (cost-per-mile):
In CPM model advertisers are charged with a cost when their ads are shown 1,000 times. Among the advertising models available, CMP is the most preferred model. It helps publishers to earn more income than other models since it generates money every time an ad was displayed. If a publisher manages to retain its traffic, the model allows forecasting revenue.
CPC (Cost per Click):
Unlike CPM, in CPC or cost-per-click model mobile app marketers advertisers are charged for each click on their mobile ads. Advertisers prefer this model over others as it allows them to make payment to publishers only if clicks happen. Since clicks show a user’s genuine interest in the offerings, the model brings more conversion to the advertisers.
CPI (Cost per Install):
You can say it a more specific version to cost per click advertising model. As the name suggest, the model deducts charges only when a user clicks on an ad and completes an ad install. For marketers who are very much into mobile apps marketing, the metric is quite important. It helps them to measure and keep track of total app installs and price to be paid to acquire customers.
CPA (Cost per action)
CPA or Cost-per-action is an extended version of CPI. This is a mobile advertising model where advertisers are charged when users take a specific action such as in-app sale, subscription, form submit or sign ups etc. These are the actions taken by users inside an app. Among these advertising models, CPA provides more business opportunities to both publishers and advertisers.
CPV (Cost per view)
As the name implies, this advertising model is mostly preferred by mobile ad networks for video ad campaigns. In cost per view model, advertisers pay for videos mobile ad views. With the growing number of audience seen engaged in all kind of video watching across video platforms, cost per view model is getting popular at scale.
Different Kind of Mobile AD Formats:
After looking into different types of mobile app advertising business models, now let’s understand several mobile ad formats used by major mobile ad platforms. Be clear about one thing that different mobile ads differ in the way they or function. Notably, mobile ads may be of different shapes and sizes and allow extended functionalities.
Here is a quick look on different types of mobile ads and what they look like.
Interstitial ads:
These are interactive ads that go full screen and cover the interface of their host app or site. Interstitial ads can be seen appearing between content. The format is most often used to display ads between different app screens.
Banner Ads:
Banner ads are static or animated image based ads. These ads are ideally placed inside a mobile app’s interface. These mobile advertising ads are useful for running third party services and products. Banner ads are meant to advertise or promote a brand or getting visitors from a website to the advertiser’s online place.
Native ads:
Next in the list of different ad types are native ads. The ad can be an image text or video text. The uniqueness of these ads is that they can adopt the form and function of the app interface it’s displayed in. The idea behind native ads is to make an app’s interface less intrusive.
Video ads:
Video ads are short and crisp ads of up-to 60 seconds for advertising advertisers’ products and services. This mobile ad format is popular with the advertisers interested in running their ads within media apps.
Video ads are of two types namely in-stream and out-stream. In-stream video ads appear before, after and within video content full screen inside an app. However, out-stream video ads can be seen displaying on a web page inside a mobile app.
What is Mobile Ad Reporting?
Mobile ad reporting is a mechanism adopted by mobile marketers to measure and track campaign performance. This is an integral component of any mobile campaign. Mobile ad networks collect this information and pass it to advertisers. The report contains crucial data about ads performance such as number of impressions, clicks, installs and video ad views etc.
Tarun Gupta, CEO of Brainpulse Technologies, is a prolific author and digital marketing specialist. His insightful writings span SEO, content marketing, social media strategy, and email campaigns, offering invaluable expertise to businesses worldwide. Tarun’s contributions continue to shape the digital marketing landscape, guiding success in multiple niches.
