Everyday more and more people are turning to their smartphones as a source of news, entertainment, online shopping and what not. Having recognized the pattern, businesses have followed suit and are focusing their marketing energy onto capturing their audience on the move.
At LeadSquared, we have experienced this enthusiasm firsthand while working for a client in the education sector who had a decent Facebook following and an active Facebook page. Their target audience is students in the age group of 13 – 16, and it was amazing to see the number of comments and responses that came in through Facebook mobile advertising. This makes mobile advertising an indispensable part of any marketing campaign.
In my earlier post, I have given a detailed insight into Advertising on Mobile for B2C companies. I have discussed about the key benefits, various types and measuring metrics for mobile advertising. Here, I will discuss about the Top 7 Mobile Advertising Platforms for B2C Companies.
Mobile Advertising platforms help marketers enhance lead generation, boost sales & brand management and finally drive conversion rates through the ads that they place on mobile websites/apps. Here are the Top mobile advertising platforms according to Alexa rankings that I will discuss about in this article:
Lets begin the proceedings.
I. Millenial Media
Millennial Media is the leading independent mobile advertising platform which provides technology, tools and services in assisting advertisers to place ads in mobile devices. This helps them maximize their ad revenue, generate more leads and get useful user insights. Here are the various ways in which marketers can use the services of Millenial Media to engage users.
How can a marketer tap its potential?
Reach Target specific audience: Mobile phones are with users at all times and is a great way for marketers to reach their audience anytime, anywhere. With Millennial Media’s Audience Targeting solutions and MYDAS technology, you can connect with the right customer, in the right place, at the right time and deliver your ads.
Here is how the technology works:
The right kind of advertising is when you can deliver the right message at the right time to the right person. The audience is targeted using their MYDAS technology. This technology is an engines that powers a full suite of mobile advertising tools and solutions for developers and advertisers.
So, every time an ad call is made, through real-time optimization and data decision making, MYDAS refines the database off unwanted contact details and aggregates the best details. These names become the actionable audience profile. This targeting is undertaken based on key behavior, location and content trends.
Example: You will not send an ad for online training modules to anyone with a mobile phone, right? You will have a target group in mind. Hence, this is where Millennial Media’s targeting comes into picture. MYDAS technology cleans up the database based on the kind of age, demography, location etc details that you, the advertiser has selected and ads are delivered to the specific set of mobile audience. Targeting helps marketers determine…
a. if there is enough need for their product/service in the market
b. tailor their business practices or product/service features to suit the needs of the potential customer base
c. reach the most promising prospects of the lot only
Get useful insights: Millennial Media provides monthly mobile advertising reports to advertisers, developers and industry watchers to help them make smart business moves about their mobile ad campaigns and monetize them better. You can try either
a. Scorecard for Mobile Advertising Reach and Targeting, S.MA.R.T report which provides the latest targeting trends & other mobile advertising insights and analysis.
b. Mobile Mix report providing the latest trends on connected devices, mobile manufacturers and operating systems.
c. Millennial Monthly reports giving the latest happenings across the Millennial platform.
Get Comprehensive Ad solutions: Services at Millennial Media provide effective and comprehensive mobile advertising solutions to advertisers. Learn more about their advertising solutions.
Handle your own campaigns: If you do not want Millennial Media to handle your ad campaign, you can manage them on your own with mMedia‘s services. mMedia is an app monetization platform.
Target with Videos: Video ads combine rich media with key messaging and leave an impact on the user and engages him/her. Here are Millennial Media’s Mobile Video Advertising Solutions.
Note: All their services are paid and you need to get in touch with them to get price quotes.
II. LeadBolt
LeadBolt is another such leading mobile advertising platform to help B2C companies provide mobile ads to users and monetize their apps. They provide a range of traditional and advanced ad formats to help advertisers and developers to effectively connect with their audience.
How can a marketer tap its potential?
Ad discovery & lead generation: LeadBolt gets millions of impressions daily, which lets your mobile ads get in front of a large and engaged audience. For search engine websites like JustDial, Sulekha, YellowPages or Hot Frog which have their own mobile applications; once a mobile user downloads the company app, this automatically leads to growth in the user base. Here are the various ways in which LeadBolt engages the audience.
Interstitials Ads: Interstitial ads are full page mobile ads that appear to a user when they are being led to another page, mostly their destination page.
Example: When you click on this website link, you will be taken to the Google search page. But, before that, you will be fed with an Interstitial ad. You have to wait for a few seconds (may range from 5 second to 10 seconds) before you can skip the ad or press enter to go to the destination website.
Capture Forms to generate leads: Data capture forms compel viewers to complete surveys or questionnaires. Capture forms become a core aspect for lead generation, because, as a marketer, you also get to keep the database with yourself which allow you to get in touch with the people who have filled the forms. These people become your potential clients.
Targeted Mobile Advertising: LeadBolt has a range of advanced ad units to help advertisers target and engage specific mobile users. You can choose from RTB (Real Time Bidding), CPI (Cost Per Install) or CPE (Cost Per Engagement) ad solutions.
Let me explain you how RTB, CPI and CPE mobile advertising work through examples:
RTB: A student is surfing through the mobile internet for online material on Physics when he lands on a publisher’s page. The publisher immediately sends a ‘bid request’ stating the details of the mobile user, “there is this user, male, aged 13-16, searching for online material on Physics. How much are you willing to bid to be the only ad on this page?”. Within seconds, the publisher gets bids from various advertisers. Analysis is done and the highest bidder gets the ad space and places his ad the same moment. Its an extremely fast process and is repeated for every ad slot on a page. In this example, I have spoken only about online coaching. However, the same can hold for physical locations of coaching centers and institutions.
CPI: This is also known as pay-per-install. Lets say, an advertiser places an ad on mobile phones for material on Physics and he needs downloads for that (it may be an app, ebook, mobile pages etc). For material on education, it will not be feasible for him to place the ad on a website for clothes, right? So, he finds a publisher whose site is related to education and he gets to place his ad. Now, each time a student/mobile user clicks on that ad (regardless of whether he is actually downloading/viewing the stuff), the advertisers has to pay the publisher a fixed amount of money which has been pre-decided.
CPE: Cost per engagement is important for a businessman because when he is paying for ad ad, he will want it to matter – his ad be seen (for no matter how long) and their brand awareness to grow. An advertiser pays money to a publisher only when the user engages with the ad. An example of this will be when students take a survey, tweet about a particular link about the brand, watch a video/tutorial till the end or fill up a form with certain details that the advertisers desires. If the target audience engages, only then payment is made, otherwise not.
Note: All their services are paid; they have no free plans. You can visit their website for further details.
III. Adfonic:
With more than 2,500 campaigns per month, advertisers and agencies benefit from over 300 billion monthly impressions. Adfonic’s mobile advertising platform enables advertisers to bid for display advertising space on mobile sites and applications.
How can a marketer tap its potential?
Bid for Ad Space real time: You want to see how your campaigns are performing and whatever you bid, you are getting the most competitive price, don’t you? Adfonic’s Madison DSP (Demand Side Platforms) helps you do just that. DSP is an online advertising platform that makes it easy for an advertiser to buy and sell online display advertising on multiple ad exchanges.
Example: E-commerce website like eBay, Jabong or Amazon:
a. Let’s say, a user is checking out shoes on an online website.
b. He likes a pair and puts it in his online shopping cart.
c. He gets a call and gets distracted stalling the process of purchase.
d. This is where DSP helps you recognize the potential customer. As an advertiser, you know that the user has shown willingness to buy a particular pair of shoes.
e. You then start showing similar ads on the websites that your user browses through.
f. Using DSPs, advertisers can purchase ad space on mobile websites using real time bidding (discussed below).
Real time Bidding: Real time bidding or RTB allows advertisers to bid on ad impressions as they are served rather than reserving prepaid ad space. The highest bidder gets the impression and has the right to show his ad the moment a user installs an app on his mobile.
Example: Stock Exchange. As stocks (in this case online advertising space), comes up for sale, brokers (in this case advertisers), bid for the particular stock. Whoever bids the highest price gets that stock and like in this case, the ad is served to the mobile user. Then the process immediately starts all over again for another ad.
Rich Media Advertising: Advertising on Adfonic means rich media formats that turn boring ads into active brand engagement and mobile videos that lets your brand burst into life. Here are their various advertising options.
Track your conversions real time: Measure your return on investment with real-time, post-click conversion reports. These track the number of app installations or actions. Here is a list of their various conversion tracking tools.
Enhanced features: Advanced targeting, various Ad formats, Calls to action and ad models…here is a list of and details of their various enhanced features.
Here is a list of their FAQs.
IV. Smaato
Smaato is a mobile advertising platform that provides ads for apps only. It also operates the leading RTB ad exchange and mobile advertising optimization platform called SOMA. They have a free account that gives you access to a highly functional automated self-service portal. More than 70,000 app developers and publishers use Smaato to monetize their content in 230 countries.
How can a marketer tap its potential?
Generate more traffic to your app: Samaato provides app developers for five different mobile operating systems (Apple, Android, BlackBerry, Bada, and Symbian) the ability to integrate adverts from over 90 different ad networks and 100 DSPs into their applications or games. Mobile DSPs are the platforms that allow advertisers to buy ad space across mobile websites with RTB or real time bidding. This gives small developers a transparent and cost-effective way to acquire loyal users and allows advertisers to generate more traffic to their ads on mobile websites. (I have already discussed earlier how RTB functions with the help of an example).
Connect with 70k+ developers: Their mobile ad optimization platform gives advertisers access to Real time bidding inventory of 70,000+ mobile publishers globally. This state of the art RTB ad exchange ensures that advertisers have efficient access to high-quality ad space of leading mobile app developers and publishers.
Range of advertising solutions: As mentioned above, Smaato provides a range of advertising solutions for app developers. This gives advertisers a wider audience that could potentially convert into clients. Here is a list of their advertising solutions.
Here is Smaato’s list of FAQs. For further queries, do visit their website.
V. Mojiva
Their mantra is to ‘Breathe life into your mobile strategy’ and their name is the breakup of mobile + jiva, which in Sanskrit means ‘life’ or ‘to breathe’. Mojiva is a premium mobile advertising platform for ads on smartphones and tablet devices.
How can a marketer tap its potential?
Cutting edge ad solutions: They develop unique mobile advertising campaigns and monetization strategies for agencies, brand advertisers and publishers from around the world. Their advertisements run on tablets, mobile sites and apps.
Relevant targeting: Mojiva visits your mobile website and analyzes and identifies relevant, targeted keywords. They are then matched against the ads that advertisers want to place. The ads are devised in such a way on the mobile sites that they compliment the content. This ensures that the audience value not the content but the content in the ad as well. Intricate targeting options allow advertisers to show ads on your mobile pages based on visitor’s location (Geo targeting), mobile device characteristics (type of phone and Operating System), time and source channel (blog, forum, social network) etc.
Free Account: Setting up for an account with Mojiva is entirely free and Mojiva pays publishers for clicks delivered from the ads that are published on mobile pages.
Keeping check on fraudulent behavior: Your ad content is safe with Mojiva. Artificially generating impressions/clicks on the platform is strictly prohibited and they rigorously monitor every action on the ads to prevent any kind of abuse.
The Only Tablet Ad option: After reaching 1+ billion mark, they launched Mojiva Tab. This is the industry’s first tablet-only mobile advertising platform. Advertisers and agencies will be able to engage the highly lucrative tablet audience demographic only if they are willing to.
Here is a list of their FAQs.
VI. InMobi
InMobi is one of the largest independent mobile advertising platforms functioning out of India and reaching 600 million mobile customers across 165 countries. Their in-house team helps clients (advertisers,marketers, app developers) pinpoint the consumers they’re hoping to target.
How can a marketer tap its potential?
Lead generation through intricate targeting: With InMobi, B2C companies can target their consumers by very specific details like exact location using InMobi’s geo-location, the kind of lifestyle the users lead, demographics based on gender and age, their careers and even the kind of mobile phones they use. These days when mobile web pages are loaded with cookies and unwanted ads, targeting users gives an edge over others for better lead generation. Because, the advertiser specifically knows which target group his/her users belong to, their ads/apps are more likely to be viewed/downloaded. You can get further targeting details here.
Schedule your Ads: With their Ad scheduling option, you can deliver your ads on specific days at specific times. This will make your work simple especially if you are a start-up and have too many things going on in your head.
CPC revenue model: InMobi uses a CPC revenue (discussed earlier with example) model for their ads. Advertisers/marketers and app publishers pay only when someone clicks on their ads or downloads their apps/engages with them online. Marketing companies use InMobi’s mobile advertising platform to create various ad formats for their products and apps. Choose from any of these ad formats.
Track your conversions easily: InMobi’s Ad Tracker helps you achieve the best return on your ad investment by keeping track of conversions accurately across multiple ad networks and that too real time. Marketers can track any mobile conversion – app downloads, lead generation or sales across all mobile marketing channels through a single interface.
VII. JumpTap
Jumptap is the leader in targeted mobile advertising. Jumptap reaches over 439 million mobile across the world and built an audience profile of 100 million unique, data-rich profiles.
How can a marketer tap its potential?
Robust ad solutions for better lead generation: Jumptap has an extensive targeting technology which makes it the only mobile ad platform that provides intelligent targeting at scale. Here are the various ways in which this mobile advertising platform reaches increases your mobile ad audience. Find and engage the most receptive customers on any mobile device, including iPads and other tablets to achieve the highest ROI.
Earn money: If you are an app developer, earn money easily by displaying ads in your application. You can also place advertisements within your ads to expand your mobile audience. Here are the various ways in which it is done.
So which mobile advertising platforms will you use for your business? Do share by leaving me a comment.
