What is the best mobile advertising network to use if you’re a developer, mobile publisher or advertiser? It`s quite a difficult and misleading question. This market is very fragment: there are more than a dozen mobile ad networks and there is still no dominant add network. No one really knows which ad networks are the biggest: figures on which networks offer advertisers the most reach, and publishers the most revenue, are not always reliable or indeed available.
So when looking for an ad network the best way is to look at the differentiators and assess what network better suits your requirements, target market, geography and budget. Hope this article will help you to find your OWN best ad network.
AdMob
This ad network was launched back in 2006, and was acquired by Google in 2009. Right now it is considered to be one of the best ad networks. It`s easy integrated into the app, publishers can manage the ads through the tools provided by Admob, the ads are very much targeted. However, the fill rate and eCPM of AdMob is comparatively less than some of the other competitors like AirPush.
AirPush
Airpush, a mobile ad network that deals exclusively with Google’s little green robot. It has a lot of developer support and revenue generation assurance. Airpush claims to have 10x to 30x revenue than any other android mobile advertiser thanks to the ‘push ad notification’ feature they have integrated to their system. As usually only about 5-15% of the applications are used actively in a device, push ad notifications allows you to push ads to the user screen even while your app is inactive. However there is one great drawback of the system: users may remove the applications because of the push ad notification system. There is an option for a user to opt-out of push ad notification (at www.airpush.com/optout), but very few people know about it.
Greystripe
Greystipe is a mobile video advertising platform. Mobile video ads are still very much in their infancy, but with 38% better completion rate than desktop-bound online video ads (according to eMarketer), these ads have high hopes in the coming days. They’ve already gathered several awards in ‘emerging technologies’ category and continue to grow with publishers and advertisers. Greystripe now boasts that it`s the market leader in terms of full screen rich media ads, with a 75% share of the market, delivering big name brand campaigns from the likes of Sony, Burger King and HP.
LeadBolt
LeadBolt focuses on using the entire App Usage Cycle for monetization. Developers and publishers can get money from the installation time till the app is un-installed: LeadBolt has around 8 format of advertisements for each scenario of the app usage. Even when the app is not actively used, notification ads can be shown to the user. However the app should be designed in an appropriate way for showing the ads. Also it provides tools that show all the analytics and reporting of the ads being displayed and converting to earnings.
InMobi
InMobi is a mobile advertising company that hold good positions in the market. They’ve got over 93.4 billion ad impressions monthly from 485 million consumers. Their advertising network has reached over 165 countries also. Having such huge network, it`s good place for monetizing the app. Sound really good, but as usually there is a fly in the ointment: initially it’s difficult to get accepted in their ad program network
Tapjoy
Tapjoy is another really interesting player in the mobile monetisation space and offers a totally different model to the incumbent mobile ad networks. TapJoy gives the developers a chance to both market their apps and at the same time monetize them to make money. For example, a user playing a game and wanting to buy an extra level or unlock new features can download an app as an alternative way of payment. Although these so called “incentivised downloads” or “offer walls” have recently been banned by Apple, they are still very much growing and operating on Android. Interesting fact is that Tapjoy has just raised a big round of funding so we can expect a lot more innovation and new models linking mobile advertising and virtual goods from them going forward.
Certainly these is not the full list, just some examples of good and interesting android ad advertizing networks. This is quite a young sphere and it’s going to increase in popularity and many different players in the mobile advertising ecosystem are going to appear. What ad network would you like to add to the list and why? It’s interesting to know your thoughts.
Anna Kozik
Business Development Manager
