Mobile Advertising and the Recession – Part 1

So how has mobile advertising affected during the times of a tough global recession?. Here are a few of our thoughts in Part 1 of 2 posts.

a) Mobile advertising is actually seeing more deals - This is simply because more and more mainstream advertisers globally are betting on newer media (like mobile) to enhance the effectiveness of their campaigns and reduce costs

b) Global Mobile Traffic has only been growing - There has been no significant change in user behavior or traffic patterns due to mobile advertising except for a few positive signs like smart phone traffic in the past few months. iPhone, iPod etc have been contributing to more mobile traffic thanks to their ease of use in select markets.

c) Some ad networks have reduced their bid prices - While we at ZestADZ have not reduced the prices, some dominant players have reduced the bid prices of key mobile ad markets around the world.

d) Recession has begun pinching unsustainable deals - There are several ad networks that are now feeling the pinch of signing up CPM deals with publishers which are now languishing without enough ad inventory or inventory that is generating negative gross margins. This is an important lesson to learn in any industry which is in its early days – you can’t buy your way through.

To be continued…

New Feature: XML Reports For Publishers [Edited]

Edited – the domain for xml reports has been changed to http://reports.zestadz.com

We would like to announce that we have XML reports for publishers. With this feature, publishers will be able to extract an XML Feed of their daily reports for each Site  / App within ZestADZ.

To Start using XML Reports, Logon to ZestADZ, go to the publisher reports section and choose XML Reports.

This will open a new window with a request that enables you to extract XML reports for your Sites or Apps, on a daily basis. The request has the following structure

http://reports.zestadz.com/publisher_reports/xml_reports?key=key_value&cid=cid_value&report_date=09-mar-2009

The XML reports request consists of 3 parameters

Key: It’s a unique value and should not be changed. If any changes are made, the request cannot be completed.

Client_id: This is the site id for Site & App. This Id can be changed to get XML reports for a different Site & App.

Date: The date can be changed to generate the XML reports for the required date.

For Eg, to get the XML feeds for January 20, 2009, the above mentioned URL has to be modified as follows. I.e. in the URL the date has to be modified (Date format – DD-MMM-YYYY). The resultant response will be as follows

<sites>
<site id=”A12345678901234567890″>
<site_name> Demo </site_name>
<type> WAP </type>
<report_date>09-Mar-2009</report_date>
<impressions>100000</impressions>
<clicks>1000</clicks>
<revenue>$50</revenue>
<ctr>1%</ctr>
<ecpm>$0.5</ecpm>
</site>
</sites>

A sample request looks like this..

http://www.zestadz.com/publisher_reports/xml_reports?key=14131C047A504140415A4A5D4657475CDDC8779A1726FCE54DDBB9C9EF0D0F4FB6EFE8&cid=14131C047A504140415A4A5D4657475E8B8A24&Date=20-01-2009

We believe that this feature will be immensely useful for our publishers. Please do review it and send us your feedback to feedback [at] zestadz.com

Site Install Code Changes

We have upgraded our Site Install Code to support several minor enhancements in the new release. The Site Install Code is available in your console after you login. All publishers must upgrade their Site Install Code to take advantage of the better performance of ZestADZ ad delivery.

 

Backward compatibility note: Those publishers who have not yet upgrade their site install code might get “NO ADS TO DISPLAY” error.

 

Getting the Code

 

‘Login’ to your account, Click on ‘Sites & Apps’ -> Select the ‘Site Install code’ which is appropriate for your Site/App. Select the code according to your  technology, copy the same and paste on your site to display the ads. Static HTML is for those sites which do not support a server side technology. 

 

 Site Install Code Screen

Email Alerts from ZestADZ

Email alerts is a nifty new feature that is available in the new release of ZestADZ. It enables the delivery of daily email alerts for both advertisers and publishers either reminding them of important events or sending them daily status reports.  Access Email Alerts at My Accounts -> Email Alerts.

The key alerts that are available are

Advertiser – Daily Budget Notification: This alert informs the advertiser if the daily budget has been exhausted so that the advertiser can increase the budget if required. This email is only sent when campaigns are running and the daily budget has been exhausted.

Advertiser – Daily Campaign Reports: The daily campaign reports for all the campaigns that you are currently running will be generated as a CSV attachment and sent to you as an email on a daily basis.This daily report contains the details of Impressions, Clicks, CTR and the total amount spent.

Publisher – Available ADs summary: This alert lists the ADs available to be published in your account. If your site was having an “Manual Approval” of ads, you might have to log on to ZestADZ to manually approve these ADs for publishing them on your site. This alert is sent once as an email on a daily basis.

Publisher – Daily Site / App Earnings Report: This alert sends a summary of all your earnings for your site or app everyday as a CSV attachment as an email on a daily basis. This daily reports summary contains the details of Impressions, Clicks, CTR, eCPM and earnings.

Balance Notification
Since this is an important alert, we decided to separate this out from the other email alerts. Access Balance notification at Campaigns->Balance Notification. The advertiser receive an email notification, if the balance amount falls below the minimum amount set.   With this alert, the advertiser will get ample time to replenish the funds before it is exhausted.

Send us your feedback to feedback [at] zestadz.com

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Blog By The Engineering Team
ZestADZ
www.zestadz.com

Press Release: ZestADZ Expands its Global Reach

CHENNAI, India & LOS ANGELES – ZestADZ (www.ZestADZ.com) a leading performance based mobile advertising network today announced that it has started expanding its mobile advertising network to mobile advertisers and publishers in US, Europe, South Africa and in Indonesia. ZestADZ initially was focused at the Asian market. After more than a year of significant growth in the region and after having completed several mobile marketing campaigns for marquee advertisers, the company has begun expanding into these larger markets. In last few months, the company has already acquired traffic and started servicing advertisers in these regions.

Read the full press release at businesswire.com.

Feature Review – Ad Control for Publishers

In our last blog entry, we had written about new features and upgrades available as a part of the upgraded version of ZestADZ. Based on suggestions received, we have chosen to elaborate on how to use one of the new features – AD Control for Publishers.

AD Approval Policies

One thing which is on the top of the wish list for any publisher is complete control – control over the ads that he serves on his site/app. We have now added this feature to ZestADZ. Given below is a run-through on the use of this feature…

Once a publisher registers and creates his site on ZestADZ, it is taken through an approval process. Although the user can start publishing ads by choosing “Auto approval” mode for ads, they won’t be able to see the ADs in the AD control tool. This is an important option that a publisher has to decide [can be changed later] while registering the site with ZestADZ.

Approval modes

Through the review, if a site has been reviwed and if no objectionable content is found, the Site is approved in about 24 hours. A site that has been “Approved” by the administrator will enable the review of ADs by the publisher in the AD control console. The publisher can then choose to approve or reject ADs based on the creatives that are shown there.

Picture: AD Control Screen with a Site that has not been approved yet.

If you do not want to wait for the Site Approval to start publishing the ADs, choose “Auto Approval” mode so that you can start publishing ADs rightaway but don’t mind the fact that you will not be able to review and reject the ADs.

Filtering ADs in the Auto Approval Mode

Using this feature, all the active ads are automatically allotted to your network unless you chose to explicitly reject the ads.

Choose the ads, you wish to reject, by selecting the ads and clicking on the ‘Reject’ button, in which case they are removed from your site/app.

Picture: Sample AD list screen in the AD Control Tool

Manual Approval Mode

In the manual approval mode, the publisher site will display ADs which have been approved by the publisher. If you have chosen manual approval, please ensure that you have approved ADs to display otherwise your inventory will remain unutilized. Reject ADs which are not suitable for your content.

Email Alerts

For your convenience, we have also added daily email alerts which will send out those list of ADs automatically approved or available for approval for your sites for you to be able to review and decide on a daily basis.

We believe that this feature can be extremely useful for publishers who want to have better control over the ADs. Remember, the ADs you choose influence your earnings, so make sure that you do what is right for your traffic. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact support [at] ZestADZ dot com

ZestADZ – Upgrade Announcement

We would like to announce the rollout of a major upgrade of ZestADZ (v 1.5). This version contains major functionality and feature enhancements built with feedback from our partners – advertisers and publishers. Access the updated version of  ZestADZ (1.5 ) at http://beta.zestadz.com

Listed below is what you can expect of the new and upgraded version of ZestADZ.

Publisher Upgrades

• Simpler, Better Interface. Easier Integration – Sites/Apps can now be integrated easily through a single copy/paste of the API. There is no need to modify and site ids, as it is taken care of by the platform itself.
  
• The USD ($) has been adopted as a standard currency and all billing and reports would be available in the same, which means, that publishers across the globe can expect their payments and other transactions in USD.
  
• The much awaited ad approval tool is now in place, and publishers can approve/reject ads that they want to serve on their apps/sites.
  
• Better AD Delivery Performance.
  
• Earnings can be transferred in a single click to generate funds for advertising on the ZestADZ ad network.
  
• Our system ensures that publishers receive notification emails during most important events.
• Unified account for advertisers and publishers.
  

Advertiser Upgrades

• Simplified user interface, easier campaign creation.
  
• The USD ($) has been adopted as a standard currency
  
• Channel wise targeting and bidding replaces demographic targeting. You can bid in over 25 different channels individually.
  
• Our system ensures that advertisers receive notification emails on every important issue, such as account balance notification etc.

Advertisers and publishers will receive email communication about the migration of their existing accounts. The transition process will be completed in the next few days. We hope for a better and much more satisfied user experience form our partners, and any feedback / suggestions are welcome at support [at] zestadz.com

Presentation: Better Monetization of Mobile Sites

Better Monetization of Mobile Sites – our previous entry has been very popular, so we decided to make a presentation and publish it on slideshare and here..

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Blog by ZestADZ Publisher Team

publisher[at] zestadz.com

www.zestadz.com

Follow us on twitter

We’re now available on twitter at http://twitter.com/zestadz

Follow us for quick updates related to mobile advertising, ZestADZ and all related topics.

Strategies for Successful Mobile Advertising Campaigns & Self Service vs Managed Mobile Campaigns

We have posted a great new presentation which talks about successful mobile advertising campaign strategies and the pros and cons of managed campaigns.

Here it goes.. Hope you enjoy it.

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Blog by ZestADZ Campaign Management Team

advertiser [at] zestadz.com

www.zestadz.com