ZestADZ – Mobile Advertising Blog

Qeep – a fast growing mobile community based in Germany and operating globally, especially in key markets like South Africa, US, India etc today signed an exclusive deal with ZestADZ to monetize their mobile inventory.

Qeep was named amongst the top 20 downloaded apps from the getjar app store in July 2009 – http://www.intomobile.com/2009/08/17/top-20-mobile-apps-from-getjar.html

Qeep and ZestADZ have been working together for the past year and our efforts in better results in monetizing their mobile app inventory has lead to this partnership.

Read the press release here – http://www.gomonews.com/qeep-partners-with-zestadz-for-mobile-advertising-signs-an-exclusive-deal-with-zestadz/

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

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..

______

Blog by ZestADZ Publisher Team

publisher[at] zestadz.com

www.zestadz.com

Mobile ad publishing is not something uncommon these days as advertising is becoming the mainstream revenue model for mobile apps and sites. A simple Google on ‘mobile monetization’ or ‘mobile publishing’ throws up thousands of links, proof enough, to show us the huge market and growth of this business area. I just thought, this would be the right time to share some information and tips on the ‘how to’ of better monetization.

Earning Better Revenues

Almost every publisher we talk to is only concerned about learning how to improve earnings per thousand impressions (eCPM) and better revenues. In this blog, we will try to cover this topic and offer you meaningful suggestions as to how you can increase eCPM and subsequently revenues.

Here are some of those suggestions and tips

#1: Ad Placement Matters. Placement of ads on top of the mobile page, below the logo is always recommended. Certain studies have shown that if the ad is placed just above the bottom end of the screen, it also has a significantly higher impact for clicks. Provide some free space around the ads, to improve visibility of the ad.

#2: Sponsored Ads Page. Multiple ads in a single page could be used as a way to redirect traffic to the ads. Please be mindful of not misleading the user. They must know that they’re going to a sponsored links page or as a link to other mobile sites.

#3: Ensure that the ad is well targeted. This is mostly the function of the ad network but good targeting can do wonders for better revenues.  For example, an ad for a great free iPhone app on a mobile site that is being browsed through an iPhone will have a better chances of a click through.

Device targeting, keyword targeting, etc are all important. Pass the right keywords to get better targeted ads.

#4: Filter unwanted or low performance/paying ads. If your ad network gives you a choice, filter out non-performing ads or ads that have extremely low CPCs. An ad which has the same creative for a very long time or is irrelevant to your site, they must go.

Also – those ads whose landing pages don’t open up fast must also be avoided.

#5: The Utopian scenario is to ensure that you have a good supply of ads. However we know that this may not always be possible. But, low inventory can reduce your CTR and your revenues.

#6: Forget the CPM guarantees. Try out different networks and work with anyone who is willing to listen to you and optimize their inventory for you. Often at times, we have seen that optimized inventory delivers much better performance and earnings are more than what you might think that you may get. So work closely with ad networks to see better results.

#7: Avoid using irrelevant keywords or misleading keywords while displaying ad Example – If a user clicks on the static html link “Free Hot videos” which redirects to a  social networking site, it would result in a bad click which no one benefits. Remember advertisers are willing to commit good money for quality inventory and not just for large number of clicks.

#8: Ensure that the ads are optimized for the end user phones. This is normally a function of the ad networks. But it is very important to keep a close watch on this issue

#9:  Do not add any unnecessary additional delays for the ad clicks or ad retrieval. Many companies tend to add unnecessary third party code or tools to monitor clicks and impressions. Well here are our comments on that

• the ad network may not give you any extra revenue, than what it shows on the reports. This is irrespective of what shows up on your console.
• due to network delays etc, there might be a difference in the actual number of clicks and impressions that you have recorded vs what they have recorded.
• adding an additional overload will slow down the page and slow down click throughs.

#7: Re-iterating a previous point, work with an ad network that wants to work closely with you. Many large ad networks want to go the google way of having no communication points. They don’t want to hear you and they won’t write to you even if you have issues. We always suggest in that case work with an ad network who is willing to hear from you and work closely with you to optimize the monetization of ad inventory.

If you have any comments or feedback, write to us @ publisher [at] zestadz.com

______

Blog by ZestADZ Publisher Team

publisher [at] zestadz.com

www.zestadz.com

The last time we published a list of bad practices in the mobile advertising industry, it caused quite a flutter. The resulting consequences were bad for some companies indulging in such practices. Although, we won’t like to go into those details, here’s a round up of the Top 5 Mobile Advertising Bad Practices in 20o8.

#1 – Misleading (mostly porn) ads leading to unnecessary clicks

This is number one bad practice in mobile advertising still dominant amongst most players. Networks create a dummy porn Ad link which takes them to another page which contains several set of other actual ads. To add salt to the injury, these ads were put on adult inventory.

This practice stopped briefly after we posted the last blog entry but it has made a resurgent come back with a few smaller ad network players.

Here’s the AD screenshot taken just 3 days back.

Here’s what a user actually see’s when he clicks the ad

What is surprising is though most networks stopped this practice, several newer networks have adopted it including copying the exact ad text creative.

#2 – Advertisers getting charged for fraud clicks?

Although we’re not sure of this, there is a strong possibility that this could be happening because we’ve seen that several advertisers get very high CPA charges on a few networks. Though fraud clicks may not be the exact reason, but it could be one of them. Most advertisers don’t tend to use detailed tools to analyze their campaigns and therefore mobile ad networks can take advantage of them if they want to.  This highlights the importance of having detailed advertiser analytics – something that we will cover in another blog.

#3 – Taking user clicks directly to those pages which charge the user

Several forums were abuzz this year about another India based advertising network directly routing the users clicks to a page where they are billed for. When a user clicked on ads, content was downloaded (without the users’s permission), the money was deduced from his phone balance and a ‘thank you’ message was sent to (mock) the user! This is a classic case of misusing mobile advertising. The responsible advertiser or ad network must understand that such an event undermines the effectiveness of the medium and can have long term consequences. It is also the duty of advertising networks to check and advise an advertiser against it if he has put such a URL willingly or by mistake.

# 4- Auto Redirection to Landing Page

Another bad practice, this one by mobile publishers has come to my notice is auto redirecting the end user to an advertiser’s landing page. Recently when I was talking with a wap site publisher, he told me about this feature, some of his partner sites were using, wherein the site has a no. of ad links and if the user does not click on any of the links within a time frame, the publisher automatically takes the user to any 1 of the landing pages of the advertiser. I am not sure if such a thing is possible but if it is possible, then again advertisers and users are being taken for a ride.

#5 – Expired Ads

Some large players in the mobile ad business end up showing ads which have already expired but display “Nothing to show” when clicked. We’re not sure what is the reason why this is happening – it could be that the ads have already expired but not removed from some temp cache or it could be to create a false impression that there is inventory available where as it is not available.  This misleads publishers and leads users to a dead end.

Time to update the Mobile Marketing Association Code of Conduct?

I think it is high time that MMA take notice of such bad practices, updates its Code of Conduct, and inform all stakeholders in this ecosystem to avoid such practices.

Players in the mobile advertising ecosystem must behave responsibly otherwise the medium will loose its credibility with advertisers. Given the tough economic climate and recession in several countries, advertisers might start expecting the rates to be further commoditised or might just stop using this medium until credibility is re-established.
Publisher Team

http://www.zestadz.com

There have been several upgrades done to ZestADZ in the past few weeks. These upgrades enhance the overall user experience of both advertisers and publishers and add several new features to the existing platform. These include…

Upgrades for advertisers

· Bidding module – You can now bid for your campaigns. ZestADZ will auto generate a minimum bid and you can bid at the same or higher price than the minimum bid. A Better bid will ensure better placement of your ads.

· Simplified Reporting UI – To utmost advertiser satisfaction, the report console is now more simplified and includes ad-wise statistics, exportable as CSV. You can also view reports based on attributes like campaign type and period of time.

· Better click fraud filters – Better click fraud enables you pay only for the right traffic and this means a higher overall ROI and lower cost of Acquisition.

Upgrades for publishers

· Static page integration - This allows publishers to integrate ZestADZ on to their static pages, allowing ads to be displayed where server side code is not supported. This is available at http://zestadz.com/static_ad?id=<your encoded ad client id here>

· CMS integration – If you are an aggregator of traffic or have a CMS, we have a solution to integrate ZestADZ Ads for you. Write to publisher[at] mobile-worx dot com for more info on this.

· Banner only request – It is now possible to request only for banners instead of a mix of text and banner ads. Just add ad_type=”Picture” within your source code.

· Perl code – Perl code is now available for integration, within the publisher console.

We will be glad to get your feedback on the above and other required upgrades

Please send us your feedback to your respective Account executive or to support [at] zestadz dot com

Publishers can now integrate ZestADZ with their static pages. What this means is that ZestADZ will be able to serve ads on your static (xhtml) pages without having to use any server side code.

Steps to Integrate ads within your Static Page
•    Create an account & log in.
•    Define your ad client (WAP Site) within your publisher console. Follow the Wizard and copy the code given by the wizard into your page OR
•    Take the ad client id ( it looks like 14131C047A504141435B4A56465145568D89) and create a link within  your static page wherever you want to insert an AD
<a href=”zestadz.com/static_ad?id=14131C047A504141435B4A56465145568D89”> Great Mobile Sites</a>

The generated link “Great Mobile Sites” will then route to a page full of ads, targeted to your WAP site which looks like the below image. All impressions and clicks generated on this page will show up on your reporting screen. It is that simple. Replace the “Great Mobile Sites” with any text or banner as long as it complies with our T’s and C’s.  Please send your feedback if you have any, to publisher [at] mobile-worx dot com.

We’ve heard of various advertising models, the ultimate goal of each being to maximize the response rate. Ad networks are always working towards getting creative models to enhance the revenues for their publishers.

One recent strategy employed by ZestADZ is the CPC with Banner model. It is the traditional CPC model, which is cost per click, where in the advertiser, pays for the no. of clicks generated, to the ad-network and the publisher, combined with pictures. An ordinary text link would take you to a landing page based on the interest that the text can generate from the user, and average CTR on a CPC is around 1%.

In the case of a CPC banner, the usage of a picture (banner) , enhances the attractiveness of the link and encourages the user to click on it thereby increasing the CTR. The pricing however is still CPC but this works out to be of great value to all stake holders involved – publisher- because he gets paid more due to better CPC, advertiser – because he gets better revenues and us because it fetches better ROI for every CPM of traffic through our network.

Given below is a case study with some comparative stats. on traditional CPCs’ and CPC with banners

Thus from the above data, we can see the increase in the CTR (by almost 100%). An increase in CTR leads to increase in revenues and eCPM which is the standard used to measure the effectiveness of any ad. Business model by publishers.

Authored by the Publisher Team @ ZestADZ