Los Angeles, Chennai – Monday, 16^th November 2009 – ZestADZ (www.ZestADZ.com) a leading global mobile advertising network announces the launch of Android SDK (Software Developer Kit) Beta Program.

Unique features of the ZestADZ Android SDK include:

• Ability to request up to 5 ads at one time
• Extremely small memory footprint

Android SDK from ZestADZ is targeted at global mobile publishers who are building applications for the Google Android platform. The Android SDK currently supports Android 1.5 and very soon, the company will be releasing an Android 1.6 / 2.0 SDK.

ZestADZ will also be providing access to a full featured analytics solution (also in beta) to its Android App developers to help them analyze statistics.

“Android SDK represents an important step in the growth of the company. Innovation is going to be an important part of our strategy to stay ahead of the competition” says Asif Ali, President and CTO of the company.

The platform which is in Beta release is available immediately at www.zestadz.com/publishers/android with more information also available at the company’s blog http://zestadz.wordpress.com

About ZestADZ:

ZestADZ (www.zestadz.com) is a leading global mobile advertising network that allows advertisers to reach out to billions of mobile impressions globally and benefit from cost-effective consumer reach, and thus gain high returns on their global campaigns.

ZestADZ helps publishers to monetize their mobile traffic, provide higher fill rates and maximize revenue potential.

PR Contact

Shereen Begum

shereen@zestadz.com

+1 310 516 8552

ZestADZ Now supports Site and Ad ID Performance Tracking  for advertisers. This is possible by passing each of the actual Site ID and Ad ID for each click while redirecting to the advertiser provided URL. This feature is useful for advertisers who want to track traffic from specific publisher sites or apps. Advertisers can also use this mechanism to track their own ad-wise  / site-wise performance and request for blocking specific Sites / Apps or Mobile

How it works:

Advertisers can submit a landing page URL for each creative, for example

The Ad - Download unlimited games for $9.99 a month

Can have the URL – http://mycontentsite.com/specialoffer999

To enable tracking of the Ad / Site performance, ZestADZ will automatically append the following variables

cid - This is an unsigned integer which identifies a Site or App on ZestADZ.

adid - This is an unsigned integer which uniquely identifies an Ad on ZestADZ

Therefore the redirected URL will actually look like

http://mycontentsite.com/specialoffer999?cid=553241&adid=4323

The advertiser can extract the cid and adid variable and store and analyze how many clicks have come in from specific publishers or ads.

In the near future, ZestADZ will also be able to send in additional parameters such as the mobile handset and other important parameters.

So what can an advertiser do if a particular Site or Ad is not delivering the desired performance?

You can log on to your account and block your non performing ads.

To block non performing publisher sites or apps, email your account manager and mention the cid (Site or App ID) and we will block it for you in less than 24 hours.

Please send your feedback about this feature to support@zestadz.com

regards

ZestADZ Engineering Team

ZestADZ Analytics is an upcoming mobile analytics solution by ZestADZ targeted at both publishers and advertisers. ZestADZ Analytics enabling them to extract  deep insights enabling them to take better business decisions.

As we put forth in one of our recent blogs,  there are many instances where advertisers and publishers request for more data such as how many unique visitors saw the campaign, what kind of devices are accessing them and so forth. Based on these market requirements we have built an extensive mobile analytics solution that complements our ad network – ZestADZ. ZestADZ Analytics comes at no additional charge to both advertisers and publishers.

A Preview of information and features that ZestADZ Analytics provides -

For Advertisers

ZestADZ Analytics gives information such as

• Visitor tracking
• Popular Handsets
• Popular Handset Supported Properties
• Detailed Ad-wise Performance
• Geo statistics
• Carrier-wise break down of traffic

Using ZestADZ Analytics, advertisers will be able to make better decisions on their campaigns such as

• Tune landing pages to suit incoming traffic
• Optimize campaign and creatives to the amount of incoming visitors
• Optimize campaigns based on handsets / manufacturers and features  that are popular
• Understand what carriers are delivering better quality traffic

Advertisers cannot yet measure download tracking or ROI but these are key features we will be adding in near future.

For Publishers

ZestADZ Analytics gives information such as

• Visitor tracking
• Traffic delivered
• Popular Handset Manufacturers
• Popular Handset Supported Properties
• Geo statistics
• Region wise breakdown of traffic
• Carrier break down of traffic

Using Analytics, publishers will be able to

• Track web / mobile apps in a single interface
• Get important statistics  in a single console
• Optimize / select ads based on available handset / carrier / location data and reject non performing or non relevant ads

Presentations

Online presentations and screenshots are available at the advertiser link and publisher link respectively.

So how can you start using analytics?

ZestADZ Analytics is currently in private beta and if you would like to try it, please get in touch with us by writing an email to analytics [at] zestadz.com or by requesting an invite at http://analytics.zestadz.com

Existing advertisers and publishers – You will get an invite soon to start using mobile analytics.

Thank you and please send us your feedback.

ZestADZ Engineering Team

ZestADZ is proud to announce the launch of ZestADZ Android SDK Beta Program. Here are a few key reasons why you should publish your android apps with ZestADZ

- You’re joining a large network of mobile app publishers - ZestADZ already has a large network of mobile app publishes who publish mobile ads on J2ME / Symbian / iPhone.

- Mobile Analytics included to track your traffic on your android app - ZestADZ comes with a superb analytics solution that will be an important part of your publishing cycle.

- We will help you integrate with multiple networks - At ZestADZ – we realize that many times publishers do not want to be tied down to a single mobile ad network. That is the precise reason why we will help you integrate with other networks to fill your unfilled inventory.

- You’re in Control - At ZestADZ you’re in control with powerful mobile advertising tools – Ad approval screens, XML reports, Powerful reporting and analytics – all of this puts absolute control in your hands to control mobile advertising.

- House ads coming soon – We’re launching house ads that will help you cross promote android ads. Keep visiting our blog for more updates at http://zestadz.wordpress.com.

Please write to asha [at] zestadz.com be a part of this program and start publishing Android ads. We will revert back with the SDK and instructions to integrate it with your android app.

The Android SDK will be available for all publishers by third week of November, 2009.

There is a wide debate in the mobile advertising ecosystem as to what are the metrics that are really important to advertiser and publishers.

Many networks try to provide an information overload of metrics and data which may not be really important to any advertiser or individual campaign  and examples of these are

• iPhone traffic has increased 10% compared to last month.
• 5 b impressions were delivered last month (how does this impact my campaign results?).

In our discussions with marketers and advertisers, we realized that many advertisers want more data. Many complained that on most ad networks, they are not able to get simple metrics that is required. These metrics which are important includes

• Unique visitors: How many unique visitors have viewed the ad?
• What are the peak hours of my campaign?
• Which ads are better performing and why?
• What kind of phones are more popular in my campaign?
• What is the break down of traffic from a Carrier perspective [this is really important for mobile subscription services]

For the publishers, the metrics that they commonly look for is

• How much of traffic was unfilled and what are the reasons why it was unfilled [Show me the devices which are not getting ads, the carriers which have no ads]
• What is the break down of traffic by Carrier?
• How many unique visitors?
• CTR, eCPM and revenue earned
• What is the Hourly breakdown of traffic

Now here’s the problem. Most mobile ad networks do not disclose these metrics. As far as the independent analytics solutions that are available are not directly linked to the mobile ad ecosystem completely and can’t completely track all the necessary metrics.

We know that this is a debatable point but we’re going to put some more thoughts in some of our newer blog posts and closing this issue for now.

Introducing ZestADZ Mobile Analytics

At ZestADZ, we have been trying to share these metrics with both advertisers and publishers through an analytics solution for several months now.  ZestADZ Mobile Analytics as we call it, is not an independent analytics solution but an extension of our mobile advertising ecosystem providing some important metrics to both advertisers and publishers. We believe that this solution will be a game changer and provide a much needed insight into mobile traffic and campaigns.

Keep visiting the blog and our website www.zestadz.com and you will see more information shortly.

We have made further upgrades to our site install code and this time there has been key functionality added to enhance user tracking. Though this functionality in the API is still in its early days and there are other ways in which we track users, this upgrade will essentially help deliver better ROI for publishers as advertisers are willing to pay for better metrics and results.

This is an important enhancement  but ZestADZ is completely backward compatible with the previous code. So you can choose to upgrade or choose to remain with your existing site install code.

We would however would strongly recommend you going in for an upgrade of the site install code.

If there are any questions, write to us at support [at] zestadz.com

We have been doing a number of user experience upgrades which we believe will will enhance your mobile advertising experience. A number of them have gone live.

#1 Dashboard

The post login home page has been replaced by a simple dashboard that provides a review of the current campaigns or ad clients. You can directly click on them to go to the reports section

#2 Publisher payments summaries

The top right publisher payments notification was confusing to a few of our publishers who thought their previous amounts vanished at the end of each month. That has been updated with the publisher payments – current and pending payments visible on the top right corner of the screen

#3 Ajax driven search in forms

Simple feature that helps users search in large data sets. This will be extremely useful for advertisers who are managing large number of campaigns.

#4 More usable forms

Most forms have been updated to make them simple and more usable

#5 Improved Approve Ads Screen

This screen has been updated to deliver the list of ads and allow for easy approval or rejection of ads.

Recently AARP launched a campaign countering negative public opinion in the states about the health care reform as proposed by President Obama.  “To be clear: AARP has not endorsed any comprehensive health care reform bill — but we are fighting for a solution that improves health care for our members,” the group’s CEO, Barry Rand, and president, Jennie Chin Hansen, wrote to members on Tuesday.

Subsequently, a few days later President Obama also revealed his clear message with a $900 billion  plan to fix health care.

We think that a mobile advertising component to the AARP’s campaign would be a great medium for AARP and the government to clarify its position to the general public. Though it may not be a tool that can bring drastic change, it can through its reach and ubiquity, educate the general public about the misconceptions about the government’s stand on health care reform.

Here are our suggested set of simple steps for a mobile advertising campaign that can help the tide turn in the government’s favour

a) Launch a simple mobile site with FAQs on the health care bill.

b) Promote the mobile site focusing on unique visitor clicks with maximum coverage

c) Send out SMS Alerts to general public about specific myths to users on regular intervals

d) Enable social media / SMS based sharing of links

e) Enable SMS Alerts campaigns to those registered users

h) Launch a search enabled iPhone App with FAQs. Promote it the same way the Mobile site was promoted.

We have upgraded our campaign screens to enable levels of targeting. Advertisers can now launch mobile  campaigns by additionally targeting

• Specific Device Targeting – Choose a single or multiple devices by device names from one or many manufacturers.
• Device Property and Device OS Level Targeting

With these enhancements it is now possible to reach a specific set of users  you can now execute the following use cases in your mobile advertising campaigns

• Target users of a specific OS such as Symbian.
• Target specific Java platforms
• Launch a campaign that focuses on specific handsets in Nokia [Say E71] and Video capabilities
• Mix all the above scenarios together with Carrier / Country based targeting

If you have any further questions – please contact us at support [at] zestadz.com

Engineering Team

Just saw a great article for mobile app developers and this is a definitive must read for them.

Follow the link to the article – http://www.netimperative.com/news/2009/september/top-10-tips-mobile-applications