More and more people these days have taken cell phones and other mobile devices as priority over laptop computers. Speaking from personal experience, much of my life as a young person is kept on my phone. It’s where I access my email, read books, and in general get my information about the world. I’m certain it’s the same for many people, and that’s why there are an abundance of ads on websites and within some apps too. There’s no surprise that I run into ads all the time, and businesses are leaning more and more into crafting ads where people will see them the most. So, are you ready to start moving to mobile? With the world at large shifting in that direction, here are Sparkfactor’s necessities to approaching the new world of mobile advertising!
The Best First Step
To start with the basics, mobile advertising is defined as advertising that “appears on mobile devices such as smart phones and tablets that have wireless connections.” Investopedia continues to talk about different types such as text ads over messenger, ads within mobile games or downloadable apps, and banner ads embedded within mobile sites among many others. So, your best first step is to think about where you want your ads to show up and how they should look. Do you want them to be text, or ads that will pop up on screens? The displays of the advertisements are also key, as they need to be small enough to fit phone screens but with enough pop to be readable.
There are 5 types of mobile ads to get familiar with:
- Text / Search Ads (ads that use search engines like Google and Bing)
- Image / Banner Ads (ads that draw attention and have a lot of Rich Media, or will get good amounts of interaction based on content)
- Video Ads / Ads on Youtube
- Social Advertising, including blog posts and ads for Instagram
- Ads in apps
Many other different types of advertising are also available, and they can also not be limited to just phones. Mobile ads on tablets are also very effective too, so keep these things in mind when drafting up where you want your ad to go and what effect you want it to have on your audience.
Follow Ups and Functions
As a follow up to the initial planning of your ad, you’ll need to start thinking about how to target your ads, or their placement in order for you to get the most engagement. Namely for mobile ads, it’s extremely important to be easily viewed, or have a specific placement that makes them quick to read or be seen. A lot of the work that mobile ads do is down to how many seconds of time someone looks at it. Mobile ads can also be specifically customized to a target audience, like how advertisements for places to eat start to pop up if you’re in an area with a lot of different restaurants. This kind of customed targeting is called Geo Targeting or Geo Fencing, and it can be incredibly effective.
Other tips include getting familiar with the lingo and different positions. First, you will need to understand the differences between the “advertiser” and the “publisher”. The advertiser is the person that pays money for the advertisements to be shown, while the publisher is the person that gets the money from the advertisements. So, after you’ve nailed down a design for your banner ad and you want to put it on a website, you’re the advertiser. But if you want to display ads on your website as part of a promotion, then you’re the publisher.
Become familiar with terms like “P.P.C” (pay per click) and “C.P.C” (cost per click), as it’s the most common form of mobile advertising– where payment and cost are determined by how many times users click on the ad or product during a PPC campaign. It can initially be very confusing, but with enough research and time, you will get the hang of it!
What Platform Fits You
With the basics down, it’s important to think of where your ads will be displayed and who will be the audience that sees them. Using social media platforms such as Twitter and Instagram may work for some companies that need a large social presence to reach as many people as possible. Restaurants and stores for example, benefit well from these types of ads because their product is visually based. But other services, ones that sell a service rather than a product, could work better within Facebook and YouTube in order to show their audience what it is they can do for them.
It’s incredibly dependent on what your business is and what you feel will work the smoothest with the ads you plan out. Social media now takes up 60% of all activity that happens on mobile devices, plus it’s much more convenient for customers to share posts on mobile devices than on computers. The pair of social media and mobile advertising is a powerful one, and it’s in your best interest to find the best ways to mix them both together.
Combating Ad Block
As with all advertising development, from video ads to mobile ads, you have to be informed about ad block. Many people use it for legitimate reasons, to keep viruses or malware in ads from getting onto their computers. However, for mobile ads, it’s a little easier to reach around to make sure that your ad isn’t blocked along with other spam. Most phone browsers and apps don’t have an inherent ad block in them, so there’s a high chance your ad will be displayed anyway. As long as it appears like a legitimate ad, there shouldn’t be a worry of someone mistaking it for a misleading one. To combat some ad blocking software, it’s a smart idea to invest in native advertising, or an ad that appears in the same kind of style or format as whatever content the person is reading. That way, your ad doesn’t seem as intrusive and they are more likely to engage with it.
The world of mobile advertising is a large and complex place, but if you use the right methods and do enough thorough research, you can pull in a lot of benefits for you and your company. With these basics and tips in hand, you’re ready to springboard off into a more in depth understanding about mobile ads and what they can do for you. At Sparkfactor, we can find just the right balance for what your business needs! So contact us with your queries about how you can get started on mobile advertising today.