Sounds like the things mobile advertising dreams are made of, right?

Well, it’s time you awoke to the fact that advancements in mobile ad tech can actually make all of these things possible. And it all starts with the idea of yield management.

This 101 guide to mobile advertising yield management will help you understand what it is, why it’s important, and how it can help you run an even more successful mobile ad campaign by distributing the right ads to the right consumers, at the perfect time – all while allocating advertising dollars to achieve maximum effectiveness.

Mobile Advertising Yield Management Defined

To understand yield management as it relates to mobile advertising, you must first understand the general idea of yield management itself.

Basically, yield management is an approach that you can use to maximize revenue when your business has a fixed, perishable resource and can “place” customers into select groups that will pay different prices for the same resource.

A good example of yield management is airplane seats. The seats on an aircraft are considered “perishable” because once a plane takes flight, the potential to generate revenue for the seats disappear.

You see, airlines want to sell the perfect seat to the right passenger — and at the right time and price for each passenger. Yield management algorithms help this process along.

This approach is practically the same when it comes to mobile advertising campaigns, but on the buy side.

Mobile advertising yield management helps advertisers maximize ad dollars by matching the right ads with the right mobile users. In this sense, ads are perishable. Once the ad is served to the wrong customer, the opportunity is lost.

Why Mobile Advertising Yield Management is Important

So why should mobile advertising yield management matter to you?

From a digital advertising perspective, it’s the ideal model for distributing mobile ads. Advertisers want to target the right consumers by placing the perfect ads within the right mobile app or site at the best possible price.

Yield management gives advertisers an incredible opportunity to maximize the value of ad impressions, control ad size, retarget ads based on their effectiveness, and ultimately increase ROI.

Making Mobile Advertising Yield Management Work

In order to produce the type of killer mobile advertising campaigns which maximize ROI, you must understand how to make mobile advertising yield management work effectively. As you now know, yield management can help increase mobile ad revenue by placing the right ads in front of the best possible consumers. But what does this process look like, exactly?

Increasing a mobile ad inventory’s value requires that multiple advertising networks be connected to ad exchanges on mobile websites and within mobile apps.

A data management platform (DMP) can ensure that the right ads are targeted to the right mobile users, increasing ad engagement and maximizing revenue for advertising companies, brands and publishers alike. The sophisticated technology of mobile DMPs actually gather and sort all types of mobile data, providing an in-depth look at mobile user behaviors; from the purchases they make, to the mobile sites they visit, and even their location.

Integrating a DMP with a mobile demand side platform (DSP) helps to produce an even more effective mobile advertising campaign, as a DSP automates ad buying based on the key data that DMPs offer, ensuring the right ads are bought and delivered to the key consumers.

The Bottom Line

Yield management is something which everyone in the mobile advertising industry should pay close attention.

Gone are the times of simply daydreaming about reaching the right target audience and producing more profitable mobile ad inventory. Mobile advertising yield management isn’t just another possibility in the grand advertising scheme.

It’s here. It’s real. And if you aren’t utilizing a DMP and its yield management capabilities, you will miss out on the right customers that will surely direct their attention to your competitors.

The post Mobile Advertising Yield Management: A Definitive Guide appeared first on Infillion.

Thankfully, mobile app attribution tools and methods can help you monitor the effectiveness of your mobile ad campaigns, plus help you increase conversions, downloads and sales.

But what exactly is mobile app attribution, how does it work and what are some common tracking methods? This article will provide you with the basic know-how of mobile app attribution so you can implement the perfect tracking tools and methods for your unique campaigns.

An Overview of Mobile App Attribution

What is Mobile App Attribution?

In order to understand mobile app attribution, it’s important to first take a look at traditional online attribution methods. Things like cookies, image pixel tags, and adding custom parameters to a URL are all attribution methods that digital advertisers have come to know and love. These helpful methods are both easy to set up, and can aid marketers in determining which visitors came from certain sources: whether a new customer clicked on a link located in an email blast, or clicked through to your new blog post from a social media site.

Traditional digital marketing attribution methods are used widely in the industry because they are quite effective. That’s why mobile app attribution exists, as well. It’s just another way to measure the effectiveness of your cohesive marketing plan.

In mobile advertising, attribution refers to the process of tracking a user’s actions within a mobile app. This means that mobile app attribution tracks things like app installs, in-app purchase behavior, repeated app launches and level completions. All of this information is crucial to have on hand as it can help you determine the value of your ads, and where you might want to allocate your ad spend in the future.

How Does Mobile App Attribution Work?

Mobile app attribution can be complicated and a little frustrating because there isn’t an existing industry standard for measurement methodology. So, using well-trusted mobile app attribution tools are critical to your success in the mobile ad realm. In order to correctly attribute app installs and other consumer behaviors to particular ads, unbiased data must be provided to an attribution partner. Because several parties are involved in this process, it can bring up more issues of complexity. In fact, both Google and Apple block attribution companies from tracking users’ behavior within their app marketplaces.

So, does this mean mobile app attribution isn’t really that effective?

Not necessarily. It’s still a very valuable tool when it comes to creating your mobile ad campaigns. As a result of mobile tech giants blocking this type of tracking, attribution companies have used their tech skills to figure out ways to know what users clicked on ads, and also downloaded and opened apps. Ad clicks, engagement, impressions, social networks and more can all contribute to just that one install.

This brings us to the most popular, universal methods of mobile app tracking that attribution tools use for measuring the effectiveness of ad campaigns.

Mobile App Attribution Tracking: Main Methods

Mobile Device Fingerprinting

Fingerprinting (also called device fingerprinting, machine fingerprinting and browser fingerprinting) is the means in which a user’s mobile data is collected for the purpose of identification. This mobile app tracking method pulls basic user information like an IP address from mobile device headers to connect the dots between conversions. For example, if a user went from clicking on an ad to an immediate app install, fingerprinting could collect that individual’s user behavior.  Not to get too technical, but fingerprinting basically works by redirecting a potential customer through measurement URLs, then attribution tools gather the publicly available data from HTTP device headers.  From there, the information is analyzed to create a unique user fingerprint associated with the mobile device.

Identifier Matching 

When a mobile app attribution tool aids the process of matching unique identifiers (whether a customer installs an app or clicks a mobile ad) it is done so in real-time — which saves you some of your own time to focus on other marketing matters. Automated tools typically support many of these unique user identifiers including app-to-app, web-to-app, iOS, Android and others. It helps to have a tool to do this for you because it saves the headaches of repeating this process manually when it’s time for end-of-month reports.

Location Tracking

Advanced geo-defined audience targeting offers marketers a way to fill in the holes created by traditionally desktop-oriented, location-based targeting. The current selection of location-based ad targeting broadly includes such methods as geo-aware ad placement, geo-fencing, and audience targeting. Big data leverage consumer information to properly buttress location analysis, tracking a user’s spatial behavior after ad exposure. Measuring large samples of these mobile users, either through first- or third- party reports, identifies consumer patterns and thus sheds light on the entire purchasing process.

Ideally, marketing professionals should heavily consider adding mobile app attribution to their advertising strategies to ensure that ads are actually working, or if they need to revamp their mobile ad campaigns to be more effective. After all, a significant part of marketing is the act of monitoring success.

The post Mobile App Attribution: An Introduction appeared first on Infillion.

If you’re a marketer, you’ve more than likely heard the term, “programmatic” pop up during conversations with your colleagues. And while you may nod your head in agreement that programmatic is an exceptional advancement in mobile ad technology, you may not know exactly what it is or even how it works.

How do I know this? Because you’re not alone! Many industry professionals don’t know the ins and outs of programmatic mobile ads – just the fact that programmatic is an important industry buzzword.

While programmatic advertising isn’t necessarily new, the technology has only just recently become mainstream as it offers marketing professionals even more data points that can help them develop targeted advertising campaigns as mobile audiences continue to grow.

But what exactly is programmatic mobile advertising? Do the benefits outweigh the disadvantages of this hot piece of mobile ad tech? And, most importantly, should programmatic advertising be within your marketing strategy? Let’s find out.

Programmatic Advertising, Explained

In order to understand the basics of programmatic advertising, you must first take a look at traditional digital advertising methods. In a traditional sense, digital advertising can be a slow process as it relies on the manual processing of ads: requests for proposals (RFPs), negotiating, plus manual insertions of orders (IOs). This method can take a long time, especially when dealing with hundreds of thousands of orders.

Plus, with traditional advertising, it can be tough to control purchased ad inventory. This, in turn, limits your ability to optimize campaigns for better audience targeting.

And because no one has time for manual-anything in the fast-paced mobile ad world, automated technologies are making things easier on advertisers by saving them time – and their mobile advertising campaigns from completely bombing.

One such technology is called programmatic advertising — or automated ad buying. It’s a helpful tool that allows advertisers to reach the right audiences, plus automates the media buying process.

With programmatic advertising, advertisers can buy exchange inventory through programmatic means by using a Demand-Side-Platform (DSP) to connect to an ad exchange to bid on inventory sources. The DSP then provides the required scale to reach a large number of ad impressions; breaking through the clutter of ads that aren’t relevant to the target audience.

Programmatic advertising technologies can also ensure that advertisers get the lowest cost possible when it comes to mobile ad inventory. All of this helps to deliver better campaign results.

The Downside of Programmatic Mobile Advertising

While we have established that programmatic advertising on mobile can be an effective way to reach your target consumers much more quickly and efficiently, you should also consider the cons before moving forward.

In the mobile ad industry, there is a growing concern that programmatic advertising doesn’t offer the best quality of ad inventory.

While an advertiser can get a low cost of inventory by using programmatic methods for ad buying, this also means that their ads can get placed on unfavorable sites and apps that people haven’t heard of, or sites with high levels of fraud and low levels of viewability. Thus, programmatic advertising can sometimes be associated with low click through rates.

Plus, transparency has been an issue with advertisers when it comes to programmatic ad buying.

But do these cons mean you should forget about adding programmatic advertising to your marketing strategy? In one word, no. Because there are better ways to approach programmatic mobile ads in order to ensure you are receiving quality inventory and reaching the customers who matter most to your brand.

The Best Approach to Programmatic Mobile Advertising

So, which should you choose when it comes to programmatic ad buying: an in-house DSP or third-party DSP? It’s not a simple question to answer because you also need to think about adding a Data Management Platform (DMP) into the mix.

The Mobile Majority offers an in-house DSP to buy inventory programmatically, and also an in-house DMP to help with audience targeting. Paired together, the DSP and the DMP offer a level of pre-bid awareness that companies who are using simply a third-party DSP do not get.

To put it plainly: the paired technologies can filter out the not-so-stellar inventory sources, sites and apps that are plagued with poor performance.

The programmatic advertising transparency issue is also alleviated by using the integrated technologies because you’ll know exactly where the ads ran and the performance they received. Plus, the integration can target audiences much more effectively due to the free flow of data between the DSP and DMP.

So, no matter what app or site your customers are on, they’ll see your ads; alleviating the burden of solely using ineffective, content-based advertising methods.

The end result? A technology stack that provides ad network quality impressions at the cost of an exchange with publisher direct transparency.

So, should programmatic advertising be within your marketing strategy? Sure. But just be ready to integrate a trusted DSP with a DMP to get the most out of your mobile advertising campaigns.

The post Programmatic Mobile Advertising: What You Need to Know appeared first on Infillion.

But what if I told you that your DSP isn’t working as effectively as those of your competitors?

Truth be told, using a DSP is just one part of creating highly successful mobile advertising campaigns. While the technology is important in and of itself, a DSP also needs a bit of help from another piece of integral software to be the best it can be.

This crucial piece of software is called a Data Management Platform (DMP). And if you haven’t yet added a DMP to your mobile ad tech arsenal, you’re already behind the competition, as many brands have been integrating DMPs with DSPs for some time now.

But I do have some good news: If you begin using a data management platform now, you can gain back major opportunities you may have missed when it comes to reaching your target audience on mobile.

But what are the differences between DSPs and DMPs, and how do they integrate to offer the best results and ROI for mobile ad campaigns?

Discerning the Difference Between a DSP and a DMP

What is a DSP?

A mobile DSP is a centralized technology platform that uses data to automate ad buying across a variety of publisher sites. The platform also connects advertisers (or advertising agencies) to the right customers for your brand through audience targeting. DSPs can sort through publisher inventory by each publisher’s unique parameters. In addition to ad buying, DSPs also deliver and track ads.

To put it in even more basic terms, a DSP makes the searching and sorting of audience segments and inventory type easier and more affordable due to the automated nature of the technology.

What is a DMP?

A mobile DMP is a centralized hub designed to gather all sorts of mobile data. A DMP provides an in-depth look at the consumer; from their purchasing behaviors, to what websites they visit and more.

Simply put, a mobile DMP is software that takes on the role of a mobile consumer data warehouse that sorts and houses detailed customer information, then ships it off to publishers, marketers and businesses.

So, DMPs and DSPs sound pretty similar.

While the line between the definitions of DMPs and DSPs may seem a little blurry, both are needed in order to produce the most effective mobile ad campaigns. While a DMP is used to store and analyze data, a DSP acts as a buyer for advertising based on the consumer information that DMPs offer. The information collected by a DMP is transferred to its DSP which helps with ad buying decisions.

Basically, without an integrated DSP, a DMP just doesn’t work as effectively standing on its own.

Why Thinking DMP-First is Crucial to Your Mobile Ad Campaign

A DMP Helps You Reach More Relevant Customers 

Behaviorally-targeted advertising is much more effective than non-targeted advertising, and a DMP will work in tandem with your DSP throughout the automated ad buying process. As it locates relevant user data, a DMP will then tie together the user activity and audience data in a centralized location to help optimize future ad buys and ad creative.

A DMP Will Help Address User Identities Now and in the Future

As a DMP and DSP work together to access the best ad buys, creative, and audience targeting, a DMP will consolidate both first and third party data from various channels to make crucial connections between the information offered.

Once the best user identities for your brand are accessed, a DMP can sync these IDs to look at the behaviors, actions and responses tied to individual consumers, providing complete data sets for audience creation and optimization for both current and future use.

A DMP Offers Something for Everyone

So, who uses DMPs? Ad agencies, publishers and marketers can all benefit from integrating DMPs with DSPs. For example, advertising agencies can use DMP technology for both data and analysis for multiple client campaigns. Publishers can also use DMP technology to better understand reader information and derive more value based upon the data collected.

As a growing number of brands are finding that DMPs make audience data more portable and easier to integrate with DSPs, they’re miles ahead of the companies who are using DSPs only. In order to help brands fly past the competition toward unprecedented audience targeting precision, the Mobile Majority has built our own mobile data management platform that leverages millions of data profiles from consumers all over the country.

And — you guessed it — our DMP integrates with our mobile demand-side platform to ensure your brand is reaching more customers who are relevant to your company’s success.

Now, all you have to do is take the leap.

The post Why a DSP Needs an Integrated DMP appeared first on Infillion.

If only we could go back to when simple radio and print advertisements were the norm; it was so much easier for a brand to reach its intended audience then, right?

Well, not so fast.

While ads that targeted broader audiences were once the go-to advertising tactic for many marketers, this content targeting method of reaching key consumers is seriously outdated due to new advancements in mobile ad tech.

Yes, content targeting once ruled the advertising world, but statistics show that both interest and investment in mobile audience targeting continues to rise. This means it may be high time  for your brand to pass the mobile ad crown to the new kid on the block.

But is mobile audience targeting really a more effective way in which to reach your intended audience? Should you still use content targeting tactics, too? Only your budget and analysis of your ad campaigns can tell you for sure, but the following information may help you choose the best course of action.

Content Targeting vs. Mobile Audience Targeting

What is Content Targeting?

Content targeting was once the marketing strategy of choice for every marketer – and for good reason.

Back in the era when radio, television, newspapers and printed magazines were prime sources of entertainment, it was quite an effective way for advertisers to target practically any type of consumer. Even as technology evolved and consumers began looking to their mobile devices as a means for entertainment, content targeting was still at the forefront of marketers’ minds.

In the mobile world, content targeting is the term for placing ads on specific mobile apps and websites.

The idea behind this mobile advertising strategy is that people who fall into certain demographics are likely viewing these particular pieces of content. For example, a young mother to a toddler will likely be an avid reader of an online parenting magazine. Thus, advertisers will place ads on the parenting site that target not only this mother, but other consumers like her.

So, does content targeting still work? In theory, maybe. But there are cons to this mobile marketing strategy. Let’s take a closer look.

The Cons of Content Targeting

It’s a Blind Sell

For many years, content targeting was the way to advertise. Digital advertising was display-based, and could technically be described as one-to-many. Advertisers would sign IOs (insertion orders) with huge Internet publishers like CNN.com or Forbes.com and buy placements within these media channels to advertise to groups of people who would likely be interested in the publisher’s content.

While this method of advertising could potentially reach a brand’s intended audience, the ads they were running on certain sites and apps were also broadcasting to anyone who was viewing the content – even if they fell far outside a brand’s target demographic.

It Comes at a Cost

One-to-many targeting may be designed to reach a larger group of people (including channels like television, billboards, and radio), but this method also creates a lot of waste. This is because one-to-many targeting comes at a high cost in terms of not only your advertising budget, but the sheer fact that the right people may not be seeing your ads. So, you could be blowing a whole lot of cash.

But while that ad for discount designer handbags you’ve placed on a parenting lifestyle site may in fact entice a woman in her 20s to click, it will also fall upon blind eyes and deaf ears. Because, yes, even a guy’s guy reads parenting magazines from time to time, and let’s face it: he doesn’t care about handbags or what’s hot in women’s fashion.

All of this means that if you’re still using content-based targeting methods on mobile, you likely aren’t speaking to the right audience, and are limiting your reach to other relevant buyers.

And that’s where mobile audience targeting comes in.

What is Mobile Audience Targeting?

Mobile audience targeting is the new way of targeting your brand’s key consumers by relying on data points about mobile users in order to deliver relevant ads to them – no matter what site or app they’re using.

The Pros of Mobile Audience Targeting

It’s Ultra-Specific

As desktop technology evolved into mobile technology, mobile ad tech companies gained the ability of audience targeting. The audience targeting method uses underlying data about an individual person, or, to be specific, their deviceID which can include certain demographic information and even geographic location for more effective and engaging ads.

This advancement in mobile ad tech allows advertisers to be ultra-specific about a type of consumer they’re attempting to reach. This is called one-to-one targeting, and much more effective than one-to-many targeting because this strategy reaches an individual person with an individual message.

It’s Contextual

While one-to-one targeting doesn’t offer quite as much scale that content targeting offers, it is a much more precise way to reach relevant consumers and targets exactly the kind of people mobile ad companies want with a message tailored to an individual; whether a young mother is reading articles on a parenting site, playing Bubblewitch Saga or catching up on world news.

In a recent auto campaign, we went head to head with some of the top automotive content providers. Employing audience targeting, we were able to direct consumers to act on our client’s KPIs at a fraction of the cost our client expected.

In short, mobile audience targeting offers a huge advantage over content targeting, and this is why many more brands are adopting mobile targeting methods over content targeting.

With more and more ad dollars quickly shifting from desktop to mobile advertising, interest in mobile ad targeting isn’t showing signs of slowing down. It also isn’t the only thing that is changing how you’re spending your advertising dollars. Stay ahead of your competitors by downloading our free mobile advertising 101 guide and discover what mobile ad targeting and other mobile ad solutions can do for your brand.

The post Mobile Audience Targeting: Why Placement May Not Be as Important as You Think appeared first on Infillion.