A long article to talk about overseas mobile traffic advertising monetization

There are more and more Chinese mobile developers targeting overseas markets. However, most tools and application products cannot achieve cash flow through IAP (in-app payment), but must rely on advertising to achieve overall monetization.

The issues that these developers are most concerned about are also concentrated on the advertising revenue part. In general, there is always an imbalance between the demand side and the supply side. It is particularly important to establish a more effective mechanism to effectively identify and access third-party aggregation.

We often see that for some business or operations personnel who have just entered the industry, when advertising revenue decreases and filling becomes unstable, their first reaction is usually anxiety and helplessness, and the account manager of the single advertising platform they are connected to is often unable to provide an effective solution in the first time.

So, what methods can we use to avoid this kind of passive situation?

When discussing advertising monetization, what are the criteria for judging revenue?

Let’s first look at some standard data definitions and their applications in monetization optimization.

➤Daily active users (DAU) are essentially a dynamic variable. The absolute value may remain in a range, but in reality it is in a constant fluctuation. As DAU increases, Impression will also increase accordingly. Similarly, Retention reflects more the interaction between incremental and stock usage than DAU.

➤Request number is the basis for cash flow data analysis . If overseas advertising platforms do not transmit data in real time, operations optimization personnel will not be able to obtain real-time DAU. The most intuitive way is to analyze the changes in the number of requests, especially the changes in the number of requests by country. This is particularly important because it is the only way to reflect the phased changes in DAU. The key points to focus on are the request mechanism (the timing of the request, the number of requests triggered, the number of ads requested at a time, and serial and parallel requests).

➤ Fill Rate is an extremely important indicator in the monetization scenario . In layman's terms, it refers to the proportion of requests that are responded to and loaded with ads. Under a reasonable ad triggering interval, a high fill rate helps to efficiently utilize traffic . When the ad trigger density is too high, a low fill rate helps increase user awareness of the ad. Of course, this cannot be simply understood as advertising demand being less than traffic supply. We need to consider a very important dimension: matching!
Here, we need to attribute labels to advertising demand and traffic.

Therefore, advertisers need to consider:

1. Are there any restrictions on the area where advertising can be placed ? "Our games only promote Hong Kong and Taiwan."
2. Are there any restrictions on adult traffic? "Our games cannot have adult traffic." (What? What is adult, you ask?)
3. Are there any restrictions on the incentive mechanism? "We reject incent traffic." (An incentive mechanism similar to downloading an app to get points and props)
4. Is there any retention rate limit? "We will refuse to pay if the next-day retention rate is less than 30%!" (The next-day retention rate is the number of apps opened on the next day/the total number of installations)

Therefore, when the server pushes advertisements, there will be a matching process. If the source area of ​​traffic is very remote, the fill rate will be relatively low.

➤Impression is the most direct reflection of advertising revenue in settlement . The settlement methods of cpc and cpi are also based on the premise of impressed conversion . After the advertising platform responds to a request and returns an ad, there are many details that can be polished for developers to display the returned ad more efficiently. For example, the distinction between paying and non- paying users , the pre-caching mechanism uses machine algorithms to make advance judgments, distinguish cache scenarios, whether caching is needed, how to cache, the country and region where the cache is located, AB Testing, etc.

➤ Number of clicks Click/ Click-through rate CTR There is a saying in the industry that "the smartest minds in the world are involved in the study of click-through rate". Although it is a bit exaggerated, it does objectively reflect the importance of click-through rate.

There are many factors that determine your click-through rate:

✦ Is the color of the advertising material clean ?<br />Clean color does not mean just a single white or gray. It can be a dazzling fluorescent color, or a mixture of various colors. As long as it is well matched, even poop color will make people feel fresh.
Advertising materials can be divided into two categories: one is real photos with text, and the other is pure design and drawing. No matter which one it is, clean colors are very important. Fancy colors will look "dirty" if they are not well matched. Similarly, a placement material only takes up such a small space on a web page or mobile phone. Who would click on it if it is so "dirty"...
Friends who have studied art or design (the same applies to clothing matching~) should know that it is best not to use more than three main colors in a picture. This is for the unity of the picture and for safety. If it exceeds~ then it is really a big test~

✦ Is the title of the creative obvious (call to action)?
Just imagine that the size of the Banner or Native you see in WeChat is 270px*150px. If your text is only 13px on such a small image, then it may only be displayed as a few dots. Therefore, the title must be obvious. It doesn’t have to be very large, but at least it should allow people to see what your copy is at first glance and clearly inform them of the benefits. After all, everyone is busy!
✦ Is the copy of the ad attractive ?<br />The most important part of attracting traffic is to have a stable number of clicks , so an eye-catching title is very important. A good title is enough for you to join the UC shock department :)

At the same time, be sure to test the key ad positions of the product yourself before launching the monetization module. At least test the following aspects:

● Is the ad pull time too long?

● Whether the ad can be displayed normally

● Whether it can be clicked normally

● Whether the page can be redirected normally after clicking

How to better improve monetization efficiency?

Developers always have the first-hand control over traffic. Whichever advertising platform can provide higher revenue, developers will lean towards it to provide more and better high-quality traffic.

Let’s take a look at the common pain points that developers currently face in monetizing overseas traffic advertising:

When many teams or individual developers are working on advertising monetization, they often bet on a single advertising platform because they do not have the resources and manpower to invest in multi-platform docking. After being connected for a period of time, making adjustments and supplements in the face of a decline in revenue will seriously affect the normal development and release rhythm, and even drag down the overall monetization income.

Operating dashboards (backends) of various platforms will also bring additional workload. There are also many inconveniences in data analysis and export.

At this point, we have to mention something about preparing for a rainy day. It is particularly important to find and connect to a completely independent third-party Mediation platform that does not prioritize filling its own advertising resources.

To connect with a high-quality monetization aggregation platform, the criteria for consideration and judgment can be referred to as follows:

▣ The scale and completeness of the platform that is integrated, and the completeness of the advertising format support. The current main advertising formats are: banner ads, interstitial ads, rewarded video ads, native ads , and point wall ads.

▣ Complete data integration and A/B Testing solutions, fast and effective stratification and slicing for different countries and channels

▣ Friendly and concise operation interface and data reporting system

▣ How customizable is the Waterfull algorithm configuration? Can the algorithm be automatically optimized for different countries?

▣ Technical and operational support

▣ Whether it supports advanced native custom layouts of major platforms, implements channel configuration of Waterfull rules through the access of Mediation, and optimizes materials under the AB testing mechanism to maximize the monetization premium ratio.

The overall performance also follows the rule that the higher the reserve price, the lower the fill rate. But when the reserve price drops to a certain level, the impact on income will be minimal.

✦ Factors that influence e CPM

A. Region

B. Time period

C. Seasonality (usually lowest in the first quarter)

D. Holidays, special events such as Christmas , Thanksgiving, and Black Friday greatly affect the traffic curve

✦ Manual optimization strategy

A. Use high base prices to improve the monetization capabilities of mid- and high-priced traffic

B. Lower the base price and increase the fill rate

C. Adjust the reserve price regularly according to time attributes such as seasons and holidays

D. Set reserve prices by country/region

Tips

➤ Ad embedding scenarios

1. Remember, do not interfere with the user's current behavior.

For example, input method. Do not place any advertisements on the input interface as this will interfere with the user's use of the product.

2. The timing of display should cater to the user's operation purpose

For example, the search interface. There can be some recommended ads below the search box. The space below the search box is large, so it is suitable for placing advertisements. According to experience, the CTR of ads embedded in search scenarios may increase by more than 5 times.

3. Resource-driven, traffic-oriented diversion, and building a traffic ecosystem

For example, a tool app with huge traffic can develop peripheral functions or services, such as changing skins, adding emoticons, and other functions, and display advertisements in secondary scenarios. By analogy, the functional scenarios can be further extended to divert and direct traffic with resource-driven methods.

➤ Advertising display strategy

1. Cache scene

That is, before actually displaying the advertisement, insert your company’s publicity, such as logo, etc. At the same time, commercial advertisements are retrieved from the background and the cache is overwritten after they are retrieved.

2. The monetization side should also design different scenarios and displays according to different countries as much as possible.

3. The most important thing is scene analysis, which accounts for 80% of the overall advertising experience

That is, user flow is the most important. After each function or requirement is met, the most appropriate advertisement is embedded according to the scenario configuration.

When users’ minds are in “exploration mode,” they are most likely to pay attention to ads. This includes using the app's secondary features, such as viewing notifications, accessing settings, or game center. Also look for moments when the user's attention is naturally interrupted, such as showing an ad after a memory cleanup operation is complete. However, if the user flow is forcibly interrupted, it will cause users to be disgusted and ignore the advertisement.

4. Native experience, seamless integration with the operating system

For example, the iOS system uses a left swipe, while the Android system uses a close button to close the ad. To adapt to the usage habits of the operating system.

5. Control a single variable for A/B testing

Compress variable factors to the minimum involved in testing and conduct rapid acceptance. Based on the single variable results, the optimal result is obtained by combining them.

6. Pay attention to user feedback and understand the characteristics of the audience

For example, dating ads should not appear in an app that sells wedding dresses.

7. More cache is not always better

For example, if you take 5 ads at a time, only the first ad has the highest CPM. Therefore, even if you need to cache, you can only cache one at most, so that every time you request, you can be guaranteed to get the one with the highest price.

How to determine the balance between revenue and experience, and whether users are disgusted by ads?

I have mentioned so many forms of advertising before. Can they all be embedded in my app? Will they damage the user experience?

This requires an event tracking mechanism. It is necessary to place event points in the advertising space to judge the audience's reaction based on real data.

1) Is interstitial or native better?

By inserting test points in the established ad positions, you can hot-switch ad types and do A/B testing to see which one works better.

2) User tag test

Based on population labels, assign men or women to show different ads or the same ads to see the effect. It is possible that men respond better to advertisement one, while women respond better to advertisement two.

3) Are users receptive to your ads?

Use time points to monitor whether the uninstall rate caused by adding ads or not adding ads has reached your bottom line. If it exceeds the bottom line, it means that this place is not suitable for advertising.

Summarize

For mobile developers, here are some things to keep in mind when monetizing overseas:

• Be familiar with key indicators related to monetization and understand the key points of each optimization;
• Implement the channel configuration of Waterfull (waterfall algorithm) rules through third-party independent Mediation (aggregation SDK) access, and optimize the materials to maximize the premium ratio of monetization under the AB testing mechanism supported by first-party data;
• Pay attention to the embedding scenarios of advertisements, understand users’ real feelings about advertisements through distribution data, and obtain the best balance between revenue and experience.

Mobile application product promotion service: APP promotion service Qinggua Media advertising

This article was written by @Alpha Sun  Compiled and published by (Qinggua Media), please indicate the author information and source when reprinting! Site Map