APP advertising promotion monetization methodology!

Whether playing King of Glory, reading articles on WeChat public accounts, or watching Douyin, people are enjoying the convenience brought by the Internet and seem to be able to satisfy their spiritual life without spending any money.

There is no free lunch on the Internet. As the saying goes, "The world is bustling with people, all for the sake of profit; the world is bustling with people, all for the sake of profit." Behind the free service is the demand of APP to attract users, increase traffic, and start commercial monetization.

So, how do APPs monetize their traffic and realize their commercial demands?

This article will interpret monetization strategies from the perspective of APP types and delve into the methodology of advertising monetization .

1. APP Types and Monetization Strategies

Currently, the apps on the market can be roughly divided into the following categories: social, information, tools, short videos, live streaming, e-commerce and games.

1. Social, information and short video apps

This type of APP can be collectively classified as an information flow type. On these APPs, users swipe to view updates, articles, pictures, videos, etc. one by one, which is often a common choice for users to "kill" time.

Apps with long user usage time are extremely suitable for setting up advertising space for monetization .

Of course, monetization of value-added services is also an option for many media parties. Social media sometimes extends to offline activities, and short videos also have more content marketing and KOL cooperation methods.

Short video apps are very good at "harvesting" traffic. Image source: QuestMobile

2. Tool apps

This type of APP does not have a strong “time-killing” attribute. Users often use it with a certain purpose and leave after use, which to a certain extent curbs the development of advertising monetization business.

Therefore, the monetization is generally based on value-added services, including content payment and service payment (or membership system).

This monetization method is less likely to cause user churn and is also conducive to cultivating user loyalty.

3. Gaming apps

Game apps not only kill time, but also have a variety of monetization methods based on their entertainment attributes, whether it is advertising or value-added services.

Value-added services are the main source of monetization , such as purchasing equipment and clothing with gold coins;

Advertising monetization has gradually increased and diversified . Incentive advertising has been the most popular in recent years, where users can obtain in-game rewards by completing specified behaviors (such as watching advertising videos).

In addition, you can also cooperate with external brands in joint advertising, such as limited-time themed equipment, printed with the logo or key information of the cooperating advertiser.

Peace Elite officially announced Rocket Girls joint skin

4. Live streaming apps

Similar to gaming apps, value-added services are the main source of monetization, such as users paying to purchase gifts and giving rewards to anchors.

In recent years, e-sports live broadcast and game live broadcast have been gaining momentum, and live broadcast apps are becoming more closely connected with game apps and e-commerce apps.

In terms of advertising monetization, live streaming apps will also cultivate KOLs and brand owners to carry out advertising cooperation on events, and some apps have also added fixed advertising spaces for monetization.

5. E-commerce apps

E-commerce apps connect merchants and users. As a platform, they can obtain transaction commissions and fees from merchants for advertising and marketing to acquire customers by providing operations and promotion services.

The promotion services provided to merchants are generally based on setting up advertising space (such as search ads and recommended ads).

2. Detailed explanation of APP advertising monetization

From the above, we can see that no matter what type of APP it is, advertising monetization has a place in monetization options.

As a carrier of advertising, Internet products have unique advantages over traditional media in that they have a wider coverage, richer advertising forms, and more precise audience targeting. According to the latest data from Analysys, the mobile Internet advertising market is expected to reach 442.3 billion in 2020.

Compiled by AdBright from Analysys International’s “Special Analysis of China’s Information Flow Advertising Market 2019”

Ad space is what advertisers directly purchase when placing ads. There are often multiple ad spaces in the same APP, and the same ad space can also have multiple forms.

Previously, AdBright also conducted an in-depth study of the current forms of advertising space. For more information, please refer to the following articles:

AdBright Technology: A Complete Review of China's Mobile Internet Advertising in 2019 zhuanlan.zhihu.com

Currently, there are the following ways for APP to realize advertising:

1. Traditional scheduled advertising

The media expands its advertisers by leveraging its own direct customers, agreeing on cooperation by placing orders via email, generally settling accounts on a fixed CPT (charged by delivery time) basis, and having technical staff manually operate the advertising materials online.

However, since the population is not accurately divided, there is no guarantee for the effectiveness of the advertising campaigns for performance advertisers , and from the perspective of monetization efficiency, it is also low. There are time and personnel costs from business docking scheduling to technical launch.

2. Build your own advertising platform

Once the media reaches a certain scale and has a strong technical team, it can consider building its own programmatic advertising platform. The advantage is that it can independently control the access industry, advertising content, traffic distribution and agency policies.

Zuiyou, Shuabao, and Huya all chose to build their own platforms

However, due to the large size and complex architecture of the advertising product system, building it from scratch is time-consuming and labor-intensive, and it is easy to miss market opportunities. In addition, the manpower and time costs required in the construction process are high and inestimable. Establishing a commercialization team is extremely expensive, with extremely high investment and high risks.

3. Access to advertising alliance

Joining the alliance is one of the fastest ways to monetize at present. By connecting to major alliance resources (such as Pangolin, Youlianghui, and Baiqingteng) through standard technical documents, you can quickly realize advertising monetization without investing too much.

But there are also disadvantages:

• Ad content cannot be controlled independently and relies on a third-party review team, which can greatly affect user experience;
• The environment of alliance transactions is not transparent. Media and advertisers do not know each other's placement and effect sources, and the value of traffic cannot be reflected.
• Advertising revenue is limited, the advertising revenue sharing ratio is not high, and there are also unexpected risks such as deductions and reductions.

4. Access to external DSP (i.e. advertising delivery platform)

That is, quickly connect to external DSP through API/SDK, and use its advertising delivery tools and DMP for multi-dimensional user portrait analysis to process data and obtain rich and high-quality advertiser resources.

But for the media, the DSPs on the market vary greatly and need to be carefully screened and evaluated:

• The quality of DSP’s customers and whether their customers match their own
• The strength of the DSP team and whether it has strong technical and data algorithm support

In addition, the relationship between media and DSP is a two-way selection, and DSP also has certain requirements for the traffic level and user quality of the media itself.

Conclusion

First of all, you need to clarify your APP type. The monetization methods of different types of apps are also very different.

Overall, advertising monetization is characterized by heavy traffic, low threshold, flexibility and controllability, and is applicable to almost all Internet products with a certain traffic base.

Each monetization method has its own advantages and disadvantages. APP can choose the advertising monetization method based on its own development stage.

Author: AdBright

laiy: AdBright