Traffic monetization: How do mobile apps design advertising space?

This article mainly talks to you about how to design advertising space on mobile apps. The following are some personal experiences accumulated in work. I will try to express them in plain language. If there are any mistakes or imperfections, you are welcome to leave a message to correct and supplement them.

First of all, make the purpose clear. The purpose of designing ad space is to generate revenue. Factors related to revenue include ad display location, ad display format, ad appearance frequency, and ad source.

1. Advertising display location

1. Find a location with high traffic

As shown in the figure below, one ad position is designed for the opening screen when the App is launched, and another ad position is designed for the content page in the App homepage information flow. Of course, the number of people requesting ad placement when the App is launched is the highest when comparing the two, because as long as people open the App, ad placements can be requested.

Theoretically, the more traffic your app has, the more valuable the ad space will be. An app can design many ad spaces on different traffic interfaces.

Is the largest traffic of an app when it is launched? The statistics agency AppOptix released that Android phone users unlock their phones 65.8 times a day. The first step in using a phone is to unlock it. With so many unlocks a day, the traffic here is huge. It would be great if we could put ads here!

As shown in the picture below, people have already taken action in places where there is money, and this has become a battleground for tool apps. Because tool software is used infrequently by users, in order to find ways to increase advertising revenue, various means are used to keep it alive, such as monitoring system broadcasts, occupying the lock screen position of users' mobile phones, providing users with information on the lock screen, and embedding information flow ads to increase revenue.

The lock screen ads mentioned above do not provide a very good user experience. Some branded apps, considering user experience and reputation, will not place ads directly on the lock screen. Instead, they use the lock screen location to divert traffic to their own functional modules. As shown in the figure below, there are shortcut entrances to videos, music, novels, etc. at the bottom of the lock screen canvas, which can divert traffic to their own products.

Information is displayed in the form of cards on the lock screen. Users can swipe left and right and click to enter the information they like. Corresponding advertising spaces can be designed on the content page.

When designing ad placements, first sort out the traffic of each functional module within the App and find areas with large traffic.

If your App users use it less frequently and you need to create high-frequency scenarios, you can consider extending the functions to places with high traffic in the system, such as lock screen location, notification bar, desktop floating widgets, etc. Of course, this requires applying for user authorization.

2. Be careful not to let users touch by mistake

Nowadays, smartphones are operated by pressing and sliding the fingers, which makes it easy to make accidental touches, which are called "fat fingers". Many ad clicks are caused by accidental touches.

As shown in the picture below, the advertising area is recommended reading, and below the recommended reading is a floating bottom menu. When users swipe up or click on interactive elements on the menu bar, it is easy to make accidental touches.

Dangers of accidental touch:

1. Damage user experience, cause user disgust, and lead to user loss. Sensitive users may directly uninstall your app.
2. It harms the interests of advertisers. The conversion rate of accidentally clicked ads is very low, and the effect of advertisers cannot be guaranteed, which may affect the advertising unit price of the media.
3. Currently, many advertising platforms will filter out accidental touches. Clicks caused by accidental touches are not charged. Accidental touches may affect the media's ratings, and the ratings will affect the media's advertising revenue.

How to deal with it:

1. When media outlets design their own ad placements, they should not place ads next to interactive elements;
2. Ad platforms filter out false clicks through “edge detection”;
3. According to online information, in some advertising scenarios of Google and Baidu, users will be prompted to make a second confirmation when clicking on the edge of the advertisement to ensure that the click is an active action by the user.

2. Advertising display format design

1. Set it to a common ad slot type as much as possible.

As shown in the figure below, common types of ad placements include splash screen ads, banner ads, interstitial ads, information flow ads, native ads, video ads, and rewarded videos.

Each type of ad space should be set to a common ratio to facilitate access to various advertising platforms to ensure a sufficient fill rate. The specific ratio will be displayed when Guangdiantong and Chuanshanjia create ad spaces.

Generally speaking, the larger the size of the ad creative, the higher the click-through rate. For example, the click-through rate of the opening screen is higher than that of the large image in the information flow, and the click-through rate of the large image in the information flow is higher than that of the small image in the information flow. Because the larger the size of the material, the more eye-catching it is, and the material can better convey content, so the click-through rate will be relatively high.

But this is not absolute. For example, although the size of interstitial materials is large, the click-through rate is not high. Because of the way it pops up, people subconsciously think it is an advertisement and will close it without thinking.

Nowadays, there is a trend towards large images in information flows. In the past, due to the high click-through rate, advertisements were all made into large images, which caused some sensitive users to think of advertisements when they saw large images and directly skipped over them. The user groups behind the traffic are different, and the actual click-through rate should be based on objective data.

As shown in the red box in the figure below, as a traffic provider, in order to increase the click-through rate, you can also design clickable elements in the ad space. The button form with copy can more easily attract users to click.

As shown in the figure below, the top traffic parties will design some unique styles to attract users' attention and increase click-through rate, such as the linkage between splash screen ads and information flow ads, information flow flip ads, and interactive ads in the circle of friends.

3. Frequency of Advertisements

Ads on some ad spaces appear at a certain frequency, and appearing too frequently will affect the user experience.

For example, in the case of a splash screen ad, you open a video app and wait for the 5-second splash screen ad to end, then enter the video list. At this time, you receive a WeChat message, go to WeChat to check the reply, and then switch back to the video app you were just using. As a result, it shows another 5-second splash screen ad. At this point, you must be disgusted with this video app.

If there is a splash screen ad every time the app is launched, it will be annoying, so an ad frequency is usually set, including the interval between ad appearances and the maximum number of appearances per day.

Reasonable advertising frequency and interval need to take into account both revenue and user experience. The specific value setting varies from product to product. It is necessary to establish a control group and multiple test groups to analyze and evaluate the impact of advertising frequency and revenue, and advertising frequency and retention, and ultimately determine a reasonable value.

4. Advertising Source

For small and medium-sized media, they can directly access external mainstream advertising platforms, such as Guangdiantong, Pangolin, Baidu, etc. For the media, to which advertising source should the traffic be allocated? It is usually compared with eCPM, which is the estimated revenue from showing an ad 1,000 times. So, can we request all advertising platforms at the same time, and give the traffic to the one with the higher ecpm?

In theory, this is true, but currently advertising platforms generally do not return prices in real time, so real-time price comparison is not possible. Prices can only be compared based on the ecpm of the previous day. The platform with the higher ecpm will be requested first, and so on. This method is called waterfall.

With the need to distribute traffic based on ecpm, the advertising aggregation platform (mediation) was born. It includes mainstream advertising platforms, and can set the order of advertising sources on the platform, automatically synchronize ecpm and other functions. The aggregation platform can be developed internally or connected to a third party as needed.

For medium and large media, which have their own advertisers, they often have their own advertising platforms, including delivery platforms (DSP), trading platforms, and traffic management platforms. Generally, traffic is distributed to its own advertisers/its own DSP first, and then to other DSPs.

I will just briefly mention this part. Mediation, waterfall, and Header Bidding (In-app bidding) are the core contents of advertising monetization. I will write a separate article to talk about them later.

The above analyzes how to design ad slots from the perspectives of ad display position, ad display format, ad appearance frequency, and ad source.

All the designs of the ad space are centered around revenue, and the following will be broken down from the perspective of revenue.

The revenue of an ad space = number of exposures of the ad space * ad click rate * ad click price. = Number of people requesting ads * Average number of ad requests per person * Ad fill rate * Ad display rate * Ad click rate * Ad click price

• Number of ad requests: related to the traffic volume of the ad display location and the user retention rate of the ad location.
• Average number of ad requests per person: related to the frequency of ad appearance
• Ad fill rate: related to the ad source
• Ad exposure rate: related to ad position and request logic
• Ad click-through rate: related to the form of ad display and ad creative
• Ad click price: related to the source of the ad and the conversion effect of the ad

The above formula is only a formula for maximizing revenue in the short term. In the long term, we should focus on the "number of ad requests", that is, the product's life cycle (LT), which is mainly related to product retention. You cannot add too many ad spaces for the sake of profit, otherwise it will affect the user experience. You should consider the long-term benefits and not be blinded by the immediate benefits.

Author: Night Star Monologue

Source: Night Star Monologue