Is a Mobile Ad Right to Reach Your Audience?

Before you start going down this route though, it is important to determine if a mobile app is right for your audience. The way we did this was to take a look at our website analytics. If you use Google this process is simple. Log in to your account, on your analytics dashboard view click “Visitors”, then “Mobile”, “Mobile Devises”. You’ll then be provided with a screen that shows visitors to your site from various mobile devices. Locate “iPhone”, iPod” and “iPad” rows and look at the number of visitors. At this point you will be able to see how many potential customers/clients could possibly see your ad via their phone. Obviously the user will have to have the specific app to see your ad, not just have the device. The visitor number will just give you an idea of the number of your customers who have the device. It’s up to you as to how many visitors will warrant your investment into an ad program for the iPhone. It is advisable to look at the percentage of total visits on the mobile devices rather than actual numbers. Because every industry is different, some websites convert higher than others, so for these sites, a lower volume of visitors would be perfectly acceptable for an iPhone ad program.

Here’s the process we used to get an ad up and running on a couple of relative apps:

1. Research – Find an app relative to your industry, one that you think your prospective customers or clients may use. They must have and existing ad platform in place for their ads (check to see if they have any ads on their app)
2. Contact the app creator and ask them about their ad program. Find out how they track impressions and clicks and any other metrics you would like to know. Note that unlike websites, where impressions are the number of times your ad is displayed, your app ad provider may not be able to get as specific as that. In those occasions they will likely be able tot ell you how may times the app is accessed per day. To calculate the effective impressions, you will need to take the number of opens and divide it by the number of advertisers that rotate in your placement. This will obviously not give you an exact number since if someone spends a lot of time on the app, they may be subjected to your ad in more than once depending on number of advertisers. That said, the number of app opens will give you a good idea of your exposure.
3. Negotiate a price – You can base this on your knowledge of web banner advertising. Just remember that apps are generally not accessed as much as popular website, so you will have less exposure but can be more focused on a specific niche, depending on your industry and app that you are advertising on.
4. Create the ad – Ad mentioned earlier, the ad formats appear to be fairly limited to a static image. These generally have pixel dimensions of 320 x 50 as a common size, but may vary from app to app. You might want to talk to your app vendor and see if you can supply two versions so that you can do some split testing and determine which type of ad content is more favorable for your app viewers. For example, one add might promote “free shipping” another might promote that you are a “green/environmentally friendly” company
5. Create tracking urls – I use Google’s UTM service as documented in a previous post, then you can monitor your traffic specifically from your app advertising campaign.
6. Submit your ad creative and tracking url and you are ready to go!

While waiting for a video project to render I have just enough time to write about a “URL abbreviator” that I have recently utilized for a client (and plan to continue to use in the future) to make my online activities run a little more smoothly.

Ever had a huge, lengthy url that you want to send someone or direct someone to by phone? How annoying it is to read all the slashes /\ and underscores and dots etc etc… There are several url abbreviators out there, today i used http://www.bit.ly/ to shorten a url for a “status update” on LinkedIn. When on the http://www.bit.ly/ homepage, I put in the URL: http://www.kluge.biz/register-for-go-large-with-vertical-presses into the specified box and hit the “shorten” button. Instantaneously I was presented with the URL: http://bit.ly/45d8G which I can now use in place of my long URL. I didnt need to register or give any of my personal information. Its a free service that worked quickly and easily. Now you can save valuable characters on your twitter posts or minimize confusion when directing people to long urls.

The free registered version of bit.ly provides you with many useful features, like the ability to track clicks to your shortened URL etc. Great news!

Have a URL abbreviator/shortner that you like to use. Tell me about it in the comments below.

1. When participating in a group you are spreading your company name around, specifically to your connections as they see updates on their homepage
2. You can learn about whats going on in the industry
3. As a group member you can contact directly any of the other members in the group, on the basis that you are a fellow group member. ie, you do not have to be connected some way and ask for an introduction. Thus you can possibly seek out new relationships with companies that you are not currently involved with
4. In your group settings panel, you can can request a daily, weekly etc digest of discussions from your group to be sent to your email. By doing this you reduce the amount time browsing the forums, instead you can scan the email each day and select to respond to any topics and engage with the group. I have found that responding to topics can start a dialogue between you and the poster, or other respodners, who knows where that may lead?
5. Post your own discussions and learn about a specific market or region as it relates to our industry

Specific group recommendations would vary depending on your industry. To join a group, go to “Groups” top left of your LinkedIn homepage, then click “find a group” on the right of the page and search for a group then click join under its title. To start, I would suggest only joining groups with a large number of members, that way you can reach a bigger audience quicker.

Contact me with any questions: info@beamondcreative.com