With more and more people using free apps, developers are turning to in-app advertising as a way to generate reliable income. The No-Nonsense Guide to In-App Ads by Google AdMob will give you an overview on how to make money from ads, how it works, how to choose the right brand-safe advertising network, and all the ad lingo you can handle so that you can start implementing in-app advertising into your mobile app.
We will cover the following sections in the Guide:
1. How an app business makes money from advertising
Imagine you owned a popular cookie shop on a busy street. With so many people seeing your storefront every day, and to make some additional revenue, you decide to sell ad space in the window and on walls - space known as inventory. You reach out to the neighborhood and soon other businesses paying you to feature their ads. As a mobile app developer, your app is similar to a busy storefront: people visit your app every day, you can display ads in your app, and businesses want to advertise to your users.
But because it’s digital, in-app ads offer several benefits, such as measuring how many people have looked at the ads, easily localizing for each market, and using a variety of ad formats to deliver the best experience to your users.
2. How pay-per-click advertising works
Digital advertising offers several models, and one of the most popular is the pay-per-click model (or PPC model), where advertisers only pay when someone clicks on their ad. If a user sees an ad but doesn’t click on it, advertisers don’t pay.
The PPC model aligns the interests of advertisers, app developers, and users. As digital advertising has matured, additional “pay for performance” advertising models have emerged like “pay per download” and “pay per acquisition”, all designed to better align interests
3. What’s an ad network?
Ad networks automate the process of buying and selling ads. They build relationships with businesses looking to advertise and apps looking to make money by selling ads inventory. Advertisers get access to lots of different inventory in apps at scale and app developers are able find advertisers quickly. As app owners, ad networks help you spend less time marketing your ad space and more time on creating the best app for your users.
4. How to choose the right ad network for your app
There are lots of factors to consider when choosing an add network. A few key questions to ask are:
How much revenue can the ad network bring you? Look at an ad network’s “effective cost per mille” or eCPM for short (referring to 1,000 impressions). eCPM is calculated by dividing total earnings by total number of impressions in thousands and will give you a standard to compare different ad networks’ payouts.
How much demand does the ad network have available? Evaluate an ad network’s “fill rate”. Fill rate is the number of times an ad network delivers an ad to an app divided by the number of times that app requested an ad.
What experience will the ad network provide your users and you?
This is combination of a number of factors:
1) The type of ad formats the ad network can offer.
2) The quality of the advertisers on an ad network — known as “brand-safe advertising” — so users see ads that don’t disrupt their app experience and in turn damage your brand
3) Is the ad network’s technology reliable and easy to use?
4) How quickly and easily can an ad network pay you?
Download the complete guide on the right to learn more about how to launch your app business with advertising. And let us know about your feedback on Twitter.
