How to improve your mobile ad revenue by 10 times.

  Monetizing free applications is a critical but confusing topic for many developers. Over the years of developing free applications, I have been experimenting with various factors to see how I can maximize my revenue. In this article, I am sharing some of my key findings and hope you can use some of what I learned to optimize your mobile ad networks.

Colors- Color combination on text ads

Colors play a huge role in everything we do, and it obviously plays a large role in ad colors when it comes to click through rates.

I could go on and on about color but there are already lots of interesting information about role of colors in marketing and our life in general out there. One of my all time favorite article about role of color in marketing is one by Leo Widrich at the Buffer blog.  Leo does an amazing job going in depth about effect color has in our life and how it relates to marketing. I actually have this article bookmarked and refer to it often as I am working on new things.

Flow of colors is key in increasing user experience. Pay special attention to how the colors in your ads fit in with your application color theme.

Interstitial ads 

I was vary wary of interstitial ads until couple years ago. I thought it ruined user experience and portrayed a cheap feeling. I thought they were too much on your face and made you look like a push over. I still have mixed feelings about them, but I feel like at moderation and proper placement they are justified and are extremely productive. This is true either you are using house ads or displaying ads for networks like Google’s Admob, Revmob, etc.

I have seen unto 4x the CTR and 10x eCPM. Of course, you have to use this sparingly, and ensure that the ads are relevant. I like to make it very easy for users to exit out of these ads, and make sure not to show interstitial ads very frequently. The rule I like to focus is, not more than 1 impression per user every 45 minutes. Of course, you have to find out what works best for your application type and audience.

Timing and placement of these ads are also critical. For example, if you have a full screen/interstitial ad pop up as soon as the application opens or on the first action, you might get a good click through rate but user retention is sure to hurt. You have to make sure the timing of the ad display is not too intrusive. For example, if it is an application that has average use time of 10 minutes/session, a full screen ad 4-6 minutes is more justified. By this time the user has felt like he has got something out of the application and is more accepting to an advertisement. They key is providing value first, before throwing something at your users.

Video/interactive interstitial/full screen ads perform amazing when used properly. If the above technique is used to decide the placement of these ads, a satisfied user who has interacted with the application for a good five minutes, a user who feels like he/she has got something of value out of the application, is 25x more likely to listen to the video or perform the action asked in the application versus a user who is presented with a video ad/interactive ad immediately after the app opens up.

Ad network optimization

Almost every ad network provides optimization tools these days. This makes it easy to optimize your ad allocation by network and also helps ensure the highest fill rate, both helping in increasing your ad revenue. Take advantage of the ad mediation features available through your ad network or use tools like burstly(skyrocket app) or Mobclix to set up tiers of ads.

Based on the tools, you might have an option to optimizie manually or let the ad networks do the job for you. You can take advantage of features like eCPM floor on Admob combined with tiered ad network setup to ensure maximum revenue and maximum fill rate.

Refresh Rates

Yes, refresh rates matter. Well, at least if you are interested in optimizing your ad earning for your application and since you are still reading this application I am guessing that is of interest to you. I have spent months experimenting  with refresh ads in a number of my ads. One ad refresh rates do not work for all applications/placements. Most ad networks  suggest ad refresh rates of 30-180 seconds, or no refresh. That is a huge range. You need to find out what works for your application or you could be losing a significant portion of your ad revenue.

If you are thinking, I will just refresh the ad as often as I can, and that will bring in additional revenue, it might actually have a negative effect. When you refresh your ad too often, your users might not even get a chance to see the ad before its refreshed or it might be refreshed by the time they get over to clicking the ad. Leave your ad on too long, and people are tired of seeing the same ad. Especially if you have an application that has users staying in a same page for extended periods of time. There is no one magic number that works for everyone or every application. You have to experiment to find out what works

Experiment, Experiment

The overall message is experiment, and experiment with everything that you can including but not limited to things mentioned in this article. There are however few things you have to keep in mind while experimenting. Being a scientist, I try to follow my teachings of traditional science even when I am experimenting with applications or ad networks.

Here are my 5 principles of ad network experimentation.

1. Change one thing at a time

2. Have a hypothesis you’d like to test, for example a lower refresh rate will increase my CTR and thus the revenue.

3. Keep a good note of the changes or effects. Use freely available analytics tools to weed out noise from the actual effect.

4. Don't change too often, give your change enough time so you can collect quality information.

5. What is true for one ad network or one application is not always true for another, so test again and again.

Bonus:

Categories/filters

Most ad networks will let you choose the categories that you want to allow the advertisers display ads for or filters that allow you to block certain categories or keywords. If your users see ads that is similar to or relevant to the application then they re more likely to click on those ads. I know this sounds plain and simple, but it does have a strong influence on the user experience . For example if I am using an application that provides financial tips, I am more likely to click on an ad for a savings account or ho to start an IRA instead of an ad that is annoyingly flashing "Meet hot singles in your are". Context matters, and since there are tools that help you decide what kind of ads that your users see, why not take advantage of that and give your users a better app experience while increasing your revenue at the same time?

If there is something else that has worked wonders for you and would like to share it with the rest of the community, please let us know in the comments section.

By- Bikul Koirala

TWIDT: How to add Leadbolt ads on Andromo or Buzztouch as HTML ads

This is a quick guide about how to incorporate some of Leadbolt's HTML ads in Andromo or Buzztouch apps or any other app builder that does not currently have Leadbolt SDK.

How to add Leadbolt app wall to Andromo apps:

1)Head over to Leadbolt and sign up for an account:

(You should get a simple one page sign up page)

2) Wait for confirmation email and activate your account.

3) After you login, click on Apps

4) On your Apps page, click on Create New App/Mobile Web.

5) Fill in the details and click Create now.

6)Next click the green + sign next to your app to bring up a window as shown below, CLick on HTML ads on the, Ad type.

7) Go through the menus and customize your ad, and click add now at the end of the setup process.

8) You will get a screen with ad code/url as shown below

9) All apps needs to be approved by Leadbolt before they receive live ads, click on the Green arrow, saying apply app to send the app for approval

10) Now its time to add this to our andromo app.

11) There are two ways to add this to your app

a) Create an activity(Website) on your app, and add your URL from leadbolt for the    website URL

b) Create house ad in Admob and use this url to create a House ad to serve this URL.

You can try either or both, or so some studies to see what works best.

That’s all, now your app is receiving app wall ad from Leadbolt. You can also add a banner ad using the same process. Other ad formats are not available as HTML ads and have to wait till andromo incorporates their SDK.

Hope this was helpful, Please feel free to ask if you have any questions in the comments section or in android forum.

By- Bikul Koirala

My Thoughts: Technology and Evolution

Evolution says that us humans start losing uses for body parts as we Start using them less and less. The human appendix is a good example of this. With the advancement in technology, we turn to our mobile phones and the web for any information we need these days. While this has made our life immensely easy, where are we heading with this in the decades to come?Here is what I worry about!!

I used to remember most of my friends and family phone numbers until 10 years ago when mobile phones were not that popular. Now that all the numbers are stored in the phone I honestly cannot even remember my work phone number. I used to be able to do simple math in my head with no difficulty. Heck, I used to be able to do even fairly complex math in my head. My nerdiness might have had something to do with that but nonetheless my point is that most people used to be able to do simple math and remember basic things with no problem. I did not need calculator or a computer to be able to calculate what the tax or tip on a certain item would be. Being a chemist, I used to be able to easily calculate molecular weight, do complex multiplications and divisions amongst many other things in my head.Now that I have my phone with me every waking second of my life. Well, it's right next to me when I sleep too, I turn to the calculator app or the web for most of the information and calculation needs.

What will happen to our memory and creativity as we start using them less and less over the decades to come? Now, when we need ideas on how to design our room we go look at sites like pinterest and Houzz... Instead of thinking for a second what color do I really like and what color would go well with my furniture etc.

where are we headed in the coming decades with the advancement in technology with our memory and creative skills. If everything we have learned from evolutions and sayings like practise makes a man perfect is true, it looks to me like we are headed to a future with technology where human innovation and creativity is actually going downhill. We are headed to a future where the start a new segrregation of people who continually continue to develop their mind as they are developing new technology and the technology users who start to loose the basic skills as they get deeper and deeper into the world of technology and forget how to read a dial watch,paper map, or even not knowing how to get their own home without the GPS directions. I believe, It's time to wait and think about where should we draw the line and stop using technology for basically every single thing in our life.

We need to find a balance between nature and technology before we reach the point of no return!!!