How to: Rule risk free mobile media buying

The latest .rising leaders post comes from Max Pepe, Head of Clickwork7, a global performance marketing company which specialise in lead generation, customer acquisition and mobile app promotion for clients such as Amazon and Wowcher.

Here, Max explores the changing terrain of mobile media buying, unravelling the new world as 2.1 billion mobile users continue to revolutionise the advertising platform. Figure out how to unload a risk-free media buying strategy in an age dominated by daunting acronyms and figures. 

 

There are 2.1 billion mobile internet users across the globe. 29% of the entire human population accesses the internet on a mobile device. Mobile web consumption has now officially surpassed that of desktop (with 57% of adult internet usage in the UK happening through a mobile phone), and mobile broadband subscriptions outnumber fixed broadband subscriptions 3:1. Your audience isn’t going mobile, they’ve gone mobile.

But hey, you already know this. Understanding and believing these (impressive) stats is not what you’re struggling with. You want to know how to make sense of this data, and turn it in to an actionable marketing plan that will drive genuine, measurable, and fundamentally profitable, consumer engagement.

Whether you’re looking to promote your mobile application and drive installs, generate leads or sign-ups from mobile users, or simply acquire incremental customers through mobile traffic; it can be hard to know where to start.

There is certainly no shortage of highly targetable mobile inventory available for you to utilise; through Real Time Bidding (RTB) Ad-Networks, Exchanges, DSPs, market places, and ad-serving publisher SDKs – billions of mobile consumers can be granularly targeted and reached instantly.

To access media across these platforms however, you will be typically buying on a CPM (cost per thousand impressions) or CPC (cost per click) basis, and will need to understand the principles of RTB and programmatic buying to maximise the opportunity. Therefore, not only are you having to take a risk in buying clicks and impressions that may, or may not, drive results; but your technical knowledge, analytical skills and targeting sensibilities (device, OS, GEO etc) all need to be highly attuned if you’re to optimise the campaign efficiently  and yield a positive return on your spend. It’s a fascinating and powerful, but incredibly labour intensive use of your time and budget.

For this very reason, savvy advertisers big and small are partnering with mobile publisher networks (aka, mobile affiliate networks) who can completely alleviate both the strain on resource, and the risk of un-profitable spend. Such networks (not to be confused with the aforementioned Ad-Networks, act as a gateway to a fleet of highly talented, independent mobile media buyers (aka publishers/affiliates) who understand the inner mechanics of mobile media buying with holistic expertise and proficiency.

These media buyers will buy targeted CPM and CPC mobile traffic on your behalf, without you having to spend a single penny. All you have to do is set a pre-determined CPA (cost per action) for your campaign; specify your ‘action’ (install app, sign up to a web form, etc), and the price you are prepared to pay for this action – the publishers on the network will then buy targeted mobile traffic, and arbitrage against your fixed CPA rate. The cost of the media is completely covered by the publisher, and you only ever pay for a tangible, pre specified result.

The benefits of such an initiative are glaringly obvious. You retain complete control of your acquisition cost, media budget, target market, campaign restrictions and brand guidelines – you have an expert mobile media team working for you round the clock, generating app installs, leads or sales – and you are now driving targeted, profitable engagements from mobile consumers.