How to Use PPC Networks to Gain Mobile Traffic
PPC is an advertising model where the business pays a fee every time a user clicks on his ad. The advertiser should bid on ad placement to see his ad on the top of the SERP and to make it visible when somebody enters the relevant keyword. The fee per click is variable and depends on the business niche. Everybody has a chance to lower the price creating high-quality ads and making the right settings for his campaign. All settings and financial transactions proceed inside the personal account created on a certain platform (Google Ads, for example).
To make the campaign work and get the best PPC traffic, creating goals is required. You should target a certain audience, identify the outcome you are expecting and specify a budget plan. To track URLs and analyze other metrics is also necessary to improve the campaign and to reveal the relevant or invalid keywords.
The visitors that come from mobile devices are similar to other users. They only browse differently – and that’s all. That’s why the traditional technique of using networks for PPC advertising is still an appropriate way to get high-quality targeted traffic.
PPC traffic arbitrage is valid for mobiles as well. You can choose a network to buy a relevant audience and to sell it with significant revenues. Publishers prefer traffic arbitrage due to the low investments required and its evergreen type.
Mobile Ad Formats
As we’ve already mentioned, the quality and standard of the ad are crucial. Mobile traffic is of great significance for both brands and individuals, which is why everybody is looking for the best mobile ad format. However, such ads are not versatile, but rather distinctively appropriate for only one or several niches. Let’s see some formats that could be very helpful for attracting visitors, however, attracting an audience can be done for free, there are some free traffic sources as well.
1. Interstitial Ads
They usually cover the entire screen of your mobile device having a size of 320×480, 300×400 or 300×250 pixels. Most platforms provide the responsive interstitial ads that suit any screen size.
The interstitial ad appears when the user opens the page, browses between the pages or apps. The ad’s dimensions allow for demonstrating the engaging images, interactive content, call-to-actions. One of its most popular placements is inside the games between their levels. Interstitials demand professional design and lots of creativity. Its CTR might be not very accurate, because of the complicated closure.
2. Video Ads
The expanse of video mobile ads is overwhelming and the trend continues to grow. The average length of a video is up 15–30 seconds. If it is longer, the users won’t watch it up to the end. Besides, the placement should be organic and natural to engage the user, but not force him to close the app. Video Ads make the target audience focus on the ad and they are the best format for brands that can spend a solid budget to produce videos.
3. Expandable Ads
It is a mix of interstitials and banners, and it has a typical size of 320×50 pixels that increases up to 320×480 pixels following a tap. The users are usually more sympathetic to them than to the redirections when the advertisers try to lead them to their websites. There is the option to close the ad in it but the users often miss that reduces the really targeted traffic.
4. Standard Banner Ads
The ads are created with the horizontal shape and have the size of 320 x 50 or 300×50 pixels, and are accessible on all screens because they are often are responsive. The banner can be static or animated and they are affordable and easy to deploy. Despite their popularity, they provoke plenty of non-relevant clicks that lead to a well-known “banner blindness” when people automatically miss the banners they could have been interested in.
5. Native Ads
The ad is a part of content and doesn’t capture the whole screen, but lets the user browse the content and see the ad simultaneously. That’s why native ads are not intrusive – they relate to the article or other content and looks like its component. This unique feature increases CTR and reduces bounce rate. However, this flexible format demands lots of hard work to adapt the ads to a plethora of variants.
There are many other types of mobile ads like, for example, rewarded video ads when people get rewarded for watching the ad that increases the developer’s revenue. Rich media ads include lots of creativity and do their job when the developer wants to stand out from competitors. Specific ads for a certain social media also exist – promoted accounts and promoted trends in Twitter, for example.
Mobile Advertising Networks – The Top 10 List of Mobile Traffic to Buy
Mobile advertising is divided into two categories – Supply and Demand. The first part includes publishers and online software solutions for them to run advertising inventory. The second one is a unified interface to place ads in a publisher’s inventory. Mobile PPC networks are developed as mediators between Supply and Demand. Today, let’s see the top networks that handle the market.
Google Ads
This network is the clear leader due to the high ROI of its advertisers. Moreover, the newest changes allow implementing a comprehensive mobile PPC campaign to businesses of all sizes.
Mobile ads can appear on both tablets and phones. They can include text, images and be built with Google Web Designer. Inside the app, the appearance of text and image ads is possible including video app promotion ads and responsive display ads. Note that the call-only ad is not going to display on the tablet that can’t call.
Google AdWords has some requirements as for the image dimensions – the appropriate sizes for smartphones and tablets are 320×50, 300×250, 336×280 and 300×250, 728×90, 468×60, 336×280 respectively. The average cost per click is from $1 to $2. However, it could be a few cents in case of high conversion or reach even $50 if the niche is very competitive.
| PROS | CONS |
| Set up a single campaign to attract users with any type of mobile device. | Professional assistance to create an effective campaign is desirable. |
| Target clients through their location, search queries or time of visit. | Requires a solid budget. |
| Checking mobile traffic volume is possible. | A lot of restrictions and unclear rules. |
| Top-notch quality of traffic. |
Admob
AdMob by Google is a real “dinosaur” and one of the best mobile advertising networks to buy mobile traffic for monetizing apps. It belongs to Google and offers ads from more than a million advertisers. If you are a developer, just register for a free account and implement SDK into the app. Both CPC and CPM advertising are available.
AdMob connects advertisers with publishers via its mobile marketplace. The advertisers should make and run targeted ads. The publishers generate higher profits from their advertising revenue, and they can monetize their apps by running a set of ads after they’ve downloaded the SDK.
The network supports native ads, interstitials, banner and video ads and lets you increase your revenue with user insights.
The average cost per click is from three to 20 cents. The rates for CPM are $0.5-$2.00 per a thousand impressions for banner ads and $1-$3 for interstitials. 60% of the generated revenue is shared with the publishers and the remaining 40% is retained by the network.
| PROS | CONS |
| Displays ads that are relevant to your audiences with broad targeting. | Not enough simultaneous connections in the free version. |
| Tips and best practices to expand your business. | RPM, CPM is low ,but could be increased by money. |
| Tools to learn how to configure and manage your account in the best way. |
Facebook Ads
The advanced PPC traffic arbitrage can hardly exist without Facebook Ads. It is remarkable for its numerous targeting options and accurate targeting settings (demographics, interest, behavior, etc.). Learn more in Ivan’s speech from a seminar on TPAS.
This network supports video ads and images with the recommended resolution 1,080 x 1,080 pixels. Besides, you can place interactive images (panoramas or 360 photos), customized catalogs (collections), lead generation ads, carousels and slideshows, event responses and others.
It requires a minimum spend of $1-$5 and its minimum CPC is $0.01.
| PROS | CONS |
| Has a global audience, you can reach almost everyone. | More cost-effective when it comes to cost-per-action. |
| Clear and detailed interface. | Facebook Ads sometimes display fake results and not clear statistics. |
Bing Ads
Bing Ads (a Microsoft product) is one from the top PPC traffic sources, because it is helpful to direct traffic to your website or LP and thus raise money. Most high-quality traffic comes from USA, Canada, Great Britain and Australia. Its partners are Apple, Amazon and Yahoo. The network is extremely valuable for Apple apps because 70% of Bing Ads queries come from iOS platforms.
The ad formats available are:
- Expanded Texts;
- Dynamic search ads;
- Product ads;
- Microsoft Audience;
- Bing Ads in Bing Smart Search;
- App Install;
- Standard text ads.
The network is rather expensive, coming in second to Google AdWords. However, it is cheaper after all and this network provides top-notch traffic that is sometimes even better than Google Ads. Its minimum CPC is $0.05.
| PROS | CONS |
| You can use lots of stuff you know from Google AdWords. | No USP – every option in Bing Ads you can find in Google AdWords. |
| Make automatic uploads of your complete AdWords-account. | Complicated settings that could be an issue for rookies. |
| Great customer support. | |
| Really increases your ROI and website traffic if used properly. |
Propeller Ads
This network is in demand, but is developed exclusively for pop traffic. It offers CPM and SmartCPA models of advertising and provides the auto algorithm for campaign optimization according to the objective of getting as many conversions as possible. The platform is compatible with Google AdSense and supports the following ads formats:
- PopUnder;
- Native Direct Ads;
- Interstitials;
- Push up ads;
- Banner ads;
- Push Notifications.
You only need $25 to start your first mobile PPC advertising campaign.
| PROS | CONS |
| The tracking settings are extremely easy. | Does not support PayPal. |
| To launch a test campaign is possible and you only pay for completed conversions in the case of your offer’s good performance. | Mobile ads do not perform perfectly, unlike pop-under and full-page ads. |
| Anti-adblocking tech (that gives you chance to show adds for people who use AdBlock in browser). |
Inmobi
inMobi is one of the independent mobile ad networks and it has managed to cover markets all over the world, including Great Britain, EU, USA and South Africa, and even India. The network offers premium mobile and plenty of other inventory. Giants such as Ford and Levis are among their advertisers.
The network supports HD video and native ads, as well as display and video ads, rich media and full-screen interstitials. The publishers can monetize both gaming and non-gaming apps. The inMobi’s SDK monetizes an app either directly or programmatically. The platform boasts its ability to provide 100 billion impressions per month.
You can hardly find mention of InMobi revenue shared on their website. This is just between the network and the publisher. The CPM rates of mobile advertising are diverse and depend on industries, OS and location. The average price is in the range of a few cents to $2.5 for Android and from $2.5 up to $7.5 for iOS.
| PROS | CONS |
| Free SDK for both iOS and Android devices. | Not friendly to beginners |
| Free opportunity to analyze conversions. | Small audience (for comparison, in FB you get access to more than 1.6B people. |
| HTML5 advanced ad-creation platform |
mOcean Mobile Advertising (form. Mojiva)
This network provides large campaigns with an extensive set of advanced tools. The developers can sell directly due to the self-served management. The successful ads are determined by their content relevance and device specs. Each publisher can track the ROI conversions. The network combines CPC, CPM and pay-per-call campaigns.
The supported ad formats contain rich media, click-to-call, click-to-form, video and click-to-play.
The platform gains revenues from more than 224 million monthly deliveries to smartphones.
| PROS | CONS |
| The constant stream of in-app advertising. | Slow support. |
| Introduces reports and clear results on any running campaign. | |
| In-depth statistics are available. | |
| Brand mobile search tool MAG. |
AdColony (Digital Turbine)
AdColony is the platform that runs CPM, CPA and CPI campaign types, and supports rich media and video ads. It uses demographic targeting and focuses mostly on traffic from the USA. Besides, it accepts banners, in-app, incentivized, interstitial and rewarded videos. The targeting includes behavioral, demographic, device and network factors.
In 2018, the network got 51 billion impressions in five diverse markets — USA, Western and Eastern Europe, East Asia and South America. Its estimated annual revenue was $191.9M. In 2022 AdColony Holdings was acquired by Digital Turbine.
| PROS | CONS |
| Light integration for a credible supply of rewarded video content. | If you do not need a feature you are not able to get rid of it. |
| High fill rates to maximize monetization. | Not global, only for specific markets. |
Tips for Choosing the Best PPC Network
Everybody needs cheap PPC traffic for higher revenue, but the ideal model is a fairy-tale. The secret of success is to choose the most relevant network in terms of the specs of your app, objectives, budget and plenty of other factors. The first reason for choosing is the platform’s billions of ad impressions. Then you should take into consideration the type of the app you are going to monetize. These other points are not to be missed:
- Price of the traffic
- Amount of traffic available
- Quality of the traffic
- Targeting options
- Audience’s peculiarities and its segments
A good way of getting larger revenue is to test some networks and then make a comparison chart in order to choose the optimal platform. To focus on a certain network’s terms and restrictions would be rational as well.
