inneractive Makes More Money for Mobile Developers
By: Hillel Fuld
If you haven’t noticed, everyone is talking about mobile apps. Everyone I know has an idea for a great app, everyone has an opinion on the best apps, and every player in the mobile industry is obsessed with app numbers. What most people don’t realize or talk about is that every app has a creator, its developer. These developers work day and night on their apps, and are then faced with major challenges when it comes to marketing and selling that app.
The whole development process is a complicated one, and I am not talking about the actual coding. Getting your app noticed, downloaded, and most importantly, not deleted from a user’s phone is a lot harder than it sounds. However, we already discussed the discovery issue and Appboy’s out of the box solution.
The other major challenge that developer’s face is of course making money. Even if your app is good enough to charge money for, chances are there is a free alternative out there, and so users will naturally hesitate before paying for your app. In fact, over 80% of all mobile apps are now free, so it is safe to say that with the exception of a small elite, developers cannot get away with charging per download.
So if you are not going to charge per download, how is a developer supposed to generate revenue from their apps? There are of course several possibilities with new creative solutions popping up all the time. Some of the available options include in-app purchases, a freemium model, and then there is in-app advertising.
While in-app purchases are gaining traction among some major apps, in-app advertising seems to do the job for most developers offering free apps. Just take a look at Angry Birds for Android and how well the mobile advertising model works for Rovio. Yes, Angry Birds is the exception, but you would be surprised at how much money mobile developers are making from in-app advertising.
Just to address the users of these apps, they are getting a free app that otherwise would have cost them money. Now, we can get into the debate about advertising in general, but at the end of the day, a little company called Google seems to have proven the model. It is therefore no surprise that mobile advertising is a multi billion dollar industry, and guess what? It is continuing to grow.
inneractive is a company that works closely with mobile developers to maximize their app revenue. How does inneractive do this?
By now, you have probably heard of many mobile ad networks, such as the famous one that was acquired by Google, Admob. Well, inneractive takes over 70 ad networks and premium ad agencies and integrates them all into one cross-platform SDK. That means that developers have the benefit of relevant ads within their apps, which of course increases the click through.
Let me explain. If a user is in a sports app and is presented with a sports-oriented ad, not only are there more chances that the user will click the ad, but the overall experience of the user is enhanced. After all, they are seeing ads that are relevant and of interest to them.
inneractive supports all the mobile platforms and not to get too technical, but while some mobile advertising companies pay developers $1 per 1000 impressions (eCPM), inneractive pays three times that. inneractive also has a higher click through rate as mentioned above, and at the end of the day, the developers who integrated inneractive’s simple SDK are making more money per month.
In addition, inneractive actually works one on one with mobile developers on their ad placement strategy, which is of utmost importance when it comes to clicks. An ad placed in an annoying location will not only yield negative results in terms of clicks, but it will annoy users, which is the last thing anyone wants.
In conclusion, some people are still very skeptical about mobile ads and ruining the user experience of an app by integrating ads. At the end of the day, developers need to monetize their work, and given all the different possibilities, in-app advertising seems to be the most practical solution both for the user and the developer.
Since this is a hot topic, I expect to hear some opposing opinions to my take on the matter. As always, hit me up in the comments or reach out to me on Twitter. I am @hilzfuld and inneractive can be found at @inneractive.
Full disclosure: I do marketing for inneractive.
