April 27, 2021

Did you know that more than 70% of web traffic comes from mobile devices?

With more than 5.8 billion unique mobile users in the world, it comes as no surprise that mobile traffic has grown exponentially in the last 10 years. For those looking to advertise, set up mobile ads, and create mobile-friendly websites, you’re in luck as consumers spend more than 5 hours a day on their smartphones.

If you are looking to get into mobile ads, here is what you need to know. 

1. What’s the First Thing You Should Do?

Know who your customers are.  

Try creating an ideal customer persona by brainstorming different characteristics about them.  Creating the ideal customer for who your mobile ad is targeting is going to give you a lot of answers for the direction you want your ads to go and what demographics you are pinpointing. 

Ask broad questions like:

• How old are they and what gender are they?
• Do they have a marital status or are they single?
• Do they have children, or even like them?
• Do they own a home or rent?
• What geographical location do they live in or frequent?
• What is their occupation or dream job?
• How long have they been with their current job?
• What is their education level?
• What is their annual salary like?

Then ask more personal questions like

• What are their hobbies and interests?
• What kind of books, music, and media do they consume?
• Do they have any favorite websites, networks, or news channels?
• Are they into fitness, sports, and health? 
• How tech-savvy are they?
• What are their personal goals & dreams?
• What obstacles do they face in life?
• How can you help solve their pain points? 
• How can you make their quality of life better? 

Understanding who your customer is and what their needs are is going to tell you what kind of mobile ads work best for them.

Always remember that those on the go will have busier weekends and evenings, while weekdays are less so. 

If your customer is nationwide or international, you may need to use geotargeting to market specifically to them. 

2. Look at Conversion Points & Search Terms

Once you know who you will be targeting, you want to decide on what actions you want them to take. This could be phoning you, emailing, making an appointment, signing up for a newsletter, registering for an event, or submitting contact info. 

You will also need to choose and find your most valuable search terms and decide on whether you want to zone in on a few or use a broader approach.

This will require testing to see which terms perform better and narrow them down as you go.

3. Make Your Website Mobile-Friendly

You can either choose to make a native mobile website that is specifically built for mobile or you can choose to use a responsive website design. A responsive design will adapt your website to the screen it appears on without losing functionality or aesthetics.

This works well if you want to grab analytics from one place or you want the information to completely fit on one page without scrolling movement.

A native mobile website will have a different URL address from your desktop version, but it has a much faster load time because it loads less information at a time.

4. Use Popular Mobile Ad Formats

1. 1. Search ads are popular because it is easy to see if someone has clicked it and followed through. Plus, there are many categories you can use but be aware that bids for these are higher than desktop ads.
      
   2. Screen-filled ads are good if they show up occasionally.
   3. Banner ads are less popular because they can be very annoying to the user. They appear cheap, take up a lot of screen space and can appear anywhere on the page.

5. Part Your Ads Across the Day

This is called dayparting and is a great technique to spend your mobile advertising wisely. It is used to target the most customers at peak times when you know your customers will be using their phones. For instance, restaurants target customers right before mealtime, and businesses targeting moms and dads will send out ads in the middle of the day. 

The trick here is to allocate your budget according to peak engagement times. Look at when your conversions spike and spend more during those hours. 

6. Choose an Ad Network to Use

Different networks allow you to target different types of channels that are useful for different types of ads.

1. 1. A blind network is good for targeting content channels or by country and is fantastic for mobile ads running by cost-per-click actions.  This type of network will have a large portion of advertisers and publishers, so you get more impressions.
      
   2. A premium blind network has a larger portion of premium publishers and is really good for brand advertising and mobile ads that run on a cost/1000 impressions (CPM).  You may also be able to use cost/action (CPA) on these types of networks where you only have to pay if a customer clicks through your ad and makes a purchase.
      
   3. A premium network focuses on high-prestige publishers but has a smaller network. Campaigns here are good for brand advertising as they often use the cost per 1000 impressions basis. They will attract really large brand advertisers who want to pay premium prices to secure top-tier mobile advertising.
   4. Affiliate networks are good if you are only looking to pay when a conversion is achieved successfully. It is also good if you want to specify where your ads run. 
   5. A local ad network would be the last one, which are quite a bit more costly to use but they do deliver high-targeted results. Ads here are likely to be in directories.

 If you are interested in serving mobile ads for your business, give us a call at (407) 637-2831 or fill out a contact form today!