Reviews of Mobile advertising networks (beta)

The great thing about developing sites on mobile internet right now is that for the first time, you can make real money from advertising.  CPMs of $2 are achievable with traffic from developed mobile markets (e.g. UK) and the small screens on mobile mean that you typically get a lot more page views per user than with the PC web.  The other big change that mobile advertising has brought about is that it's now much easier to promote and drive traffic to a new mobile web site by buying clicks on ad networks.  This has made building up a mobile user base a lot easier.

The question is which ad networks should you use?  We've been experimenting with a few of them, have talked to others about what they use, and have done a bit of research on the others.  For now, here's a quick review of the mobile advertising networks out there.  We'll update this list over time so please leave a comment if you have used any of them or know of new ones. 

Admob - admob is the real daddy of mobile advertising.  They were the first to build scale in mobile  advertising and have a really first class platform for both advertisers and publishers.  The thing that makes admob stand out is the way they have opened up mobile advertising to very small sites by providing  an html link option for very small sites that use site builders like peperonity.  However, on the downside, admob have been jacking up their prices and it now can be quite expensive to target UK users for example.  Also admob dont strictly allow adult advertising although a few advertisers are pushing the boundaries a bit with ads like "games for men" or "hot girls" etc.  Admob have recently launched banner-ad style advertising alongside their text link offering. 

Google mobile ads is the mobile extension of the main ad platformThe success of admob is shown by the fact that Google is more or less playing catch-up in mobile advertising to them.  Apparently, Google mobile employees will agree that admob are streets ahead if you ask them. The rules for google mobile are different than for a traditional site. You are limited to 1 adsense block per page, and you can choose between a single (1 ad) or a double (2 ads). The double ads must be on the bottom of the page but can be above the footer.  People like http://www.surfwap.com seem to be using Google mobile adsense as a fill-in or complement to admob which suggests it's the best alternative.  Google recently launched image/ banner ads for mobile. 

yahoo mobile publisher could in theory be great.  Yahoo have been putting lots of resources into mobile and have some big deals, for example with Vodafone.  They also have a great mobile search product, Onesearch and a much better overall position in mobile search than online.  Unfortunately, it appears to be impossible to sign up with them as an advertiser or a publisher without them manually "approving" you, which is a real joke considering how open the admob system is.  Maybe they are great if you can get on the system, certainly the gurus at Mobileseonews have had a few good words to say about them in conversations with us. 

Admoda runs a general advertising network a bit like admob.  There are a few other differentiators - admoda run off a fixed rate card, not a bidding system, and allow banners/text ad campaigns on both CPC and CPM for all advertisers. According to admoda they have seen 800% growth since last year and have a rebook rate of about 95% suggesting that most advertisers come back and rebook each month.  Apparently they have a large number of publishers earning over $50,000 per month on the platform. 

They also run a completely separate service (even down to the hardware) called adultmoda which allows adult advertising and adult sites to host ads.  Adultmoda has found a good niche in some ways, filling in the gaps that admob doesn't want to fill, a bit like adbrite in the world of the PC web.  Basically, if you are an adult site these are your guys, either as a publisher or advertisers.  They claim to be the only adult-focused mobile ad network.   

Buzzcity - this is a Singaporean company who also run the mygamma mobile community and also do mobile advertising, offering both text and image ads.  They don't have a massive amount of inventory or advertisers yet but quite a few small sites are using them and doing ok according to reports.  They also support html link based advertising which opens up the long tail of small sites and developers.  It's possible to get cheaper rates than admob for targeting UK or US users if you are advertising at small scale.  As a result, you often meet some real fans of buzz city from people that are looking for low volume, low cost traffic.  One quite clever thing we've noticed them doing is linking to admob as a fill-in when they dont have any ads!

Medio are trying to build a similar system to admob and are apparently not doing too badly, although they are hardly a first choice for either publishers or advertisers.  As a publisher, we've found that a problem with their system is that it doesn't yet support sites built in Ruby/ Ruby on Rails (unlike admob).  Medio also seem to be repositioning themselves into mobile search so will be interesting to see how they  develop going forward.  I have heard some people recommend them alongside admob. 

Deck Trade are a part of a US mobile marketing company called Millenial Media.  Whilst they are US focused they have recently expanded their coverage to Europe, Middle East and Africa.  Decktrade have signed up some big sites including MySpace Europe and big advertisers too but they also seem to let you just sign up as an advertiser or publisher pretty easily, even if you're a small player.  Definitely one to watch, we may give them a try as an advertiser.   May be somewhere you can get cheaper US traffic than admob?

Screen Tonic was bought by Microsoft as a way of moving into mobile advertising.  When you think about it, it says a lot that a company with Microsoft's resources couldn't build something organically in such a nascent market.  They seem to be exclusively aiming at mobile operators and major "portals" in terms of getting their ads out there which include a lot of rich media like banners, video ads, interstitials etc.  They have a pretty impressive list of top tier advertisers like major FMCG brands, Coke etc.  Probably not a great option for smaller publishers or advertisers as a result.    

Third Screen Media are part of AOL (NB I thought mobile was the "fourth screen" after cinema, TV, PC hence "Fourth Screen" above but hey).  Third Screen is basically now AOL/ Platform-A's mobile ad server which benefits from links to the AOL Advertising.com ad network.  This could give AOL a good starting point through its existing links to advertisers and publishers.  They claim a good roster of mobile publishers including mocospace and twilightwap, both of whom know what they are doing on mobile.  They seem to have built quite a lot of technology around their platform, including an ad server and ad management system. 

Nokia's mobile ad platform was built on a company called enpocket in order to build a position in the mobile ad market and have been doing a fair job since.  They seem to be good for banner style advertising for publishers which have a brand, a fair bit of traffic and for big advertisers. As a result, I'm not sure they really compete with admob.  Not really seen much about their payouts. 

Doubleclick are a big online ad network that acts as an aggregator, focusing on display type advertising (banners etc).  They were pretty slow to the mobile game however and didn't really build any traction for their double click mobile product. They were acquired by Google recently who obviously already have a much more well developed mobile ad platform.  It seems that as a result, double click is repositioning its mobile offering to be more like an adserver, linking up multiple ad platforms together.

Smaato isn't an ad platform per se - they seem to be some kind of ad server that links to other networks like third screen media, screen tonic etc.  Could be interesting if they offer similar functionality to the big mobile ad server guys but allow smaller publishers to access it?

adshandy (deliberately not linking to this) has a strange name, especially if you know english slang (replace "ad" with "hand").  They reportedly/ allegedly operate some shady practices e.g. a minimum payout of $1000 which means that many small publishers will never see revenue.  Unless you hear otherwise avoid them!

Adbid.mobi could have been really interesting as it is designed for operating as an advertiser or publisher entirely over mobile, which is useful for a lot of the really small sites out there, where wapmasters mainly only have mobile internet access.  Again though, we have heard that they don't pay out so avoid them!

Right that's it for now!  What this post really needs is comments, especially on some of the less well known ad networks and services so we can help fill out the picture a bit more.  Please let us know your experiences with these or other ad networks, and let us know of any new ones.  We will update the post on an ongoing basis. 

Comments

[RAZiB]

Can any 1 plz give me Adbid.mobi s address ? i wanna **** the **** he don't payed my $ 200+ :@

he is a real *******
no, don't want to use any bad word for ds ......

[james (mjelly)]

Sorry to hear that Razi B - let's try and spread the word - avoid Adbid.mobi!

[Diego]

Great post!! But I think you may have miss two important comparations that would help publishers a lot. What is the payout methods of those (CPM? CPC?) and also, how much publishers are earning with them (also in a CPM and in a CPC contract).
Hope others can hace some clue about it

[james (mjelly)]

thanks Diego - you are right CPM/ CPC info would be good. The problem is that this very much depends on the country mix of traffic you have for the open networks (e.g. admob, google mobile). I think some of the premium networks (third screen etc) probably pay very high CPMs for branded environments e.g. mobile operator portals etc

[anonymous]

Nokia, the same thing that happens to Adbid, are not paying the publishers since November 2007. No editor, in my country (I do not know other countries, but I think it will be equal), has received payment from the date indicated.

And still more, nor has submitted any invoice since January 2008.

Both the financial and administrative department, it seems that not constructed, virtually non-existent.

Anyway, I still running Nokia, I suppose, that at some point pay.

Good report ;)

Regards.

[GumSlone]

BTW, just to make it clear.
AdsHandy is a german mobile network, and handy translated into english is a mobile phone, and the meaning of its name is something like mobile ads

[Johnson@mobile-worx.com]

Try ZestADZ for India and Asia Pac Traffic. I am with ZestADZ and happy to say that we have had good successes with branded and un-branded publishers and advertisers.

We will be glad to have you on board if India and Asia Pac is your focus.

Johnson.

[Johnson@mobile-worx.com]

URL is http://www.zestadz.com

Blog is at http://zestadz.wordpress.com

[lada]

I'm using admob for 10 months.They banned my account when I got 1500 USD pending earnings.I've seen a lot of posts all over the internet about admob scam.So try them..and loss your money..

[jack]

admob is shit, my friend had 3500USD in his account and they banned him...

[saleem]

I got paid $500+ from admob.Its amazing

[Admin LeoChat]

Hi all,

I used admob in my site LeoChat. It started working at once, where as, I used Zestadz (India based mobile ads company). Zestadz were not working for a week or so I contacted their support officer, he fixed that problem. But the main problem still exists. Zestadz has a limited number of countries listed, where their ads is displayed and I am in Pakistan (and Pakistan is not in their list).

Admin, LeoChat

[Mobile Advertising]

Thanks for this informative post.

[elsworthbe]

scenarios features worldwide android region

[kensleigha]

fuel emit policymakers references shelf business

[mobile seo]

really handful information thanks for it.

http://www.anww.org

[martin jude]

Need to know the Bid Rates for Mobile Advertising in South Africa & European Countries!!!!!!

I want to know the exact bid rates for mobile advertising in South Africa and European Countries. I tried to get some information on this but the results seemed rather misleading! Is there anyone who can help me on this???