The Most Common Mobile Ad Formats for Mobile Advertising

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Whether you’re interested in in-app advertising or want to advertise on a mobile website: you need the right advertising format! In this article, the mobile ad formats available for mobile advertising campaigns and guidelines for their creation are shown and discussed.

Incent Mobile Ad Formats

First, we want to explain a few formats you can use for incentivized advertising campaigns. Incentivized campaigns are supposed to encourage the users to interact with the displayed ad by offering a reward in return.

Offerwall

An offerwall is a display of advertisements that features other apps and oftentimes can be found within apps. These ads are mainly part of incentivized install or engagement campaigns. With install campaigns, the user gets a reward when he/she downloads the app and completes its installation. When choosing engagement campaigns, the user has to accomplish a specific action inside the app before he/she gets a reward. Possible actions can be the completion of a specific level or the process of setting up a new account for an app.

 

Rewarded Video

A rewarded video is a modified video ad designed for an in-app environment, offering users rewards such as coins, credits or an extra life or playtime in return for viewing the clip. However, the download itself is not incentivized and users choose to install the app themselves. Therefore, rewarded videos represent a mixture of incentive and non-incentive advertising.

Rewarded Video has quickly become one of the fastest growing ad units in digital marketing because they:

  • are completely opt-in and do not damage the user experience
  • increase user engagement
  • help developers to increase their revenue
  • and provide higher viewability rates for advertisers.

Additionally, rewarded video ads create a win-win situation for developers and users, since they balance monetization and user experience. On one hand, users only have to watch if they want to get a reward; hence it doesn’t distract or disrupt the user experience. On the other hand, app developers still have the possibility to monetize their app with advertisements.

Non-Incent Mobile Ad Formats

With non-incent mobile ad formats, advertisers can address and catch the attention of users that are truly interested in their product. Since they don’t get a reward for downloading the app, the install is completely by choice and most likely a lasting decision. In the following, we will explain a few formats that fit into this category.

Banner

A banner ad is a rectangular graphic ad, either text or image based. It is placed on the side edges of a mobile interface and stays on screen while the user interacts with the app.

Ad servers deliver those banner ads to a certain application or website. If a banner ad is displayed, the user can click on this banner and is then taken to the App Store or a corresponding landing page. Since the format of banner ads is largely accepted, advertisers can easily place their advertisements in apps or on websites and publishers can accept ads from most advertisers.

Banner ads are usually paid via cost per impression (CPI), cost per click (CPC) or cost per action (CPA) and mostly aim to promote a brand or to activate or reactivate users. They have been the most popular form of mobile advertising for the last years but now seem to lose some popularity as Native and Video Ads become more popular.

Interstitial Ads

According to the IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau), advertisers can place interstitial ads before, in between or after the primary content experience. In any case, there should be a natural break, for example when the user is navigating between content. Contrarily, ads that overlay or cover the content a user is looking at interrupt the user experience and aren’t considered interstitial but pop-up ads.

Additionally, the IAB guidelines require a clear close button that is available from the appearance of the ad. This also means that they disapprove of a countdown users have to endure before allowing them to close the ad.

Video Ads

Since all forms of moving images or active content are really popular these days, video ads are a great choice for a mobile ad format. They embody an opportunity to effectively reach a high percentage of mobile users.

The IAB generally distinguishes between three different forms of video advertisements:

  1. In-Stream: The video ad appears pre-, mid- or post-roll within the environment of a video content the user chose to watch, e.g. a video on YouTube.
  2. Out-Stream: The video ad appears within other content that either includes text or images.
  3. Other Non-Video Environment: The video ad appears in other content environments like in-feed or between content lists. Additionally, the advertiser can place his/her video ad within another display advertisement

Native Ads

A native advertisement matches its environment in an application or on a website visually and behaves consistently with the native user experience. This way, the advertisement should feel just like natural content to the user and avoids distracting the content experience.

Well-known examples for platforms that use this type of advertising are social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr.

Furthermore, they can appear in many different ways:

  • Content Recommendation
  • Search Ads
  • In-Feed Ads
  • Promoted Listings
  • In-Ad With Native Elements
  • Custom Ads

The main goal of native ads is to address the target audience to an enjoyable extent without being obtrusive.

Rich Media Ads

The idea of rich media ads is to encourage users to higher interaction and engagement with the ad by combining different features like video or audio. Additionally, users can activate certain effects where the ad expands, floats etc.

For instance, these are all creative types available at Google’s DoubleClick Studio:

  • Expanding
  • Interstitial
  • Banner
  • Banner with floating
  • Multi-directional expanding (MDE)
  • Multi-floating interstitial
  • Push-down
  • Peel-down
  • Video
  • VPAID

You can visit Google’s Rich Media Gallery for more detailed information and real examples for each of these types.

All in all, rich media ads are much more complex than traditional formats like banners. With the help of HTML5 technology, advertisers can layer multiple types of content. Videos, games, tweets and many more formats can be included in just one ad.

Visit our website to learn which dimensions and formats we support for each ad type that we offer.

The Advantages of In-App Advertising

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Developers oftentimes use in-app advertising as a strategy to monetize their free app. In this article, we will explain how in-app advertising works and which ad formats are the most common to implement into an app.

How Does In-App Advertising Work?

With in-app advertising, app owners have the opportunity to sell advertising spaces to advertisers and publishers to make a profit with their app. The real-time-bidding market mainly controls and determines the whole process. In other words, every time the app is loading, the highest bidder of a real-time auction can place his/her ad within the sold advertising space of the app. You can provide your own advertising spaces for advertisers through ad networks or ad exchanges.

The biggest advantage of in-app advertising is the direct interaction of the user with the app as the ad is displayed. This is why most people will react to the ad as opposed to traditional display advertising where it might even be overseen. Nonetheless, there are reasons to be careful: you have to balance the amount of advertising and content! If the user feels suffocated by ads, he might react annoyed and abandon the app.

Since most mobile users spend their time within mobile apps, the in-app advertisements will most likely reach great audiences. A good example for effective in-app advertising is Facebook: as of April 2015, the company made over 70% of their advertising revenue through mobile devices. If done right, it will definitely pay off!

The Different Ad Formats for In App Advertising

In the following, we will take a closer look at the most common and established ad formats for in-app advertising.

Banner Ads

A banner ad is a rectangular ad that either includes images or text. It is placed on the side edges of a mobile display and stays on screen while the user interacts with the app or website. If the user clicks on the banner, it takes him/her directly to the App Store or another corresponding landing page.

The banner ad is a largely accepted format, hence advertisers can place their ads in most apps or websites. In turn, publishers are able to display the ads of most advertisers.

Rich Media Ads

The purpose of rich media ads is to encourage users to higher interaction and engagement with the ad by combining different features like video or audio. Additionally, users can activate certain effects where the ad expands, floats etc.

All in all, rich media ads are much more complex than traditional formats like banners. With the help of HTML5 technology, advertisers can layer multiple types of content. Like that, they can include videos, games, tweets and many more in one single ad.

Native Ads

A native advertisement matches its environment in an application or on a website visually and behaves consistently with the native user experience. Well-known examples for platforms that use this type of advertising are social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr.

The main goal of native ads is to address the target audience to an enjoyable extent without being obtrusive.

Interstitial Ads

Interstitial ads are full screen ads that cover the interface of an app. They typically appear at natural transition points without interrupting the user flow. These points could be between different activities or after the completion of a level.

Usually, the user has the choice to either tap the ad or close it and return to the app.

Video Ads

Video ads can either be displayed pre-, mid- or post-roll, for example on YouTube. In apps, they can appear at natural transition points or breaks similar to interstitial ads.

A special form of video ads is the rewarded video. It is specifically designed for in-app environments and offers users a reward in return for viewing a short video.

Which Is the Best Ad Format?

Many forms of in-app advertising, like reward-based or opt-in videos, go way beyond traditional banners and desktop display formats. Since they are more engaging, adapted to current consumption habits and uniquely positioned to combat ad fraud, they are highly effective.

However, the right format is different from advertiser to advertiser and depends on the purpose of their marketing campaign. For instance, advertisers who want to bring attention to their product will choose larger formats like interstitials that cover and require more space. Therefore, it is important to offer a wide range of spaces for different in-app advertising formats.

Tips on How to Advertise an App Effectively

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After developing and launching your mobile app, the next step on your checklist is to advertise it! To catch your potential user’s attention, this is extremely important. In this article, we want to explain how to advertise an app and introduce some tools that simplify the management process.

Popular Strategies to Advertise an App

In the following, we want to introduce you to the most popular and common strategies for advertising an app. They include free as well as paid tactics and you can decide which one best fits your app and budget.

ASO

App store optimization, also known as ASO, is the cornerstone of advertising an app. With ASO, you can optimize your app and perfect its app store features, relating to both appearance and findability.

By implementing suitable keywords in the title and description of your app, you can increase ranking position in the app stores and ensure that users find it easily.

Furthermore, by designing a unique and memorable icon together with screenshots and maybe even a video, which explains the benefits of your app, you can convince the user to download your app. Learn more about this topic here.

Word of Mouth

Since most people make a buying decision based on recommendations and suggestions of people they know, word of mouth publicity is very important for an app. Make sure, your users are content with your app and encourage them to review or recommend it to others.

You can even give them the opportunity to share it directly with their friends – which leads us to our next point.

Social Media

Social Media is a great tool to connect all users of an app – and alert others who haven’t discovered it yet. On one hand, you can include options for users to interact within the app or communicate with them on Facebook. On the other hand, you can suggest to them to invite their friends and share the experience together – potentially with a reward in return.

Now that you learned about how you can use social media for free, let’s look at a few paid options.

Facebook Ads

Facebook is probably the best choice for advertising an app through social media since it has the widest reach. In 2016 alone, it had 1.71 billion monthly active users – with 56% of them logging in more than once per day. Another advantage is the possibility of addressing users on a personal level since you can aim the ad at a specific target group and their interests.

Twitter Ads

Besides Facebook, Twitter is also a great tool to reach new users. Though the ad placement works similar to Facebook, Twitter has a big advantage: here you can communicate easily with the users who react to your ad.

Influencer Marketing

With so-called influencers, like YouTubers and Instagrammers, you can reach a unique group of users, who follow and trust their idol. You can let them advertise your app to their followers by posting videos or pictures featuring your product. Additionally, you can choose influencers with a significant reach and ask them to review your app.

Search Ads

Both the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store offer their own ways for you to advertise an app.

Under Android, you can make use of sponsored Search Results, which are search ads on Google Play. They enable developers to heighten the users’ awareness for their apps resulting in more frequent and easier discovery by users.

With Search Ads in the App Store, developers can place their app above other search results. Keep in mind though, they’re only available in the U.S., UK, Australia and New Zealand. You can create a Search Ad Campaign with Apple’s self-service dashboard and there is no minimum spend or additional costs, unless the user taps the ad. Apple has set a bidding system for this feature, which makes it possible to set a price according to your current budget. You can check out Apple’s website for more detailed information.

Traditional Advertising / In-Store

Of course, you can use traditional methods to advertise your app as well! For instance, your ads can be broadcasted on TV or the radio – which will grant you great reach albeit require a much higher budget.

If you run a store, for example a clothing store, and create a mobile app for that purpose, you can advertise your app locally. This way, customers who visit your shop take notice of your app and may use it to purchase something later on in the convenience of their home.

Helpful Tools for Advertising an App

Now that you received a first impression how to advertise an app, learn how to organize and monitor your campaign with the following tools.

Advertising Campaign Management

The term advertising campaign management combines all steps from planning a strategy to finding the right user segment for the product and addressing them appropriately. More specifically, you approach the general public through advertising in the media, while reaching out to existing users personally, e.g. via e-mails. The last step is to evaluate the results of the campaign.

With different software and programs, like advertising dashboards, advertisers can access their campaigns’ reporting and measure their performance across different metrics and assets. This data helps advertisers to identify optimization opportunities and subsequently to adjust the campaign.

Ad Targeting

Ad targeting, also known as targeted advertising, is a method of tailoring adverts to a specific target group or user segment. Therefore, you analyse the past behavior, demographics and psychographics of your users and create ads according to this data. By doing so, you can address your users and appeal directly to their interests.

This method assists you in finding the right users, who will respond positively to your app and reduce the chance of annoying uninterested users. This also prevents you from investing in ineffective advertising campaigns.

Advertising Dashboard

Advertising dashboards are a helpful tool to measure and supervise the key metrics of an advertising campaign. This indicates where you have to make improvements early on in your campaign. For example, when you detect a poor click-through-rate for some ads, you know that you have to optimize them.

And remember: the sooner you can identify and solve problems with any part of your advertising campaign the better your results in the end. Therefore, constant monitoring of your campaigns is a big part of the success of your app!