Like any business vertical, any branch of economy, the app business is driven by advertising. It’s behind any doubt – organic traffic, driven by built-in search on app stores, isn’t sufficient to sustain app businesses, today app discoverability is one of the top problems app developers are struggling with. The next issue on an app developer’s list of problems to tackle is retention. Simply put, people don’t use apps, they have on their mobile devices, as often as app developers and publishers would hope or abandon them altogether. App users have a tendency to stick to 3-4 apps they use the most and spend significantly less time on other apps they’ve installed. And finally, finding an effective app monetization model may present a challenge for app developers as well. The freemium model, which is based on making a profit on in-app purchases app users do, dominates the today’s app economy landscape. This model, to be successful for app developers, requires an app advertising company assistance.
All these issues combined lead to mobile advertising platforms as one of the best, if not the best, solution.
As an app developer or advertiser, you are most likely confronted with the question – what mobile advertiser partner to choose? What platforms do they support? By composing the list of Top Mobile Advertising Platforms we want to bring you up-to-date with companies you should consider to drive traffic to your app. As we look at the companies on this list, we can reveal the following trends:
Programmatic Approach – having real-time-bidding (RTB) feature on an ad platform has become really essential. All ad companies are aiming to grow and outperform their competitors. The question is – how can you do that? Any operations that require manual intervention eventually slow down your performance. So the programmatic approach, automation as much of your platform operation as possible is the way. At the end of the day the more sophisticated algorithm of running ads gives a leg up to an ad company to beat its competitors on a market.
Video Format – video ads as an ad channel has become mainstream in 2015, the enormous popularity of videos on Facebook and high performance of app install video ads it hosts are the biggest cues to demonstrate that video ads is the Next Big Thing. All companies on the list offer video ads as one of the available ad formats. The two features that allow some companies video ads to out perform others are – better targeting options and truly non-intrusive way of displaying video ad inside apps.
Global presence – significant part of an ad company success on a market is how well it manages to establish partnership with as many other companies as possible to cover many locations worldwide. To this day the best way to partner is via face-to-face meetings and if your company has an office in your future of existing partner country is always a big plus. That’s why many companies on the list have opened regional offices in various regions worldwide.
Value Proposition Articulation – the more sophisticated your services are, the harder it becomes to present them to your potential customer. This is the challenge that ad agencies are definitely facing. By checking these companies website you’ll see the difference at how well they manage to explain to you their services and what they see as their strengths over competitors.
Check out the list of Top Mobile Advertising Platforms 2015. Companies on this list aren’t in a specific order, the list presents a snapshot of the mobile app advertising industry this year in general.
The Full List
AdMob
Opera Mediaworks
Unity Ads
MoPub
Smaato
InMobi
Applovin
Leadbolt
NativeX
AirPush
Startapp
YeahMobi
AppNext
Avazu
Mobfox
Mobvista
Epom Market
PropellerAds
Clicksmob
Avocarrot
Affle
Matomy
Performance Revenues
AppThis
GoWide
Adatha
Inneractive
Vungle
CPALead
Abmob
AdMob is a mobile advertising network, founded in 2006 by Omar Hamoui and acquired by Google in 2009. It offers app developers a combo solution to analyze, monetize and promote apps. Mobile app analytics solution is powered by Google Analytics, which allows app businesses not only to analyze mobile app performance metrics but to do cross web-mobile analysis as well. AdMob app monetization solutions are based on utilizing various In-App Interstitial ad formats, such as: Full-Page Ad, Magazine-Style Text Ad, App Install Ad, TrueView Ad, as well as In-App Banner ads. AbMob is being used by over 650K apps, it provides fast and reliable payment in local currencies. The company has additional offices in New York, New York; London, United Kingdom; Tokyo, Japan; Singapore; Mumbai, India; Johannesburg, South Africa; Sao Paulo, Brazil; and Pyrmont, Australia.
Tag line: Monetize Your Apps Intelligently
Key features: powered by Google
Mobile platforms: iOS, Android, Unity, Cocos
AdMob Case Study: Etermax
Opera Mediaworks
Opera Mediaworks is a mobile advertising company, founded in 2013 in San Mateo, US. Opera Mediaworks, Inc. operates as a subsidiary of Opera Software ASA. The company provides app businesses with advertising, content distribution, and monetization solutions. It enables brands to reach their target audiences, while allowing their consumers to find and purchase the mobile content and services that are most relevant to their interests. Additionally, Opera Mediaworks offers AdMarvel, an ad-serving and mediation platform; Mobile Theory, a premium mobile ad network in the United States; and 4th Screen Advertising Ltd., a premium ad network in the UK. The company’s exclusive Instant-Play™ HD video technology and award-winning rich media enable brands to interact with consumers in the most popular mobile apps and sites globally. The company works with over 90% of the AdAge Top 100 advertisers and 18 of the top 25 global publishers.
Tag line: To Enable More People, In More Places, To Experience What Matters, When It Matters Most.
Key features: powered by Opera Software, rich set of ad formats and targeting options
Mobile platforms: iOS, Android
Rich Media Advertising
Unity Ads
Unity Ads is the premier ad monetization solution for mobile games, it was launched by Unity Technologies in 2014. It’s designed to facilitate app game developers to monetize their entire player base. The platform ads targeting algorithm allows game developers and publishers to target ads to players that are most likely to be interested to play a particular game. Unity Ads helps advertisers to acquire high-quality users that are engaged, spend more money, and have an overall greater LTV.
Tag line: Maximize Your Game’s Revenue
Key features: high eCPM, high global fill rate, built-in to the Unity Engine, universal SDK, video-only
Mobile platforms: iOS and Android
Unite 2015 – How to make money with Unity Ads without pissing off your players
MoPub
MoPub is a mobile monetization company, founded in 2010 by Bryan Atwood in San Francisco, US and acquired by Twitter Inc. in 2013. The company’s hosted ad serving solution helps publishers drive more revenue from advertising and mobile transactions. MoPub is trusted by leading mobile publishers like Zynga, Ask.fm, NewsRepublic, Tango and many more. The ad serving platform features easy-to-use campaign management, various ad formats – image, text and tile and HTML creative types, banner, full screen interstitial, native, and custom formats MRAID 1.0 and 2.0 support for certified vendors.
Tag line: Drive More Mobile Ad Revenue
Key features: MoPub Marketplace, ad network mediation and serving.
Mobile platforms: iOS and Android
MoPub: Native Ads Offering
Smaato
Smaato is the global real-time advertising platform for mobile publishers and app developers, founded in August, 2005 by Ragnar Kruse, Harald Neidhardt and Petra Vorsteher in San Francisco, US. The company runs one of the biggest independent mobile ad exchange. The core element of the company services is Smaato Publishing Platform (SPX), it presents unique integrated mobile monetization solution that brings mobile, native and programmatic together on a single platform.
90,000+ publishers and app developers use Smaato to advertise and monetize their apps. The company’s platform connects them to over 290+ demand side platforms and over 130+ directly integrated Ad Networks worldwide. Smaato runs 6 billion ads a day, across over 800 million mobile users monthly.
Tag line: The Global Real-Time Advertising Platform for Mobile Publishers & App Developers
Key features: Dynamic Demand solution to match demand source with ad request efficiently, Native Ad Builder, Private Marketplace to limit traffic audience
Mobile platforms: iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone
Smaato Presents: Mobile Programmatic Perspectives #1
InMobi
InMobi is a mobile advertising platform, founded by Naveen Tewari, Amit Gupta, Abhay Singhal and Mohit Saxena in San Francisco, US. The company’s mission is to enable consumers to discover amazing products through mobile advertising. To fulfill the mission, InMobi introduced Miip digital companion concept to serve as an ad curator for consumers. The company was recognized by MIT Technology Review as one of the 50 Most Disruptive Companies in the world. InMobi provides global reach with local service by having 17 offices across the globe. The company’s ad platform reaches 1 Billion monthly active users, and 30,000+ publishers, inclusive of premium and brand-safe inventory.
Tag line: The Discovery Platform for a Mobile-First World
Key features: Miip digital ad companion to deliver rich app discovery experience for users, coverage for 200 countries.
Mobile platforms: iOS, Android, Windows Phone, BlackBerry
The InMobi Story
Applovin
Applovin is a marketing automation and analytics company, founded by Adam Foroughi and Andrew Karam in San Francisco, US. The company was named #8 on Forbes 2015 America’s Most Promising Companies list. The Applovin’s marketing platform helps brands to reach their consumers on mobile. Its real-time data enables brands to make effective marketing decisions across 1 billion mobile consumers worldwide. AppLovin has a headquarter in Palo Alto, with offices in San Francisco, New York, London, and Berlin.
Tag line: Marketing Automation and Analytics
Key features: Similar traits users mobile acquisition, data-driven recommendations, consumers re-engaging, real-time metrics
Mobile platforms: iOS, Android, Amazon
AppLovin – The Fastest Growing Mobile Advertising Company
Leadbolt
Leadbolt is an app discovery and monetization platform for advertisers and mobile app developers, founded by Dale Carr in 2010 in Sydney, Australia. The company’s Direct Deals Marketplace brings app developers inventory optimization and partner matching. Leadbolt delivers 10+ billion ads monthly across 65,000 apps in over 165 countries for companies such as Zynga , Disney, Warner Brothers, Pandora, eBay, Walmart, Outfit7, Tencent, Gree, Glu, Dominos, M&CSaatchi, Baidu, and many others. Leadbolt has offices in Los Angeles – USA, Sydney – Australia and Tokyo – Japan.
Tag line: High Performance Mobile Advertising
Key features: Premium global traffic, advanced partner match technology
Mobile platforms: iOS, Android, Windows Phone
Leadbolt Connect, The Direct Deal Marketplace for Mobile Ads
NativeX
NativeX is the leading mobile game advertising company, founded by Robert Weber, Ryan Weber and Aaron Weber in 2000 in Sartell, US. The monetization options NativeX offers developers are based on a wide range of both reward and non-reward ad formats, including interstitials, Lightning Play™ video, in-house promotions and playable ads all in one SDK. NativeX is been profitable for the last 12 years in a row and has acquired 1+ billion users across 178 countries through multi-year partnerships with top app developers including Sky Vu, Yahoo, and Imangi Studios.
Tag line: The Leading Mobile Ad Technology for Games
Key features: Native ad formats, simple SDK integration
Mobile platforms: iOS, Android
Predictive Analytics Ad Selection Technology by NativeX
AirPush
AirPush is one of the largest ad network for Android OS, founded by Asher Delug in December, 2010 in Los Angeles, US. In 2014 the company was recognized by Forbes and ranked #2 on the “Most Promising Companies” list. The company has approximately 250 employees and offices in Los Angeles and Bangalore, along with sales regions in all major markets. Airpush ad technology powers ads for more that 120,000 apps.
Tag line: Mobile Ads Redefined
Key features: Weekly payments for advertisers, Conversion Optimizer
Mobile platforms: Android, iOS and Mobile Web
Airpush Overview
Startapp
Startup is a mobile advertising company, founded by Gil Dudkiewicz and Ran Avidan in December, 2010 in New York, US. Currently it partners with 150,000+ apps, generating over 1 billion SDK downloads to date. Via direct partnership with app developers, the company is capable to offer advertisers 10 billion+ monthly ad impressions worldwide across a variety of technologically advanced ad units including ads in a 3-D format. It was recognized by Forbes as one of the 5 Innovative Ad Tech Companies.
Tag line: Our desire is to Inspire. Innovate…Mobile
Key features: 3-D ad format, runs ads on 100,000+ apps, powers ads for more than 50% of world’s top grossing apps
Mobile platforms: iOS and Android
StartApp Smart Targeting
YeahMobi
YeahMobi is a performance based mobile advertising company, founded by Peter Zou and Frank Wang in May, 2009 in China. It’s a subsidiary of NDP Media Corp. YeahMobi is one of the top mobile performance marketing companies on the market. It has offices in China, US, Japan and Germany. YeahMobi works with both supply and demand sides, including many top direct advertisers, owning large numbers of mobile apps in China and world regions. Its partners network includes a great number from US, Europe, MEA, SEA and Japan.
Tag line: The Leading Mobile Performance Marketing Platform
Key features: Global partnership with publishers and affiliates, Programmatic Advertising and Retargeting Platform
Mobile platforms: iOS, Android, Windows Phone and Blackberry
Yeahmobi website homepage
Mobilecore
mobileCore is a mobile ad platform, launched by ironSource in 2012. The solution is primarily focused on facilitating app developers to increase user engagement and to acquire high quality users. The mobileCore SDK is easy to integrate with self-learning algorithms that assess the best way to display ads in an app. The company has 4 local offices in US, Israel, China and Ukraine.
Tag line: Turning great apps into scalable businesses
Key features: Server-to-server integration, native ads inventory, cost-effective buying from AppNexus, Facebook and Google networks.
Mobile platforms: iOS and Android
mobileCore website home page
AppNext
AppNext is a mobile app discovery company with a platform that operates on a self-serve CPI bidding basis. It was founded in 2012 by Elad Nantason. The company allows advertisers to accurately target their preferred audience, and buy directly from the top-performing publishers. The AppNext platform hosts a community of 25,000+ app developers and top app advertisers. It’s sophisticated platform serves 12+ billion app requests monthly, in 180 countries, with 380 million unique users, and dozens of media partners.
Tag line: Grow Your Mobile Business by Promoting Apps
Key features: API, Native Ads SDK, Unity, Marmalade and Corona frameworks support
Mobile platforms: iOS and Android, Windows Phone and Blackberry
Adding an app to Appnext
Avazu
Avazu is an online advertising and digital marketing company, founded by Yi Shi in October, 2009 in Shanghai, China. The company is the part of Avazu Holding, it consists of Avazu (mobile advertising), Teebik (mobile gaming) and aFund (early-stage investment fund). Avazu is one of the fastest growing TMT enterprises in China. Currently Avazu Holding is operating offices in Berlin, Amsterdam, Shanghai, Beijing, Xian, Hong Kong, Los Angeles.
Tag line: A Leading Advertising Platform with Global Coverage
Key features: Focused on Chinese companies promotion outside China
Mobile platforms: iOS and Android
Avazu Mobile DSP
Mobfox
MobFox is a mobile advertising company, founded by Julian Zehetmayr and Maximilian Springer in 2010 in Vienna, Austria. The company’s ad network has 20,000 mobile publishers and many of world’s largest third party exchanges. MobFox provides comprehensive support for multiple advertising formats including banner, interstitial, video and native, to maximize monetization potential for publishers.
Tag line: The Open Mobile Advertising Platform
Key features: RTB, native ads, open source SDK, 30+ ad networks integrated, video ads
Mobile platforms: iOS and Android, Windows Phone
MobFox homepage
Mobvista
Mobvista is a mobile advertising and game publishing company, founded by Robin Duan in March, 2013 in Hong Kong, China. Currently the company’s mobile app ad network distribution covers 236 countries and receives more than 10 billion daily impressions. The company’s platform offers solutions for advertisers, publishers and affiliates. For advertisers it offers ad exposure in high quality apps and brands, for publishers it offers a one-stop-shop solution, with over $5M / a month current level of monthly payments. The company’s affiliates get exclusive ad offers, industry leading eCPM and sophisticated self-development guidance.
Tag line: The Open Mobile Advertising Platform
Key features: Global reach (about 240 countries), 10,000+ traffic sources
Mobile platforms: iOS and Android
How to Monetize your Android Apps?
Epom
Epom is an ad serving company, founded by Anton Ruin in 2010 in Kiev, Ukraine. The company provides white label ad serving solutions for advertisers, publishers and ad networks. The clients lineup consists of such companies as DoubleClick, Verizon, BBB, Wooga and other companies, it results in Epom serving over 120 billion ad impressions each month. Epom flagship products are Epom Ad Server and Epom Market.
Tag line: Leading Ad Serving Platform for Networks
Key features: white label ad solutions, 50 ad formats support, 5+ years on the market
Mobile platforms: iOS and Android
EPOM Ad Server for Networks
PropellerAds
PropellerAds media is an online advertisting company, founded in 2011. The company’s platform matches advertisers offers with publishers needs and enables them to launch ad campaigns, based on CPM, CPL or CPA model. The ad server solution supports eCPM real-time optimization, detailed statistics and 24/7 support to resolve advertisers issues quickly and efficiently.
Tag line: Professional Media Solutions
Key features: retargeting, video ads (pre-roll, post-roll, overlay), banners, onclick ads, CPM, CPA and CPL models
Mobile platforms: iOS, Android and Web.
PropellerAds media website home page
Clicksmob
ClicksMob is a mobile performance company, founded in 2012 by Yossi S., Vadim Drabkin and Rotem Amar in San Francisco, US. The company’s mobile-only ad platform allows advertisers to launch ad campaigns on CPI, CPA or CPL basis, with real-time optimization in 150+ countries. ClicksMob offers over 500 ad offers for each supported OS to meet any traffic needs.
Tag line: Only Mobile. Only Performance.
Key features: dedicated success managers, broad range of traffic sources, easy-to-use payment methods
Mobile platforms: iOS, Android
ClicksMob Introduction
Avocarrot
Avocarrot is a native mobile advertising platform which provides real rewards on mobile apps, founded by Conno Christou, George Makkoulis, George Eracleous and Pana Papageorgiou in London, UK in 2012. The company is laser-focused on native ads to deliver users ad interaction experience that matches look & feel of any app. Avocarrot was awarded as 1 of the 8 best companies by Google for Entrepreneurs in a global competition and voted as the ‘Next Big Thing’ at the advertising technology conference ad:tech in 2013.
Tag line: Fix The Core Of Mobile Advertising By Empowering App Developers.
Key features: personalized revenue assistant tech, transparent reporting, easy native ads integration, light-weight SDK
Mobile platforms: iOS, Android, Unity
H.E.R.O. – A Fully Automated App Revenue Assistant by Avocarrot
Affle
Affle is Singapore headquartered company that offers Mobile Apps and Ads as a Service (MAAS) platform for marketers and publishers. Founded in 2006 Anuj Kumar, Anuj Khanna Sohum and the group of the entrepreneurs in Singapore. For commerce marketplaces the company provides solutions for audience and transaction growth, as well as audience engagement and monetization.
Tag line: Mobile Audience As a Service Platform
Key features: tools to build & analyze apps, solutions to promote & optimize apps, app monetization tools, 9 years on the market
Mobile platforms: iOS, Android
Affle – Mobile Audience as a Service Platform
Matomy
Matomy Media Group is a global and multichannel performance-based advertising solutions company, founded by Adi Orzel in Tel Aviv, Israel in 2007. The suite of peformance-based solutions for publishers and advertisers delivers multichannel and global coverage for their apps. Matomy’s solutions facilitate affiliates and publishers to get the most value from their traffic, social games, mobile optimized websites and apps with a variety of monetization models, robust ad serving, and reliable payment. For advertisers, agencies and networks, Matomy offers effective campaign management and performance optimization.
Tag line: Multi-Channel Performance Advertising
Key features: advertise & monetize tools for display, mobile, video, email channels, domain parking
Mobile platforms: iOS, Android
Matomy Media Group Introduction
Performance Revenues
Performance Revenues is a performance based mobile affiliate network company, founded in 2011 in Tel Aviv, Israel by Oded Former. To advertisers, the company deliver great volumes of daily downloads, with a wide variety of diverse traffic sources to choose from. Years of expertise, coupled with providing dedicated account managers, allows the company to be a reliable user acquisition partner. To Affiliates, Performance Revenues offers multiple exclusive and top paying offers, in popular verticals such as mobile games, utilities, dating, travel and more.
Tag line: Let Your Online Marketing Perform
Key features: performance based payments, thousands of traffic sources, fraud & brand protection
Mobile platforms: iOS, Android
Performance Revenues website home page
AppThis
Appthis is an app discovery platform focused on native advertising, founded by Jim Mansfield and Mike Fitzgerald in March, 2014 in Denver, US. By utilizing machine learning and data analytics, the company runs sophisticated app discovery and mobile ad platform to advertise apps on mobile devices. AppThis platform allows to reach app users with a variety of ad formats, including native/in-stream and targeted appwalls. While keeping its focus on excelling at app distribution, the company has got a solid record of succeeding across a variety of advertiser objective formats such as direct response, click-to-call, and video.
Tag line: International Mobile App Distribution
Key features: machine learning, global app add localization, non-incentivized traffic
Mobile platforms: iOS, Android
Appthis website home page
GoWide
GoWide is a global mobile ad platform, launched in 2013. It features App Booster – a mobile app incentive traffic generation tool, Managed Buys – tailor-made app user acquisition solution and Affiliate Network – the solution for app developers to increase their mobile revenue stream.
Tag line: Global Mobile Inventory Converted To Results
Key features: one-stop-shop incentive traffic buying tool, managed buys solution powered by the team of seasoned media buyers.
Mobile platforms: iOS, Android
GoWide website home page
Adatha
Adatha is the ad network company, founded in 2014 in Madurai, India. It provides a platform to match advertisers traffic needs with publishers offers. By utilizing the sophisticated CPI bidding system, as well as savvy CPC, CPI and CPA partnerships with mobile publishers, the platform allows app developers and advertisers to increase ROI of an app traffic they advertise. The Adatha platform marketing channels toolbox consists of such channels as Paid Search, Social Media, Video Promotion, App Discovery, Ad-Icons, E-mail, App Review, In-App Display Advertising, and Virtual Currency, to provide app developers with premium user interaction.
Tag line: The Mother of All Ad Networks
Key features: CPA/CPL/CPC/CPM optimization, LTV analysis
Mobile platforms: iOS, Android
Adatha website homepage
Inneractive
Interactive is a mobile ad exchange company, founded by Offer Yehudi and Ziv Elul in Tel Aviv, Israel in 2007. The Inneractive ad platform consists of a mobile Supply Side Platform (SSP), a Private Marketplace and an Open Ad Exchange that combine RTB with native and video ad solutions.The company’s mission is to empower mobile publishers to maximize the full potential of their properties by providing powerful technologies for buying and selling mobile ads. Inneractive is headquartered in Tel Aviv with offices in London, San Francisco and New York.
Tag line: A Global Independent Mobile Ad Exchange Focused On Powering Native And Video Ads
Key features: Inneractive Exchange ad marketplace, engaging native ads, sophisticated reports
Mobile platforms: iOS, Android
Inneractive Story
Vungle
Vungle is a video ads-serving company, founded by Jack Smith and Zain Jaffer in 2011 in San Francisco, US. The company’s value proposition to app businesses is entirely focused on delivering highly personal video ad experience to end users. Its motto – to ensure no two users have the same video ad experience. Vungle products provide infrastructure for app monetization through video ads. The company runs ads on 200+ million people mobile devices worldwide each month. Vungle is a global company with offices in San Francisco, London, Berlin and Beijing.
Tag line: Making Video Ads Personal
Key features: simple, flexible SDK, high global fill rate, skippable and non-skippable interstitials ads, opt-in ads, storefront placements
Mobile platforms & plugins: iOS, Android, Unity, Corona, Cocos2d-x, AbobeAIR
Life at Vungle
CPALead
CPALead is mobile & web affiliate network company, founded in 2006 in Las Vegas, US. The company’s business focus on delivering the best iOS & Android mobile apps and web monetization solutions for developers. Over the years CPALead has built the extensive network of advertisers that allowed the company to pay out $100M+ to more than 200,000 members in 200 countries. CPALead referral program provides additional rewards for generated traffic, such as medallions, iPads, T-shirts. In 2011 it was recognized by Inc. 500 as the 40th fastest growing company in US.
Tag line: Monetizing Traffic Since 2006
Key features: Offer Wall, Content Locker tech.
Mobile platforms & plugins: iOS, Android, Web.
Introducing CPAlead
Final Thoughts
We hope you’ll find it as useful tool for you to improve your app business, to get more users, increase retention and revenue. During your mobile advertising partner selection process, make sure you have a good understanding of app traffic sources a specific company offers and its pricing structure. Also it’s important to know that your app traffic driving partner company has a reliable and efficient technical support. We hope this mobile advertising platforms guide will help you to move your business forward and increase its profitability.
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