Ads On Android blog

Part 1 (of 2): How to Advertise Your Business on Android

This first part will discuss Android and mobile advertising strategies and how a business can get ready for the new environment. This series is intended for both application developers who want to know how businesses will view their productions from an aggregate agency level competitive point-of-view and businesses wanting to get in front of the Android wave. Surfs up!

The two problems we have as of the date of this writing are: 1. Android isn’t released yet so there is no network to test advertising on, and 2. the mobile web concept is so new and early that businesses don’t yet have the broad desire to buy ads or know how this will work.

But soon these problems will disappear. Android will be happily running on cheap phones for the masses, and businesses will want to interact with users in new, useful ways.

So what’s needed to get a business primed for advertising on the Android platform? The quick answer: scout applications where your business makes sense. Set up an agreement to advertise on them. Add value to users which turns them into customers.

But with all the long-tail publishers, how does a business pick and choose? Is signing up for AdWords Mobile Ads enough?

In an environment like this, many businesses will find it useful to develop a relationship with an ad network, and expect service from the network. First, it should be able to provide examples of how the business will interact with the Android users. If you don’t like what you see, then it isn’t good enough, and go somewhere else. Is the network simply pushing text pay per click or image / video ads onto a mobile browser through AdSense? While that’s one strategy, you don’t want to put all your eggs in the AdSense strategy. Surely you will need a mobile web savvy ad network to come up with the right keywords, creative, and be able to target mobile devices, but you’ll also want your ads to develop more useful, interactive experiences with your users. Consider whether you would enjoy interacting with your business in that way on the Android phone. Make sure you get a list of all the network’s top publishers and that you approve of the quality of those publishers and how they function.

After you establish a comfort level with the user experience the network provides, make sure that there are no strings attached to working with the network and that you have visibility to as much data and segmented reporting as possible. This foundation in the relationship ensures that details are easier to work out at every phase.

In Part 2 of this post, I’ll discuss the fun part for businesses - how do you make the ad relationship work for the business and generate return-on-investment, and how the movable web (mobile model) differs from the stationary web.