Combined On and Off Deck Solutions
The difficulty of working with carriers and advertising on carrier decks has driven many mobile advertisers off-deck, and unless the carriers' business models change, this trend is likely to continue. Just as the lines between on- and off-deck Web access have become blurred, so have the lines between off- and on-deck mobile advertising. In many cases now, mobile ad-serving networks provide access to audiences that are both on- and off-deck. This is especially true of the search engine ad networks, such as Google, Yahoo!, and JumpTap. The trend has also been pushed by ad networks that sell advertising within free downloadable applications; when viewing the ad, the subscriber is neither on-deck or off-deck.
The lines between on- and off-deck Web access are further blurring, as many carriers have opened up their carrier decks, sometimes referred to as a "walled garden" WAP decks to the rest of the Internet. Some carriers are working with top search engines to provide both on- and off-deck search for their subscribers; sometimes it is unclear whether subscribers are searching for or requesting on- or offdeck information. This confusion and obfuscation should be taken as an indication that the carriers do not have a clear plan regarding how their carrier decks and on-deck content will compete in the long-run.
Working with mobile ad aggregators is the best way to bridge the gap and get your advertisements seen both on- and off-deck. According to Deepa Karthikeyan, a data analyst at Wireless Data Services, the top aggregators in the United States in 2009 were AdMob, Google (AdSense), Yahoo! Mobile, ThirdScreen Media, and Amobee. (Ms. Karthikeyan's methodical research also contributed to some of the vendor descriptions at the end of this chapter.) Many of these mobile ad aggregators have networks that span both on- and off-deck, and allow advertisers to include the carrier as a targeting or segmenting feature on their platform.
Continue reading here: Mobile Affiliate Marketing
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