If you’re a regular on our blog, you probably recall the recent article we released on the role social media plays in your brand’s image. Today we’re back with an article covering a topic that goes hand in hand—online advertising.

The end of the year is near, which means it’s already time to have a look back at 2016! Figures of a KPCB report on Internet Trends depict what looks like a promising future for app creation in 2017, in developed and affluent countries, where mobile penetration is high, among which Germany, Italy, Korea, Japan, Russia and of course, the USA.

With new mobile centric customer behaviors, monetizing one's app seems to be an attainable goal, now more than ever before. Yet, questions such as which positioning to adopt or, what are the solutions to consider to make a mobile app profitable, remain to be assessed. Ready for a quick overview?

As an app publisher considering advertising to monetize your app, you’ve landed in the right spot. Indeed, with our app builder you have the possibility to enable flexible advertising solutions, with the opportunity to manage them first hand. Today, we will also give you a few guidelines on how to avoid annoying advertising practices and make your ad placements more interesting and ultimately, more effective.

One of the most talked about features of the latest Apple operating system version, iOS 9, is how it now allows its users to enable ad blocking apps. The big question is, will ad blocking become big for mobile or not? Pointers seem to be heading towards a yes. As it turns out, ad blocking apps reached the top spots on the App Store within a day of the iOS 9 release. Crystal, Purify, these are the seemingly innocent names posing as a threat to mobile ad revenues.  

Last week, we attended the webinar « #TweetSmarter: Boost your website traffic with Twitter », the learnings of which we thought we’d share with you so that you can make the most of Twitter when promoting your Beautiful App . So, there you go!

eMarketer predicted that in 2016, mobile advertising will hit a milestone with $101.37 billion spent on mobile ads. In 2014, mobile ad revenue was $42.63 billion with digital advertisements accounting for 29.4%. In 2016, this percentage will rise to 51.1% of total mobile ad spending.   These numbers exemplify the ever-changing trends in the mobile advertising industry. By the end of the year, mobile ad spending is expected to reach $68 billion with digital ads accounting for around 40%. A few years back this seemed impossible, but with the large global increase in mobile users, companies have started investing in mobile advertising.   This global revolution is bringing new trends to the market. Let's have a look at some of the future trends we expect to see in the mobile advertising industry.

If you have an Apple Developer account, you should have received an email announcing the release of the new App Analytics available at no additional cost in your iTunes Connect account.  Devices operating with iOS 8 or later will be able to agree to send information on their app usage to Apple, who will generate reports concerning the user engagement, marketing campaigns, and monetization of your app. 

To advertise or not to advertise? This is a common question that many GoodBarbers have, due to the ongoing debate regarding whether or not the money earned is worth the compromised user experience many believe to occur. There is a definite line between effective and obnoxious when it comes to mobile advertising, but if you can manage to incorporate ads in a tasteful way there is certainly an opportunity for profit, which is apparent in the spike in mobile advertising revenues seen over the past year. The following is a summary of the results and trends seen in the mobile advertising industry intended to guide and help you make advertising a successful part of your strategy.

Hi GoodBarbers! Today we are going to show you one of the opportunities our platform offers to monetize your app: advertisements. Sell space in your app to advertisers and watch your revenue quickly increase! In addition to being able to create your own ads in your back office, you can also connect your app to a third party advertising service, so you don't have to worry about dealing with advertisers. In this video tutorial, you will learn how to enable the advertisement options in your back office from the Add-Ons store and how to connect those services to your app. To give you a practical example, in the video we show you the process of connecting Admob. However, you'll have the opportunity to implement ads from different services, such as Mobpartner, Swelen or dfp, amongst others. Moreover, GoodBarber allows you to define the platform (Android smartphones, iPad, etc) in which your ads will be displayed, as well as the order of your campaigns.  

This month, Facebook introduced a new algorithm for News Feed algorithm for 2015 that will change the way we receive content on the most prominent page on Facebook. If you don’t know about the new guidelines yet, this will be a valuable article for you. We will explain in detail what you should know about the new guidelines for Promotions and Advertisers on the News Feed and how you can optimize your mobile campaign.

Huge! Facebook is the largest online social network and according to Facebook stats has more than 1 billion monthly active users. Almost 90% of worldwide active users are using mobile phones to check their news feed, chat with friends and update their Facebook profile. There is no doubt that Facebook has conquered most of the world's internet users and brings to the table a great opportunity for brands, companies and entrepreneurs to launch their products with a low budget or even, for free. The mobile apps promotion are not an exception. In the last two years, Facebook has improved the advertising tools for mobile promotion, becoming more successful than conventional Facebook ads. The variety of advertising formats, the deep segmentation (gender, language, interests, behavior, connections, pages), and the placement of your ads on the News feed helps to increase the number of downloaded apps, the app's engagement and retention of app users. These facts also contribute to achieve a more relevant position through search tools of Google Play and Apple's App Store. But let's understand how it works in detail.

Many companies today have chosen to be present on mobile by creating an app to support their business. An app is an extremely powerful tool because it’s extremely versatile, businesses can communicate in a much more personal way. Also, people access the internet always more from mobile devices and less from pcs. Why? Because it’s more practical, we carry our smartphones around with us all day and now there is a good connection practically anywhere, also apps are easier to use. On a phone you don’t have any desktop clutter, you just have to enter a specific app to get the information you need, in a few seconds you can check the weather, find the best restaurant in town, buy those pants you saw in a shop at a cheaper price. But it’s not all as simple as it sounds, many companies have missed the mark when trying to take advantage of the great opportunity an app represents. You mustn't forget there there are some specific rules to follow when going mobile, this channel is very different from the web so you cannot just transplant your web strategy, you have to plan a specific strategy for the mobile segment. Here are series of common mistakes that to avoid if you want your branded app to be a success and bring your business that extra value!

Have you ever considered inserting native ads in your app? Native ads are an open secret when it comes to monetizing content. So much so that brands are shying away from traditional advertising. Why? Because this marketers' favorite tool makes for more efficient ad placement, with messages tailored to the target audience.

The Murdoch University, Australia, and the University of Indiana, USA, studied how mobile apps can have a positive impact on users. The study consisted in comparing the impact on sales, after the use or not of a branded app. It confirmed that using branded apps has a positive persuasive impact, it can increase the interest in the brand and in the brand’s products, and it can also produce a large and significant positive shift in involvement. Apps also seem to be an ideal medium for educating people about new products, or products they have yet to try. Do not forget the high level of user engagement, based on the enhanced user experience apps can offer.

We’ve recently made GoodBarber compatible with a new ad server called Swelen. For those who are less familiar with the terminology, an ad server isn’t an ad network. Ad serving is a technology that stores and distributes advertisements. Different mobile ad networks use ad servers. Swelen allows the distribution of interactive media ads such as video interstitials, or interactive advertisements (holograms, etc.). Swelen also differentiates itself from other ad servers by offering a decentralized, social approach in order to link advertisers, publishers and advertising networks. In terms of innovative solutions, Swelen offers an “in-banner” format for video streaming. The application user does not have to quit the application to view the advertising content. For more information about Swelen, you can visit their website, and read the article that TechCrunch France wrote in 2011 or see them in the CrunchBase.