The world of advertising is always changing. Advertisers are always looking to stay one step ahead. Advertising using WAP(Wireless Application Protocol) has been a constant for as long as I can remember, but now with the introduction of Mobile Applications(APPs) there is effectively a new kid on the block.

Mobile WAP are basic services of a web-browser, but simplified to operate within the restriction of a mobile phone. APPs are usually downloaded by the user and feature real-time interactivity, push updating, community functions, polling, mCommerce, media streaming, and downloading.

I spent days scouring the Internet trying to make sense of the debate between which is better from an advertisers standpoint. The conclusion I came to is that it really depends what you are trying to accomplish. APP advertising seems to be better if you are willing to pay more for quality impressions. APPs run by companies have the ability to draw much more information about the person that downloaded the APP. So in terms of targeting, APP advertising is much more affective, the downside is that you are going to pay more for it since the click through rates and quality of traffic tend to be much lower.

WAP is more suited for a more traditional buying style similar to the web. Performance tends to be consistent when it comes to CTRs and CR across similar targeted sites. Apps on the other hand tend to have varying differences in performance despite being the same category.

Keep in mind that the mobile APP market is still in its infancy, but it is developing rapidly. In an article published by Flurry on Mon, Jan 09, 2012, Charles Newark-French states “ the average smartphone user, for the first time ever, began spending more time in their mobile applications than they do browsing the web.” 

For right now companies cannot solely rely on their APP campaign because WAP is still a huge part of the traffic especially form feature phones which do not support apps. In an article by Bill Siwicki, Managing Editor of Mobile Commerce, he says, “Traffic stemming from mobile devices to a dozen web sites in various industries, including retail, accounted for 13% of total web traffic in the fourth quarter of 2011, up from 6% in Q4 2010.” So the mobile industry is growing, but still only at 13% of the total web traffic.

Today, companies will have a combination of both APP and WAP to really have a successful mobile marketing campaign.

FlipSite Media will be attending Ad:Tech New York this year. We are moving all of our focus to mobile for 2012 and looking for innovative companies to partner with.

If you are a company that specializes in the following we would love to speak with you:

Do you have mobile inventory? Find out how FlipSite Media can monetize your traffic.

Do you have a true mobile ad server or trading desk? If you can parse mobile impressions and serve ads based on mobile criteria like carrier and handset then lets get a demo going.

Are you an advertiser looking to break into mobile? If you’re looking to get started in mobile let our team help you by providing counsel and drive leads on a CPA basis.

See you in New York.

We have finally decided to open up our own Mobile Network. Please notice I didn’t say that it’s an affiliate network because it is much more than that. The network is an end to end mobile marketing solution for our partners.

Here is how MobAff is different.

Training 

nternal docs are full of training material and insider knowledge only accessible to our partners.

Tracking

Mobile tracking platform allows our partners to analyze and optimize campaigns on the fly.

Traffic
In house media buying to give enterprise level access to mobile inventory.

One of our longest running clients is Wicked Lasers. They specialize in selling high end high powered handheld lasers. The reason we’ve had such a long lasting relationship is unlike a lot of other small businesses, they were very open to new ideas and marketing practice.

Finally some of the work we’ve done has been recognized. We’ve been running Facebook ads for over 3 years and at one point it was one of our major traffic sources. Today facebook is still a powerful tool if used correctly. Our goal for Wicked Lasers was to drive fans and likes to be leveraged for future promotions.

The ad that made the list is posted below. For the full article on how to leverage Facebook ads please visit Lunametrics blog.

There a lot of trends in online marketing that I look past because they are not what I call “evergreen” trends. Let me explain just a few.

Twitter – although their use is on the rise, most people still don’t know what twitter is or how it can be effectively used to put money in your  pocket.

Social Bookmarking – Besides a slight boost in SEO social bookmarking was never going to catch on. Digg was highly over rated.

Article Directories – Matt Cutts for years hinted that content farms where not good, and with a recent Panda update Google finally put their foot down.

However mobile is a trend that can’t be ignored. The moment I realized how important mobile is, was while on top of a mountain staying with mountain folk in Thailand. Despite not having running water every villager (even the kids) had a cell phone!

(solar panel I assume to help charge their phones)

I’m trying to ignore the hype of tablets and smart phones, because even in the US almost 50% of phones are still Feature Phones (non smart phones).

I’ll be doing most of the blogging over at Mobile Affiliate Blog regarding mobile marketing, so hop over there if you want to learn more about how to make money with mobile.

Whew… another great conference is over. Conferences are great especially when you need that extra kick start to get you motivated and fired up about your business. It’s also great to put faces to names with the many vendors that you work with on a daily basis. Although we are an internet business, at the end of the day nothing beats a good ‘ol handshake.

This is my 5th Ad:Tech which makes it easier than ever to spot trends and growth areas in the industry. Here are a few that I thought were interesting and might be game changers in the future.

Real Time Bidding – As a media buyer, I always wondered how fragmented and inefficient the landscape is. Well that may soon start to change my friends. Thanks to a few companies that are creating markets for inventory on a real time basis, you will soon have to pay closer attention to you metrics and performance than ever before. Soon the days of negotiating huge buys at discount will be long gone.

CPA Traffic Sources – I remember when rumors were flying that some ad networks will let you buy on a CPA basis. As a direct response marketer this was too good to be true. This conference it seemed like almost every ad network had a CPA component. However, don’t think that this means easy profits. The catch is that your campaigns have to produce the highest eCPMs possible for you to receive significant volume. Again, it is vital to pay attention to your metrics and optimize like never before.

Convergence – I see more CPA networks buying traffic sources and vise versa. What does this mean for the independent affiliate? If you do not own an asset (product, service, traffic) your business will have a very hard time surviving in the long run.

Flipsite Media takes performance marketing to the next level in creativity, customization, and scalability. Mundo Media has been more than happy with our experience working with Flipsite and they are our go to team when the project needs a unique approach and unlimited volume potential. Their systematic approach to testing I have rarely seen in the affiliate marketing space. These guys tested over 10,000 creatives to boil it down to 500 winners, that’s absolutely unheard of! I highly recommend Flipsite Media for your next performance based marketing project, they are the trusted leaders in our industry.

I recently purchased a HTC Incredible, the latest Android phone from Verizon. I was pretty content with my black berry, but knew I had to get the latest touch smart phone to stay ahead of the curve. With the continued growth of smart phones (ever since the iPhone) I knew this is a market that can’t be ignored. Overall I’m fairly satisfied with the phone. This isn’t another phone review as much as a few notes on some opportunities I noticed for marketers.

One of the coolest things I didn’t know about these new smart phones is their ability to scan bar codes. With a simple app you can scan any bar code using your camera and do a quick search for that product. There are a lot of apps that use this to pull coupons and such, however, there’s even bigger opportunity lurking.

How many of you know about the QR Code? This also can be scanned and often used as a hyperlink between the real world and your phone. It is a pain in the ass to use the browser on your phone. Imagine seeing a billboard and using your phone’s camera to quickly pull up the website? That’s exactly what you can do with QR Codes, just point your phone and visit the website embedded in the code instantly. I’m hoping QR codes will continue to gain popularity and people innovate how they are used.

I’m limited to the Android marketplace but I was still surprised to see how few apps there were for sites I frequent daily. Granted I check out some niche stuff online, but creating a simple RSS app or the like isn’t that complicated and the benefits outweigh the costs. An idea outside the scopeof marketing is to create an online tool that easily builds and submits basic apps to the store. This will let business stay closer to their customers and will allow the site to charge a small fee for the service.

These are just my thoughts for now, I’ll expand them in the future.

How much sleep do you lose as an affiliate marketer? There are so many things that can go wrong with your campaign including but not limited to hosting issues, offer going down, conversion rate tanking, etc. Most affiliates are obsessed with checking their stats but forget to look at the big risks they are taking.

Here are some risks most affiliates over look and how you can proactively take steps to reduce them.

Lawsuits and Copyright Infringement

Nothing will halt your operations like well written Cease and Desist letter from the likes of Harpo or other big time law firms. Imagine making 1k profit a day and having to completely stop because your whole angle banked on using Dr Oz to sell.

If you want to avoid getting sued make sure that you are not using copyrighted material. This even goes for images in your ads. I know we all love Google Images, but those images are often times copyrighted.

Solution: Stop being cheap and buy the image of DreamsTime or iStock. Also, get creative and sell products without leeching off someone else’s brand.

FTC and The Government

We’ve all heard about the smack down on users of Flogs/Farticles to market but I’m sure most of you still think that it will never happen to you. I’m here to tell you YES it can happen to you, and it has happened to people I know personally. All that money your banking today won’t mean jack when you’re wasting it on a lawyer to keep you out of jail.

Don’t think because that a few astericks and some hard to read disclaimer in the footer of your site will keep you safe.

Solution: Be proactive – do your own research into what is and isn’t compliant. Make sure to look at your own states laws as well since there can be nuances at the state level you aren’t aware of.

Remember, a compliant page does NOT mean that it won’t convert, just means you have to do a little more work to optimize it.

Theft from Affiliates, Advertisers, and Even Your Network

As an affiliate, whenever you make some bank everyone is going to want a piece of the action.

1. Let me give you some examples:Other affiliates find your traffic sources and your ads and duplicate your campaign driving down your ROI.

2. Your affiliate network often times have their own internal teams who will just as readily copy your tactics

3. The advertiser sees your making money and can decide to scrub taking more and more of your hard earned share.

4. You think your traffic source is safe? If it’s a self serve you don’t know when a policy change will wipe your whole campaign out. If it’s a media buy the network can go direct to advertiser and cut your out of the deal.

By now most of you heard that you should diversify both your offers and your traffic sources. Some may have even thought about creating their own traffic source or offer, but here are some other ideas that will help you stay in business.

Solution: Build trust with your affiliate managers. Same goes with your traffic sources. Make sure you have a rep, and make sure you know your rep has your back. This is the only way you can avoid being “just another affiliate” who always gets the short end of the stick.

Here are some advantages you will reap if you build quality long lasting relationships with all your reps:

• Exclusive offers. There are many offers out there that are on big time private due to strict quality guidelines. If you AM trusts you, he/she will open them up to you and now you’ll only have to compete with a handful of affiliates instead of every n00b with a credit card.
• Heads up from traffic sources. They will tell you trends they see and ways to game their own systems to maximize your profits. Or like in my case they will make sure your account doesn’t get banned/slapped (Thanks Pete from Facebook).
• Test budgets and guaranteed EPCs. Once you build rapport with a network they will often times help you when testing new offers for them.

Cash Flow

This is an issue that a lot of guys don’t take seriously enough. Never take on more risk than you’re willing to lose even if a campaign is profitable. I know it sounds crazy but let me explain.

Lets say you find a loophole in some ad system and can drive a ton of leads/sales in a short period of time. You do 100,000 in sales with an ad spend of 50,000. To get that 50,000 you had to max out your credit cards, borrow from friends, and maybe leverage your mortgage. You think you’ve made 50,000 just to find out your wire/check didn’t come. You ask the network whats up and find out your quality was poor, the advertiser isn’t paying, you broke a restrictions without noticing, etc. Now you are completely wiped out and don’t even have enough money to pay a lawyer to try to get paid.

How can you avoid this catastrophe? Here are some tips:

Solution:

• Diversify across many networks. Even if the offer performs better at another network, by splitting it across 5 networks (easily done with prosper) you are managing risk and gaining favor with all 5 networks.
• Wires multiple times a week. Weekly wires are nice, but getting wires more than once a week can minimize cash flow risk even more.
• Prepay for leads. If you know you can do volume see if the network is willing to pay you ahead of time or even fund your campaign expenses.

Hope these tips will help you sleep better at night and not keeping your fingers crossed that your next wire is on time.

Lastly… GET EVERYTHING IN WRITING!!!!

Check out my guest post on MrGreen.Am (the finest marketing blog out of New Zealand) about marginal profit maximization. Sounds fancy, but its not. All I’m trying to explain is why sometimes opting for less volume can actually lead to higher profits.

If you are still confused then check out the article there are some pretty charts and graphs.

Affiliate Marginal Profit Maximization