The latest mobile LUMAscape by LUMA Partners now includes a more complete and up-to-date view of the ever evolving mobile advertising ecosystem. That said, the updated chart still does not include all the players in the mobile advertising industry.
iOS 9 targeting now supported on Smadex
After the first week of release, over 50% of Apple users had downloaded and installed the new iOS9 software on their Apple iPhones and iPads. This is a significant achievement when compared with Android’s latest Lollipop 5.0 that was released over one year ago and has only managed to achieve to date a 21% adoption rate. These adoption rates by OS platforms clearly highlight the fragmentation across the Android ecosystem and the challenges faced by Android developers with designing software and user experience.
Apple’s latest iOS9 also included a major challenge and threat for the mobile advertising industry – ad blocking. Supporters make a case that consumers are tired of having to put up with (low quality) ads splattered across their apps and want some form of control over advertising. Publishers on the other hand, argue that mobile advertising is what enables them to offer their apps for free and pays their bills. Already, a number of ad blocking apps have been released and shot up the app charts – it’s only a matter of time before we start to see the impact (if any).
For advertisers, the most interesting feature released with iOS9 is the ability for deep linking within apps and that will give mobile marketers more options around retention, managing churn and customer lifetime value. This will open opportunities for increased spend from marketers around managing the sales funnel and mobile commerce. The deep linking concept is also applied to the new search feature, giving users relevant results within the section of an app – search will behave more like a (local) search engine.
From an industry perspective this is a smart move by Apple because it puts the focus on higher value marketing that’s about revenue and not about acquisition – and good news for publishers as it could lead to higher average CPMs. App installs are easy, the challenge is now on for mobile marketers to drive revenues streams from installs.
Audience retargeting using Smadex’s DMP
Audience targeting is not the same as targeting specific media; media targeting involves buying impressions across named publishers that are sold because they more or less match audience criteria whereas audience targeting identifies specific consumers based on demographic or other more concrete data points across all publishers.
Advertisers use audience targeting because they know precisely what consumers they need to go after based on previous data point, and can therefore eliminate any unnecessary spend from their marketing efforts to be more efficient and effective with acquisition activities.
Advertisers can specify target audiences using a number of approaches: groups built by third party Data Management Platforms, collected from a previous campaign, collected by an advertiser or built using a combination of the aforementioned.
3rd party Data Management Platform audiences: Advertisers can leverage existing pre-built audiences that match requirements or create specific new audience groups using the vast data sets on offer from third party DMPs. These audiences may be socio-demographic, behavioural, Interest-based, (interested in cars, travel, etc.), location based or any other available option.
Smadex has integrated with location derived audience platform Statiq to power local audience targeting for brands and agencies. Advertisers can use existing segments or build new groups.
Campaign data: Advertisers can create audiences from their own campaign based on collecting data from pre-defined events. Using this data, advertisers can then target users based on specific and relevant actions. Further examples include targeting inactive and dormant users.
Smadex supports custom post-click event tracking and reporting. Events data captured can be used to build future audience groups for targeting purposes
Advertiser data: Advertiser data is the most common use case for retargeting – reaching users that have visited the advertiser app or web site. For retargeting campaigns, the performance can be significantly improved by adapting the creative dynamically and display to users the most relevant content related to what they’ve viewed before.
Advertisers can securely upload their data into the Smadex platform for retargeting campaigns and build dynamic creatives based on rules such as offers by geo-location.
The overarching message to advertisers is that the more data they can share with Demand-Side Platforms like Smadex, the more effective the DSP will be at optimising campaigns to achieve objectives. Advertisers can share their data with DSPs via trackers, pixels, or specific API integrations.
Retargeting case study
Smadex worked with a digital agency on an innovative retargeting campaign to drive initial downloads and then bookings for a global taxi app.
Smadex ran the campaign for the taxi app over two phases. The first phase focused on acquisition (downloads and registrations), and the second phase focused on stimulating users that had downloaded the app but not booked any taxis.
The app recorded key custom events and this data was passed back to Smadex to drive retargeting campaign activity.
Results: There was significant value from retargeting users that had downloaded the app but not taken any action. The campaign data demonstrated boosted taxi bookings from retargeting and Return on Investment; For every app downloaded recorded, there were over 10 taxi bookings!
You can now geo-target any global city
Geo-targeting is what’s possible when geo-location data is enabled – that’s about knowing someone’s whereabouts at latitudinal/longitudinal, zip code, city or regional level within a country.
Smadex geo-targeting now enables advertisers to reach specific audiences in any city in the world. That may include focusing on specific users in any given location that advertisers want to reach. For example, that could be a campaign for a taxi app looking to run a stimulation campaign for dormant app users in a list of given cities.
The new feature is now available to advertisers via the Smadex self-service platform. Advertisers will see the new feature within the GEOLOCATION section when building or editing a campaign.
Advertisers will be able to target multiple countries and cities within a single campaign using the intuitive country and city selection wizard.
City geo-targeting will complement our existing hyper-local targeting feature. To use this tool, advertisers will need to enter a LAT/LONG coordinate and the approximate radius in kilometres that advertisers want to impact. Multiple hyper-location points can be created to support multi-location campaigns – for example, when targeting supermarket chains.
For all geo-targeting activities, advertisers can manage and control their campaigns via location reports that show all metrics for locations selected, that’s a powerful tool that enables advertisers to optimize and test to determine what works and doesn’t work very quickly.
WIRED names Smadex in Europe’s top 100 hottest startups
The team at Wired has shortlisted Smadex as one of Europe’s top 100 “hottest start-ups” for 2015.
Obviously, we are super excited that we’ve made the list, but more importantly that we’ve been recognized by a top tier magazine and journalists/analysts for our mobile advertising technology.
It’s a priviledge to list amongst other incredible and smart startups such as Marfeel, which is optimizing web content for mobile and monetizing it in a super smart way, and Wallapop which brings location-based buying and selling to consumers.
Read the full list of other disruptive and innovative start-ups like Smadex that are making Barcelona into one of the best places in Europe to start a business.
Advanced audience targeting features released
At Smadex, our goal is to build the best mobile Demand-Side Platform for advertisers to run both brand and performance campaigns. We operate a proven agile software development model that enables us to develop and deploy features that customers want quickly.
We firmly believe in maintaining an open and fluid dialogue with all our partners, both on the demand and supply side. That communication channel enables us to prioritize our product backlog, keep focused on the things that really matter and build features that have a real impact on campaign results.
Below are some of the top features that we’ve managed to release during April 2015.
Targeting devices
We’ve improved our device targeting feature by adding more options that enable advertisers to choose OS platform (Android, iOS and Windows), auto-complete device look-up (smartphone and tablet) and OS version number (by default all versions are targeted).
Limiting traffic
We’ve added new features to limiting traffic such as in-app or mobile site sources, frequency capping ads and enabling advertisers to filter out bid requests that do not pass device ID.
Improvements to whitelist and blacklist combinations
Combine whitelists and blacklists: Advertisers can now combine whitelists and blacklists in the trafficking interface. For example, selecting one or more already created whitelists and combining this with your master blacklist. The key point to note here is that if one inventory source/publisher is present in one whitelist and in the backlist, then the line item won’t bid on that inventory source, as the blacklist has priority over any whitelists.
Audience segments
Only available in the UK (for now), we’ve released a third party audience segmentation tool that enables advertisers to choose specific segments (e.g. Young Cosmopolitans) to meet their campaign requirements.
Improved reporting
We’ve improved our reporting interface. Clicking on any of the top level reporting icons opens up a new reporting interface, which is now organized into three sections: key KPIs, Charts by KPIs and LIVE reporting by publishers.
Live reporting by inventory
The new live reporting section shows the top 20 inventory sources for a campaign together with detailed performance metrics. This level of granular information gives advertisers tools for optimization including excluding publishers from a campaign. Note that advertisers can add an inventory source back into a campaign.
Smadex Blog 
