New Post has been published on http://www.learn-digital-marketing.com/mobile-app-developers-heres-an-api-for-user-acquisition/

Mobile app developers: Here’s an API for user acquisition

Above: The titular fowl from Flappy Bird.

Image Credit: Inciclopedia

CEO David Dundas calls it the “Stripe for mobile advertising.” That might be a little over the top, but the point is made: Decisive is trying to make the hardest problem in mobile development as simple as adding an API.

“Most app developers neglect app promotion because it seems like a black box,” Dundas says. “The API provides app developers with the building blocks to control of one crucial drivers of their app’s success.”

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Decisive works by integrating multiple ad networks into one API — nothing necessarily new. But then it also offers a full stack of analytics showing developers what’s working or not, and who their best potential target users are. It’s also integrated with existing ad-tracking tools such as AdX, Kochava, and AppsFlyer.

The result, Dundas says, is quick campaign optimization, low and flexible spending budgets, and the ability to iterate marketing at the same pace as you iterate your app.

The company, which is backed by name investors such as Gary Vaynerchuk and is a 500 Startups alumnus, is young and small, having launched in April of this year. It’s currently serving a billion impressions a month (adtech is an extreme volume business, so yes, you have to have very large numbers to show significant scale).

But it’s an interesting idea, and Decisive has already signed up 2,500 advertisers while running 50,000 campaigns, so clearly a decent number of developers are kicking the tires.

Ad networks and exchanges on the platform include Twitter’s Mopub, Yahoo’s Flurry, Google, Millennial Media, AOL, Inmobi, Tapsense, and many others. In total, Dundas says, participating networks and exchanges enable access to over 100 billion impressions per month.

Still, there’s a long way to go before Decisive joins the likes of AdColony, NativeX, Fiksu, Chartboost, Flurry, each of which has user acquisition scope and scale similar to a YouTube or a Twitter.

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NativeX is a leader in innovative monetization and user acquisition solutions for mobile and desktop apps. For publishers and developers who want to monetize with advertising that really works, NativeX is the marketing technology platf... read more »

New Post has been published on http://www.learn-digital-marketing.com/amazons-new-ad-network-has-a-secret-weapon-against-google-adwords-shopping-data/

Amazon’s new ad network has a secret weapon against Google AdWords: shopping data

Above: Amazon's Jeff Bezos at a 2010 event.

Image Credit: Jurvetson/Flickr

The secret to delivering relevant ads is data. Demographic, psychographic, personal data. Google has data on what we search for, Facebook has data on what we like and share, but Amazon’s data may be the best of all for targeting ads. It has data on what we browse and buy.

That’s why yesterday’s revelations that Amazon is gearing up to launch its own ad network are particularly interesting: Amazon could offer retailers a much-wanted alternative to Facebook and Google ads, and Amazon may prove to be better suited than either of its rivals at putting ads in front of consumers that actually get clicked.

The new ad network, which Amazon is calling “Amazon Sponsored Links,” will also set up back end systems that allow ad agencies to “buy audiences” by buying ads in bulk. The agencies would then place ads on behalf of their clients based on the target audience demographic of the product.

Again, those ads would be targeted to consumers using a sophisticated real-time system that knows the viewer’s product preferences, as expressed by their browsing and buying history on Amazon.

If all this happens, Amazon’s new platform would look a lot like Google’s AdWords program, in which more than a million users bid on ad inventory on sites all over the web..

Right now Google and other third parties place ads for clients on Amazon, but that will likely be the first thing to change. Like Facebook and Google, Amazon will place its own clients’ ads on its own site.

Amazon already has a small program that can place ads for clients on other sites. But reports yesterday say the program will get much bigger, and will run different sorts of ads. Amazon likely will launch a wider ad network through which it will be able to target ads for advertisers on lots of partner sites around the web.

Amazon has already told some of its existing advertising partners that it will launch the new ad network later this year.

This could be a particular threat to Google, whose business rests on the $50 billion or so it makes every year on web ads.

An ad network would add one more battleground on which Amazon is competing with Google. Google Shopping puts up a small fight against the Amazon site. The Google Shopping Express competes with Amazon’s AmazonFresh and local pick-up services. Both companies now make phones, and the two are currently in a price war in the cloud storage market.

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Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), a Fortune 500 company based in Seattle, opened on the World Wide Web in July 1995 and today offers Earth's Biggest Selection. Amazon.com, Inc. seeks to be Earth's most customer-centric company, where cu... read more »