Making mobile apps pay off

Mobile apps continue to progress in both usefulness and popularity, which means there are a lot more of them. That means it has become increasingly important—and simultaneously more difficult—to monetize an app.

Downloads are one obvious and important stream of revenue for app developers, but in-app advertising continues to be a solid strategy for increasing per-app revenue—assuming ads get noticed and advertisers continue to spend because of the response they get. That’s why it’s critical for app developers to understand not only the fundamentals of in-app advertising, but also the tricks of the trade—the ad strategies that are going to make users not only tolerate in-app advertising, but also click and convert.

A recent piece on Mashable provides a good, in-depth look at the strategies behind what the author—Tim Wandell, an executive at the digital agency Universal Mind—refers to as “appvertising.” In it, he elevates the app advertising craft to the revered commercials during the Super Bowl:

The advice is straightforward but useful for app developers: Put the user in control, design for the medium, be smart about load times, and so forth. It’s the same kind of advice app developers should follow for developing their apps, come to think of it—so it’s really not that much of a stretch to extend that kind of logic to advertising that works as well. But the piece also provides several excellent examples of in-app advertising that works. App developers that heed strategies like these are likely to be the ones still standing—and, more important, still making money—as the app market continues to escalate.