BuzzCity's Rich Media Platform: A How-To Guide

By Manish Mishra, Vice President (Sales)

BuzzCity has launched a new in-house rich media platform to make it easier for advertisers to serve video ads to mobile consumers across the globe.

As I mentioned in my last two columns ("The Rise of Mobile Video Ads" and "What the World Cup Tells Us About Mobile Video Ads"), video advertising is becoming increasingly popular on mobile. By one estimate, consumers spend nearly 1 hour a day watching digital video, while video ad spend rose 55% in the first quarter.

With the BuzzCity platform, mobile video advertising starts with a banner which expands into a video window with one click by the consumer. On a PC the banner expands when the cursor hovers over the banner (below)

In today's column, I'd like to walk you through the backend to show you how simple it is to set up a mobile video campaign.

Mobile & Desktop Campaigns – 4 Simple Steps

Consumers’ adoption of PCs, smartphones and tablets has given need for advertising campaigns to be spread across multiple screens for marketers to stay in front of audiences.  

From April 2014, advertisers can do just this on the BuzzCity Ad Network.

Advertiser Campaign Tools - September 2013

By Joey Ho, Director, Partner Communications

BuzzCity is making it easier for advertisers to target their campaigns.  We've broadened the selection of carriers and included more handset makes.  You can also target a campaign specifically for smartphones, feature phones or tablets.

More Campaign Optimisation Tips: Proxy Exclusion

By Nicolle Harding, Country Manager (South Africa)

It's no secret that advertisers want as much information as possible about their clients and the people who view their ads.

One of the advantages of mobile advertising is that you can target people much more specifically – and learn more about them – than with traditional print and broadcast ads or even internet advertising. Knowing someone's location, for example, can allow an advertiser to provide discounts or promotions at nearby stores and restaurants.

Some handset manufacturers and internet browsers make this hard to do though.

Blackberry and Operal Mini, for example, use proxy servers.

These proxies do two things which can affect your campaign's performance:

Campaign Optimisation Tips: Publisher Targeting

By Nicolle Harding, Country Manager (South Africa)

As an advertiser, how do you get the best return on your investment?

There are a number of ways to optimise a mobile campaign.

But unlike print, radio, TV and direct mail, these tricks of the trade require companies to take a more engaged approach. We find that “Activist Advertisers” – those who test and consistently monitor an ad's performance then make adjustments accordingly – get the best results.

Your ads will likely perform better, for example, on one site or app than another. But in a 'blind network' like BuzzCity, where advertisers do not directly choose the mobile sites where their ads appear, how can you direct your ads to sites where consumers are most likely to show interest?

One of BuzzCity's newest tools, Publisher Targeting, allows you to do just that – by excluding sites and apps that aren't converting for you.  Let me walk you through it . . .

Starting a Campaign with BuzzCity

Advertisers now have a diverse array of mobile tools to choose from to connect their messages and interactions with consumers thanks to advancements in mobile. Display advertising on mobile is one of these tactics and has been successfully used by advertisers to drive brand awareness, purchases, and loyalty. 

Here's a quick guide on how to setup a mobile campaign on BuzzCity in a few easy steps.

Starting A Campaign with BuzzCity: FAQs

Here are some of the most frequently asked questions we receive from people starting a campaign on the BuzzCity Advertising Network. If you have a question, please let us know.

So, What Are Rich Media Ads?

Are you looking to increase interactivity and consumer awareness of your brand?

If so, you should consider using rich media mobile ads.

According to a two-month study earlier this year by the Interactive Advertising Bureau, consumers react more quickly to rich media ads, which they find to be generally 'better' than standard mobile ads. Rich media generates higher brand recall – of both brand names and messaging – and nearly twice the interaction rate of standard banners.

In this article, we provide an introduction to Rich Media Ads as well as some initial steps for getting you started.

Let's begin though with a brief look at the evolution of mobile ads (we promise it will be quick!) . . .

Earning Money as a BuzzCity Publisher

By Delynn Ho, VP Sales

The BuzzCity Ad Network enables mobile website publishers and application developers to monetise their content with advertisements. Partners earn a share of the revenue for each ad clicked while retaining complete control over how and where the ads appear.

So if you've created a mobile site - whether it's to talk about sports, music or share your views on everyday life -- and you'd like to make some money, this blog entry is for you.  Today, we're going to walk you through the basics of becoming a BuzzCity Publisher and answer some commonly asked questions about payments.

M-Ads: Advertising Inside an App

By Delynn Ho, VP Sales

Our partners spoke and we listened. In this case, mobile application publishers said they don't like losing eyeballs. Unless, Je tells me, it's part of a really rad game like Inferi Dii. But when it comes to users exiting an app because they've clicked on a banner ad, that's not so cool.

So, please allow me to introduce m-Ads . . . banner ads that open inside an application.

The BuzzCity Campaign Planner

By Delynn Ho, VP Sales

This week, I'd like to walk you through the BuzzCity Campaign Planner, an easy-to-use online tool that can help you target your mobile advertising campaign, estimate the amount of traffic it will receive and maximise the return on investment.

The Campaign Planner – which can be found at planner.buzzcity.com – provides statistics on over 230 markets as well as a list of our top markets.

Calculating Ad Traffic Using The BuzzCity Campaign Planner

By Delynn Ho, VP Sales

The BuzzCity Campaign Planner provides a host of demographic and publisher site data for markets across the BuzzCity Ad Network. You can use this to estimate the size of your viewing audience and the required budget.

Let's say for example that my company is running a promotion for a female spa in Jakarta. Our research shows that women aged 30-34 are the most likely to take up the service. And these women enjoy Entertainment and Lifestyle content. If we run a campaign on the BuzzCity Ad Network targeting this market segment, how many pageviews should we expect?

DISCOVERY

By Romulo “Je” Alipio, Executive Producer, Games

DISCOVERY is the big buzzword in mobile now. Everyone is talking about application discovery, content discovery, game discovery, social network discovery . . .

Not long ago, application development was a dying industry. Content was tied to telco portals, which restricted the content available to consumers. Then, along came the Apple App Store whose success is fostering imitation by Nokia, Google and others.

But if you're a mobile consumer, how do you find what you want? And how do you do it quickly?

Mobile users have demonstrated they do not want to spend much time looking for content. Time searching is time not-playing. And the extra time online also often adds to consumer phone bills.

So, at Djuzz, we spent time thinking about how to make it easy for consumers to find what they're looking for, whether it's a specific title or a genre. We also designed the portal to dynamically highlight the most popular content.

Let's take a closer look. In this blog, I'd like to walk you through the user interface.

CAMPAIGN OPTIMISATION SECRETS

by Michael de Souza, Executive Producer, South Africa

Here in South Africa in recent months, we’ve noticed two distinct approaches to managing campaigns on the BuzzCity network. There are those who upload their campaigns and let them run, hardly making any changes. Then there are clients who monitor and optimise their campaigns, making constant tweaks, testing new bidding levels and exploring targeting options. No prizes for guessing who’s getting the best performance and return on adspend.

Some of our most experienced advertisers are sinfully lazy! They upload a campaign based on past experience. They set start and end dates, enter a bid rate, upload one version of a good solid creative and perhaps include some relevant targeting. Then they sit back and let the campaign run. Sometimes this means that an early mistake will play itself out through the entire campaign. That's an extreme case. Most advertisers still get decent results – it's just that they could be doing a lot better.

So, I’ve taken note of how some of our very best advertisers* continually optimise their campaigns and I hope they won’t mind me sharing a couple of their secrets with you.

Here’s what they’re doing:

FINE-TUNING A CAMPAIGN

By Delynn Ho, Regional Director, Southeast Asia

An advertiser on the BuzzCity Mobile Network recently launched a campaign to promote a free music service. “Free MP3 Downloads” read the banner, which attracted 150,000 views a day and a 1.89 percent click-through rate. At first glance, these are great numbers. But the campaign experienced only a 5 – 7 percent conversion rate. Out of 20 people clicking on the FREE MUSIC! banner, up to 19 were walking away without closing the deal.

What went wrong?