11–20 of 108 posts
After one year a competitor showed up at less than half the price and the party was over.
My strategy: find a niche app so you can charge a lot more
Do contract work and let others deal with monetization. The problem with creating a mobile ad network is that you're competing with Facebook and Google[0,1]: > • Facebook and Google have the most inventory and are still growing in terms of both users and ad-load; there is no temporal limitation that works to the benefit of other properties (and Facebook in particular is ramping up efforts to advertise using Facebook…
His question has nothing to do with creating an ad network...
> That's why I've started working on an ad network for mobile apps...
I'd love to be wrong but I tend to think any semblance of an app store gold rush passed by 5+ years ago.
What happened to building great software, providing great service and letting the rest flow from there? Monetization strategy; what is that, really? How is that ever going to lead anywhere that matters? Not that I don't have the same issues, I too am trying hard to find a way to survive in this mess of a world; but I'm convinced it all starts with doing the right thing, which rules out advertisement bullshit for me.
Nothing happened. Build it and they will come (tm) never flowed. Sympathies for the struggle, but I'm not sure why you're convinced "survival" "starts with doing the right thing", discarding "monetization strategy" and cursing "advertising bullshit". That's not the path to "somewhere that matters", it's just the path to a failed business venture.
> That's why I've started working on an ad network for mobile apps - where the advertisers buys directly from the app publisher the ad spot - and the publisher has full control over which ad is displayed and when. I like the idea in concept, but as an advertiser this intuitively tastes like a strictly worse product. Doesn't this model mean I now have to vet the inventory (users) of the app -- another cost, as well as…
Also - I don't see the publisher's willingness a risk factor if the product, service or brand you want to promote is a relevant one for app user base.
Our free apps make money by promoting paid 'pro' versions of themselves, by offering an IAP to remove ads, and by promoting other Windows apps, either through the Microsoft affiliate network or private arrangements.
We manage these ads with in-house tech to get around the "little control over what ads are displayed, their format, etc." you mention - we had the exact same problem. (Lots of really scummy ads on the bigger networks.)
Enabling direct deals between app developers would be super cool, it's basically what we find ourselves having to do anyway. Curious what you'll do with your unsold inventory, especially when you're starting off? (Maybe fall back to the platform's affiliate program, like the iTunes affiliate program on iOS?)
Do contract work and let others deal with monetization. The problem with creating a mobile ad network is that you're competing with Facebook and Google[0,1]: > • Facebook and Google have the most inventory and are still growing in terms of both users and ad-load; there is no temporal limitation that works to the benefit of other properties (and Facebook in particular is ramping up efforts to advertise using Facebook…
I think that high-quality apps have a loyal and passionate audiences - a smaller one for sure - but advertisers can rest assured they have access to the best audience money can buy.
I've never thought in terms of Facebook or Google's scale and I actually want to take a more anti-Facebook/Google approach where the amount of user tracking is inexistent. Just track the ad performance and that's about it.
I've found the Amazon Underground App Store to be pretty cool - you get paid by the minute by Amazon for the people using your apps so all you need to focus on is engagement and retention. http://developer.amazon.com
What happened to building great software, providing great service and letting the rest flow from there? Monetization strategy; what is that, really? How is that ever going to lead anywhere that matters? Not that I don't have the same issues, I too am trying hard to find a way to survive in this mess of a world; but I'm convinced it all starts with doing the right thing, which rules out advertisement bullshit for me.
Its unlikely the then young Adobe would have needed to do much if at all any marketing to get companies behind PostScript, because it was ahead of any other solution of its time. Many people welcomed it with open arms, and it became the de-facto standard quickly at the time.
Adobe just built a superior product. And then they all showed up to get some.
You can say the same of Netscape in the 90s before Internet Explorer, you could say the same of MySpace in the early 200s as the superior social network to what came before it. (Of course, this is before FaceBook, which through targeted marketing at first to college kids, proved to usher in a different era, on many fronts, in 2006). There are other numerous examples.
Fast forward to post Web 2.0 hay-fever of the mid 2000s into the Gold Rush stage of the App Economy, by 2010, there was a clear shift. Apple & Google consolidated on mobile. The Desktop, a traditional stalwart of Microsoft, began its small but inevitable decline of mindshare (and eventually, real dollars) in the minds of consumers and businesses alike. Web apps made the desktop OS less relevant (but not irrelevant, mind you). The field became crowded. Quality wasn't the only measure of success anymore. The economy of software shifted, in large part due to the internets inherent reliance on gaining users first for services (like FaceBook, which at one point was being hailed as the 'the gaming future' https://www.forbes.com/2010/02/27/videogames-farmville-zynga..., see these other anecdotes as well: http://www.adweek.com/digital/future-social-gaming-facebook/, https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2010/02/big-names-tiny-games-... notice that FaceBook rarely charged a dime for any of its endeavors. The same happened in email, and other services)
What become clear as these platforms began to take assertive positions in the market place is that it no longer became about just quality. The quality, or I should say the minimum viable quality, became easy to achieve. Xcode, through quite a few iterations, made it easy to go with default values that make most apps look and feel relatively native. You didn't have to be the best coder to have a slick working app and publish to the app store. The 'quality' of the product increased its minimum bar substantially. iOS 7, for all it garnered, enforced a design paradigm that adapted easily to most apps by default. Google with Android is achieving this, albeit more slowly, with Material as well.
Not mention toolkits published by Unity, FaceBook has their own frameworks as well for publishing things to their platform (not so much games anymore, as much as now becoming a strong aggregator of media), and much more. This isn't to say anyone can code and put out a great app, there is still some skill required. It is to say that it takes much less to build that quality product.
So today, in 2017, it is unfair and quite naive, I think, in this world we have, to broadly state, 'build it and they will come' makes any sense. Because you can build the next great thing. And nobody will come. You can build something that is so compelling that anyone aware of its existence would be a fool not to adopt it, and it can still fail. Why? because you are no longer competing on 'quality' as much as exposure, marketing, and mindshare. Is quality a component? You bet. I am not arguing for a lack or disregard for quality. Its very important. Now, however, you are competing for the funnel. The eyes of those you seek to reach. We find ourselves in the same situation car companies did years ago. Where generally speaking, all cars built today, are about as reliable as each other, broadly speaking. Instead, they duke it out on the fringes (performance cars, electric cars, until perhaps recently, hybrid cars) or for mindshare and price.
Price. You see, price as a side of effect of this, for software, has effectively been driven to zero for most markets, broadly speaking. Advertising is the only quick way most companies, I believe, have found any way to monetize their product at all. If you consider the age we are in, its remarkable people want to build software that relies on any sales at all. The rise of subscription software is no accident. Even Enterprise software has been upended by the free or freemium models. One of the larger HVAC businesses in my area of living, for example, still uses their @gmail.com for email because thats what they started with 10 years ago (roughly, i think thats about how long they been around). Why pay for email when you don't have to? SquareSpace, Wix, Blogger, Wordpress, and the like, have also decimated the once flourishing cottage industry of catering to small and medium business owners to get a web presence.
That, in 2017, is the state of the markets of software. Especially consumer software. Now is the time of infinite quality (from the very best to minimally viable, but viable enough to be considered quality @ that specified 'bracket' or 'demeanor'). Quality, itself, is no longer the only reason people use a product.