The history of the creation of "Mobile Advertising"

As the Steel Was Tempered.

The topic was published at the request and support of the residents of Habr.

I'll start with the results.

Advertising network now:

- 20 000 000 ad views per day
- 3000 advertising campaigns
- 150 advertising campaigns in rotation simultaneously
- 84 countries of the world and 326 mobile operators in targeting settings
- 100% mirror statistics with a detailed log for both sides of the mobile advertising market
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For me, this is 3 years of work, with no days off and vacations, access to publishers outside of Russia and offers of integration with other systems, dozens of problem partners and everyday stress.

For all the time I worked on the project, I got a lot of experience and met interesting people.
All the experience gained is considered positive for conclusions and further work. I consider any situation, overcome by myself, an adventure and a plot of tales for friends.
At one time, the mobile Internet was for me a hobby and a game, but the hobby grew into a business, and the game became part of the business process.

I will try to do without addresses and names. Get ready, read a lot.

The story begins in 2005, when I made my first mobile site (websites never interested me). It was a catalog of nightclubs in Russia with contacts and addresses, in addition contained several links to content and had its own chat for regular visitors.

After a short period of time, I thought, as it is said now, about the monetization of the project. The purpose of monetization was self-sustaining, that is, not to invest in the project, and the project could provide for itself with attendance of about 600-800 people daily. Now this project is a tape of musical news, without catalogs and other information.

2006

At that time I did not see advertising networks for mobile sites, I knew only affiliate programs that redeem traffic to third-party sites for a penny with my own accounting algorithms. I was not happy about selling traffic to such PPs, I was constantly looking for more acceptable solutions, the requirements for which I already started to formulate for myself.

2007

One of their first experiences of placing quality targeted advertising on a mobile project is of course Google AdSense.
It seemed that it was very difficult to withdraw money from it, but fantastic prices for the cost of the transition seemed like a fairy tale. Three months or more was a block.
As many already know, my Google AdSense account was banned after filling out the address form to send a check. The reason, as I recall, was that the sites I referred to contained links that violate the rules and regulations.

The idea was in the air.

I searched, continued to put links from PP and pseudo-advertising tools, tried many, but stopped at one, which for the first time in two long years of searching paid for advertising more than the cost of hosting a project.
Advantages of the network: the output of ads under the visitor, more expensive ads were shown more often, each visitor had his own link.
I will not give names and links, but I’ll say that at that time I was amazed at the possibilities and accuracy of this advertising tool, I was satisfied with the price for the transfer, every month, but ...
The cons were definitely present:
- absence of the transition log in free access
- inaccuracy in the accounting of views ads
- lack of analytical information
- dull advertisers
- calculation and pricing in WMZ Webmoney (and I would like rubles)

But all this overlapped the regular income to the account without delay and claims.

After that, it became clear to me that in Russia there is no universally uniform way of advertising on mobile sites, calculated in rubles. The niche is completely free, and PP for reselling clicks are not related to advertising and, accordingly, are not competitors in principle. So far I have not fully understood how to do this, what investments are needed and what will be required for maintenance. But he looked for people, watched, studied how the emerging advertising tools worked.

2008

Good mobile advertising tools began to appear. He began to use some to advertise his project. Acquaintance with the managers / administration of networks gave an additional reason to think about increasing advertising momentum. Claims and requirements for advertising tools were formed by themselves with increasing speed and needs. I wanted one tool, where all the minuses were removed, all the necessary chips were implemented, and there would be an opportunity to monetize not only one project, but to give everyone who wants to transparently use the advertising opportunities of their site.

Having knowledge of all (maybe almost all) traffic buying / selling systems that existed at that time, their subtleties and payment terms, I tried to organize a steady stream of transitions from one PP to another. A first project appeared, taking into account transitions, a multi-user structure and a buy / sell credit system, where the exchange rate for loans (credit is the unit of calculation) was formed by the internal exchange. Starting turnovers and price differences were insignificant, but understanding the logic of the processes can be successfully resold, remaining in a big plus. It was also on hand to new networks, which could in the shortest possible time give their advertisers a large amount of traffic and work out the resulting budgets. I myself organized advertising streams several times for advertising campaigns of famous brands, but I received only a percentage of the budget without direct contact with advertisers.

Further, my knowledge of programming was not enough. To optimize and improve the system of buying / selling needed good hands of a programmer.

At that time, I already had a substantial balance on advertising, contacts with managers of well-known networks and agreements on large volumes of traffic.
The advertising campaigns that drove the ad networks were large, the advertising budgets exceeded my income dozens of times. All this has become for me to turn into gameplay. I started looking for a programmer to improve my tools and logging system. Money and turnover allowed to hire an employee.

Many of my friends did not believe that they could work with advertising, especially in such a narrow area as the mobile Internet.

The first experience to entrust the idea of ​​a buying / selling tool to a third-party developer was negative. Or the developer’s level was not high, or I couldn’t formulate the task, but the developer wasn’t satisfied with the fixed payment for supporting the tool consisting of one file and database, I had to raise deductions in his direction and add more tasks to match the amounts and tasks works The launch has gone directory sites, which still stands in the state of 60% of the plan. Not grown together, and pay, and demand for work. The developer went into freelance, leaving me in a panic and with an obscure tool code.

The following experience with a remote developer was not long in coming.
I was recommended a young and very gifted specialist.
The task was simple:
- make a tool for buying and selling advertising on mobile sites
- with the ability to customize targeting advertisers by mobile operators, mobile device browsers, phone manufacturers brands
- maintaining a full detailed log for each show and transition
- with automatic deposit of funds
- with free registration in the system
- a single account for all operations

Work on the project went very quickly, I myself did not believe that everything was realizable and customizable, although I did not take into account much in the first version of the network. Three months after setting the task, the advertising network was already working, but at least it had to have its own server, and the existing hosting did not allow either external or incoming requests, which made the work very difficult, until the project was stopped during the first stages of work.

With the appearance of good incomes, there was a desire to go into a legal existence, to establish an organization, which would give direct access to good budgets of large advertisers.
All the available experience and ready-made tools allowed us to save up on initial investments in the business. If I knew where to look for investors, how to get start-up capital and the support of specialists, then everything would be faster.

About unsuccessful experience to find co-founders.

I will give advice: “A business must be managed by one person, on whose decision the course of affairs will depend, all participants and employees”. And I wanted to go the other way.

To start an advertising network, both advertisers and sites on which advertising will be placed are needed. In the absence of one of the parties of a turn, the network of the income will not bring.
As co-founders, I invited friends of managers from the sales department of another advertising tool. The terms of the partnership were 50x50: from me the equipment, the maintenance of the network, the websites and the traffic, and from the “partners” advertisers. The scheme is correct when everyone is busy with his task for the sake of a common cause, but as it turned out, it is better to do everything yourself. I waited a long time until the "partners" come to advertisers. I changed constitutive documents several times before filing in tax, adjusting to the interests of my “partners”, but one trial advertiser with questionable advertising campaigns for three months didn’t suit me and my employees.

The server is purchased, installed in the DC, the advertising network is set up, people are hired, the sites are connected to the network, as time went on. The expectations of new advertisers were replaced by anxiety over the profitability of the project. When “partners” stopped responding to my calls, SMS and letters, I had to make a decision to get out myself, to get out of the current situation.

LLC Mobile Advertising

An organization was created, an office was removed and a loan was taken for the first salary of employees. People believed in me, I expected full return from them, they did not let me down. I hope they also have no complaints to me about possible rigidity in the first months of work, but then it was necessary to swim out. Only tough, in the absence of external funding, distributing responsibilities and funds could get on their feet.

The first contract was received during the first three months of the organization’s work; we went to it for a long time. The second is almost six months. It would seem that there are organizations seeking to get advertising, there are publishers who want to sell ads, but getting a contract for advertising is not just going to the office, bringing a commercial offer and signing a contract. Communication is everything.
I had to go through content providers, call offices, write letters with commercial offers, but this did not give any results. My connections and connections of my friends were brought to managers who are responsible for advertising inside the CP. A couple of calls to the right people and here's an agreement for you, an advertising campaign was signed and started. I note that the first contract I signed with KP was extended for all three years and is currently in force.

Work on attracting sites to the network is one of the most ungrateful activities. The more you try for people, the worse they treat you. As an example: I personally helped the first partners to set up advertising campaigns and explained how to choose ads, communicated with everyone via ICQ, people knew me for a long time, but more and more my help turned into a duty. At any time there were requests, comments, requirements. I had to listen to rudeness and read mats to my side. He put people around his neck - lifelong support. I had to limit the use of ICQ, now it is not more often than once a week. All business contacts made to Skype, the contacts on the business card, which I give personally to an important person for me. For partners there is a standard ticket system where you can always ask a question and get an answer. All appeals and responses are personalized.

With advertisers, too, everything is not quite smooth, but for them once I set up a template, showed where to turn on / off campaigns, where to monitor statistics, where to choose sites and everything is clear to them. There are also independent partners, from which there are neither questions nor complaints. They themselves advertise, use all the functionality, they themselves monitor and upload statistics for local processing.

Our core team consists of three people:
I, in the person of the manager and coordinator,
Andrey - support of partners and users of our tools;
Nikolay - equipment support and all software.
All in the equity and more than three years of doing this together.
My employees are my friends, people whom I trust and my like-minded people.

We were connected by a chain of random events. Nikolay, at that time still not very experienced programmer, wrote a catalog of night clubs for my first mobile site. We organized the first purchase and sale conversion systems with Andrey. He was brought to me by one of my first public works, then joint interests and frequent meetings about and without, made us good friends.
We are all originally from different countries, but now we work together. I managed to assemble a team, in that I was lucky.

The organization also employs salaried employees, but staff turnover does not focus on core business. Learning and introducing new people takes a lot of time. All activities are organized through the Internet office.

Our advertising network: mobiads.ru
The project has been operating for three years. During this time, the network engine was rewritten from scratch, including the functionality and authorization system. New engine in work a little over a year.

The designer from me is rather weak (not the designer I), but all the design that is present now is invented by me. Many people blame minimalism and the lack of information content on the main page, but I think it is better than a bunch of unnecessary elements and graphics. Currently we are working on a new network design. The work is performed by a professional studio. The design will be completely different from the available scheme.

The system is built on the complete trust of three parties.

The site owner chooses which advertising campaigns to show to his visitors;
The advertiser himself chooses which site will rotate his advertising campaign;
We control traffic from sites and advertisements.

Network Basics

initially stood:
- regular payments once a week
- Nor any porn in the texts of the links that hang all mobile Internet
- accuracy of accounting and clear logic system
- accurate logistics and advertising system
Further to this list was added:
- transparency of all information about sites and advertising campaigns
- mirror-like statistics for both groups of network users
- analytical information to advertisers about current and past advertising campaigns
- information on all existing advertising campaigns for site owners

From the details of the network:
- auction ad display system
- good advertising rate
- the necessary debugging information is displayed in the comments in the place where the advertisement is displayed
- together with the statistics, a log of each transition from IP, referrer and add. data
- the ability to choose the time of rotation of advertising advertiser
- set the minimum cost of advertising for your site

Further network development plans:
- expansion of advertising methods
- integration with large foreign networks
- consultations and seminars for advertising agencies
- the presence of representatives from the network in all important forums and conferences

Also, my personal plans include:
- applications for modern mobile platforms
- new mobile projects and services
A team is formed for these projects.

Ask questions, write recommendations.

PS
I am very grateful to the people who helped and supported me in difficult moments.
Thanks to habrovchanam who helped in the publication of this material.
I do not know the consequences of this topic, but I hope they will only be positive.
Always open to new connections with interesting people.

Pss
Requires developers for Android, iPhone and Win Phone, preferably living in St. Petersburg.
If you are interested in working in a team on new projects in shared participation, send your resume to the mail. More than enough ideas to start new projects.