作者：Adam Landis

在当今年代，关于热门移动广告初创企业融资创下新纪录，或者新分析报告预测移动广告发展将远超预期的消息几乎不绝于耳。这些数据确实颇为惊人：全球已有将近20亿智能手机用户，150万款iOS和Android应用。

移动行业茁壮发展，移动公司成群涌现，部分是因为广告尚未完全实现其发展潜力。但我们必须正视一个现实：移动发行商确实难以通过广告盈利。虽然美国有4.5%的媒体消费内容来自移动设备，但这也仅能转化为1.7%的媒体广告投入。一方面来说，这也确实表明移动广告市场具有发展潜力。

但从短期来讲，虽然存在这种差异，它让成百上千万移动发行商支出的费用相对更低。事实上，移动平台的广告价格(CPM，或每千次印象成本）远低于其他主流媒体渠道，而报纸的CPM为51美元，电视的CPM为29美元，互联网的CPM为4.7美元，移动平台的CPM平均仅为1.31美元。

究竟是什么原因拉低了发行商的广告支出？针对我所交流过的上千家发行商而言，主要有三个因素拉低了移动广告盈利费用。在此我还要分享精明的发行商如何将这些挑战转化为获胜优势的方法。

首先，这些挑战与较低的移动广告价格密切相关：

mobile-advertising(from wirelessduniya)

技术分裂性

苹果、谷歌、微软、亚马逊、黑莓和三星等主流公司创造了一系列用户可选择的平台、操作系统、设备类型以及设备型号。虽然这给用户带来了更多选择，但也为发行商带来了更多复杂性和技术挑战性，导致他们不得不让自己的系统迎合所有这些快速变更的平台版本、硬件性能以及屏幕尺寸。发行商投入大量精力发行内容，努力在市场中站稳脚跟。而他们原本却可以将这些精力用于制作出色的内容和虏获用户——这两大因素直接影响其广告盈利性。

广告资源垄断

许多移动发行商并不会投入资源去试验多种盈利渠道。他们会选择单一的合作伙伴，通常是一家广告网络，并将自己的广告盈利控制权全权交给该合作伙伴。这实际上给该合作伙伴提供了一种不对称的定价权，令后者掌握了控制发行商广告的主动权。在缺乏竞争的情况下，这种合作伙伴在初次“审核”过程之后就不会有提供具有竞争性盈利价格的动力，之后发行商就会困惑为何自己的盈利开始缩水。

“无价值”的创新

创新是技术行为中应用普遍的一个术语，通常指代重组一个已经毁坏或有瑕疵的系统。这里存在“积极”的创新——使用技术提高我们管理生活或公司的方式。不幸的是，我几乎每天都能看到移动领域出现所谓的“无价值”创新现象。这只是为了创新而创新，只是因为存在创新的可能，而不是因为这可以让生活更美好，公司更成功而创新。

我经常遇到一些笃定最新、最棒广告技术、广告单元或奖励性解决方案必能成功，并且不遗余力投入大量时间和精力去尝试这些方法——-最后总是惨淡收尾并关门大吉歇业。结果是：浪费广告资源，开发时间，并产生了对这一行业发展潜力的质疑。当市场很脆弱时，“创新”很可能就是一种“破坏”。

但也有些成功的发行商已经找到了应对这些挑战的方法：

分裂性的解决方法

精明而专注地选择。领先的发行商已经旗帜鲜明地表明立场：他们首先坚守可靠的平台（游戏邦注：例如仅专注于iOS和Android），等待新平台证明其可行性之后再向其投入开发精力。想想那些曾经对Windows 7和旧版黑莓App World大为推崇者如今的结局就知道了。其次，领先的发行商会在多个平台和作品运用开发精力——例如将Unity 3D游戏引擎用于多个平台的代码生成。赢家都知道巩固实力以维持成功的必要性。

盈利垄断的解决方法

多样化。赢家都不会死守单一的广告平台。有些更先进的发行商（例如Zynga）甚至已经建立自己的广告平台。虽然多数游戏发行商并没有大量的游戏和资源用于建立这种平台，但即使是小型发行商也能够通过多种渠道传播自己的供应内容，以便培养其广告的持续竞争力。竞争可以提升盈利水平，让盈利合作伙伴保持“忠诚”，避免广告供应来源与盈利合作伙伴之间出现力量不对称的情况。

“无价值”创新的解决方法

要创新，但不要过于冒险，尽量让他人来冒险。创新是必须举措，赢家通常会先执行调查再谨慎布置策略。他们专注于那些能够带来持续、稳定收益的模式。赢家会选择那些愿意为其承担大量风险的合作伙伴。例如，视频广告虽然问世多年，发行商在这种广告上投入太多赌注，最终却只收获了令人失望的盈利结果：对于一家可持续发展的发行商来说，采用基于视频广告的商业模式，需要多年的技术稳定性以及填充率。赢家通常会让自己的合作伙伴来试验音频、RTB和MRAID（移动富媒体）等新技术，这样他们自己就可以专注于制作出色的内容。

移动广告前景光明是一个不容质疑的事实——因为这一领域的用户规模在扩大，技术在提升，广告商数量也在增长，对这一媒体的投入也不断增加。但发行商只有谨慎根据自己的实际情况制定移动盈利策略才可能胜出。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

3 challenges in mobile ad monetization — and 3 ways to solve them

Adam Landis

This story is part of a series exploring the convergence of design, technology, and commerce in the mobile industry. Find out more at MobileBeat 2013, July 9-10 in San Francisco. Read the full series here.

Adam Landis is the Vice President of Business Development for LifeStreet Media.

A day doesn’t go by without news of some record-breaking funding round for a hot mobile advertising start-up, or a new analyst report forecasting that mobile ad growth will be even more dramatic than expected. Indeed, the numbers are staggering: almost 2 billion smartphone users worldwide and 1.5 million apps for iOS and Android alone.

Despite robust industry growth, a number of mobile companies are floundering, in part because advertising has yet to realize its full potential. Reality check: it’s really tough for mobile publishers to make money through advertising. Although 4.5 percent of media consumption in the U.S. occurs on mobile devices, this only translates into 1.7 percent of media ad spend. On one hand, this indicates real potential for growth in the mobile ad market.

But in the short-term, while this discrepancy exists, it spells lower payouts for the millions of mobile publishers looking to monetize their inventory. In fact, ad rates (CPMs, or cost per thousand impressions) are lower on mobile than on any other major media channel; while newspapers command $51 CPMs, TV $29 CPMs, and online $4.70 CPMs, mobile averages a measly $1.31 CPM.

What’s driving down publisher ad payouts? I’ve spoken to literally thousands of publishers, and there are three primary factors driving down monetization rates. I’ve also learned how a few savvy publishers have figured out how to turn these challenges into winning propositions.

First, the challenges responsible for lower mobile ad rates:

Technology fragmentation

The major players including Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Blackberry, and Samsung are creating a plethora of platforms, operating systems, device types, and device sizes from which consumers can choose. While this brings greater options to consumers, it generates complexity and technical challenges for publishers who have to adapt their systems to support all of these rapidly changing platform versions, hardware capabilities, and screen sizes. Publishers spend an exhausting amount of energy distributing content and remaining relevant in the marketplace. This is time that otherwise could be spent building great content and acquiring users – two factors that directly impact inventory monetization potential.

Self-inflicted monopolization of ad sources

Many mobile publishers don’t invest the resources to experiment with multiple monetization sources. They choose a single partner, typically an ad network, and give complete control of monetizing their inventory to that sole partner. This provides asymmetric pricing power to that partner, who gains monopoly control over the publisher’s inventory. Without competition, the partners have little motivation to provide competitive monetization rates after the initial “review” process, and then publishers wonder why their monetization rates start decreasing.

“Worthless” disruption

Disruption is a widely used term in the technology industry, and typically refers to the reimagining of a system that is broken or flawed. There is “positive” disruption – the use of technology to improve the way we conduct our lives or our businesses. Unfortunately, what I see on an almost daily basis in the mobile sector is what I call “worthless” disruption. This is disruption for disruption’s sake; innovation because something is possible, not because it makes lives better or businesses more successful.

Too often I speak with publishers who bet on the latest, greatest new ad technology, ad unit, or incentivized solution that takes an inordinate amount of time and resources to try — and then ultimately flops miserably when that company goes out of business the next day. The result: wasted inventory, misused development time, and a heap of skepticism about the industry’s potential at large. When the market is fragile, “disruption” can be simply that: a disruption.

Now the good news: the winning publishers have found solutions to these challenges:

Solution to fragmentation

Choose wisely and focus. Leading publishers have established a defensive position against the confusion: first they stick with proven, winning platforms—such as focusing on iOS and Android only— and will wait for new platforms to prove success before taking on the risk of development. Just think about what happened to those developers who bet heavily on Windows 7 or the old Blackberry App World. Second, leading publishers are leveraging development resources across multiple platforms and titles – such as using the Unity 3D game engine for multiple platform code generation. The winners know it’s necessary to consolidate efforts to maintain success.

Solution to a monetization monopoly

Diversification. The winners have moved away from relying on a single ad network to monetize their inventory. Some of the more advanced publishers – like Zynga – have even gone so far as to build their own ad platforms; while most gaming publishers don’t have the variety of games nor the resources to make this type of investment, even smaller publishers can afford to spread their supply across multiple sources to encourage ongoing competition for their inventory by using mediation platforms such as MoPub. Competition drives monetization levels up, keeps monetization partners “honest,” and prevents the development of asymmetric power between supply source and monetization partner.

Solution to “worthless” disruption

Innovate, but take calculated risks, and let others take the risks for you when possible. Innovation is a must. The winners do their research and place their bets carefully. They focus on solutions that will bring them enduring and sustainable revenue models. The winners also often opt for partners who will take on a lot of the risk for them. For example, while the concept of video ads has been around for years, publishers who bet too heavily on earnings from those ads have been disappointed with monetization results; it has taken years for technology stability and fill rates to make for a sustainable publisher business model based on video advertising. Winning publishers let their partners experiment with the latest technologies like audio, RTB, and MRAID (mobile rich media) at their own cost, without expecting publishers to focus on anything beyond creating great content.

There is no doubt that mobile advertising has a gleaming future: audiences are growing, the technology is improving, and increasing numbers of advertisers are investing in the medium. But only the companies that carefully tailor their mobile monetization strategies will live to tell the tale.（source：venturebeat）