Official Release of New Publisher iPhone SDK v3.00

We are so excited to have officially released the latest version of our iPhone SDK for LeadBolt (version 3.00) and it is now available for download in your Publisher Portal.

This updated publisher SDK for iOS (v.3.00) features the following new additions which will surely help you achieve even more from your iOS apps!

  1. New ad types (Audio ads)
  2. Enhancements to existing ad types (Audio enhanced In-App Alerts)
  3. New features (optional EULA)
  4. iOS 6 IFA/IDFA and performance enhancements

Here the details …

Audio Ads [New]
Audio ads provide the next dimension in ad experience and app monetization for app developers and can work seamlessly alongside app ads. This is a new ad type available for publishers to create and add to their apps.

Audio Enhanced Ads
The next dimension Audio ads are available on selected Display Ad Templates to further enhance app monetization. This advanced functionality improves the performance of Interstitials and In-App Alerts.

EULA Support
An optional EULA is now available for iOS publishers when setting up their apps, allowing publishers to provide more information about the local notification advertisements integrated into their app, with both Full Terms and Summary Terms options.

IFA/IDFA Support on iOS 6
This USDK also extends the IFA/IDFA support included in iOS 6 and above, so that iOS App Publishers can feel confident this new ad serving ID is handled properly.

Other iOS 6 Enhancements
This USDK also includes a number of iOS 6 specific enhancements to ensure the ad serving experience is optimal on these new versions, including support for armv7s architecture.

How To Get Started
You can now download/update to the latest version of the iPhone SDK by visiting the ‘Help/ FAQs’ tab then clicking on the ‘App Developer SDKs’ tab in your publisher portal. Please read the updated PDF documentation included to migrate to the new SDK version seamlessly.

Login to your Publisher Account and download the latest version of our iPhone SDK now!

We continually strive to provide our publishers with the most effective and high performing advertising experience for their users. Extending audio ads to iOS will increase advertising performance for publishers and diversify the ad format options for publishers.

 

Highlights at Apps World San Francisco

Apps World North America was a great success for the LeadBolt team.  The conference showcased many of the major players in the mobile industry and our booth was constantly busy with interested attendees engaging with our team.  Over 5,500 attendees were present at this event and they consisted of a wide variety of developers, affiliate marketers and enterprise entrepreneurs.  Potential partners were plenty and kept the team on their toes.

The two day conference proved to be a great success from a branding and name recognition stand point as LeadBolt stood out from the crowd as a leading mobile ad network.  More than just banners, our diverse range of high performing and advanced ad types combined with our direct relationship with developers really set us apart from the competition.

This event provided opportunities to not only establish new partners but to reconnect with current partners face to face.  Be sure to catch up with us at our next conference venue – Mobile World Congress in Barcelona from 25-28 February!

 

Win a Mobile World Congress Pass valued at €699!

We will be exhibiting at the world’s largest mobile industry conference this month in Barcelona. This huge event will be taking place from 25-28 February 2013 in beautiful Barcelona and we’d love to see you there at Booth #8.1B3 in the App Planet Hall 8.1!

Three MWC conference passes are up for grabs and to win a pass (worth €699) which will give you complete access to the expo hall with over 1,500 exhibitors, access to GSMA seminars and partner events, simply read on!

Win a Pass to MWC!
To enter, simply tell us in 100 words or less why you love using LeadBolt and why you think you should win a conference pass to the Mobile World Congress in Spain. All entries will be judged on their creativity and integrity by the LeadBolt marketing team.

Please send an email to kate (at) leadbolt (dot) com with your answer and include the following details – Full Name, Company Name, Email Address, Phone Number and Advertiser ID.For more information about the Mobile World Congress, please visit their website here - http://www.mobileworldcongress.com/

Entries close on Friday, 15th February 2013 at 11.59:59pm PST. Winners of MWC passes will be notified by email to the email address provided by Monday 18th February 2013. Please note, only a pass to MWC is being supplied as a prize. There is no travel, accommodation or other component to the prize.

Highlights: Affiliate Summit West

With over five thousand people attending this year’s Affiliate Summit West conference in Las Vegas, our team had a very busy start to the week exhibiting at their biggest show this year! Our exhibition booth was constantly buzzing with hundreds of interested attendees engaging with our team throughout the day.

The jam-packed three day conference included access to thousands of affiliate marketers as well as experts within search engine marketing, email marketing, social media, mobile marketing, and more.

This conference gave us the opportunity to catch up with our partners face to face and it was a great way to successfully establish new business relationships and leads to further benefit our current advertisers and publishers. If you did not manage to catch up with our team at the conference this time around, be sure to make it to the next show as we’d very much like to meet with you then!

Biggest Mobile Advertising News of the Week: Volume 1

This is the first of a series of roundups that will help you stay on top of all the mobile advertising news that is out there. We may also have a story or two related to the mobile world in general. For mobile developers and advertisers, this is mobile news you need to know.

  • Google Launches New Ad Feature To Cut Down On Accidental Mobile Clicks - Working toward getting rid of accidental clicks on mobile ads. This may, of course, change CTR as well as conversion numbers for a lot of people who use Google to serve their mobile advertisements. (TechCrunch – 12/13/12)
  • BII REPORT: What’s Holding Back Mobile Advertising? - The state of mobile advertising in 2012 and where it is going in 2013 and beyond. A look at the question of what is missing for mobile ads to grow even larger. (Business Insider – 12/13/12)
  • Mobile Advertising Revenues in the U.S. Projected to Increase to $12 Billion by 2016 - “The research group [eMarketer] has projected that U.S. mobile advertising revenues to more than quadruple from the $1.45 billion seen in 2011 to $6.62 billion in 2014, and to be worth nearly $12 billion by 2016.” (Marketwire Press Release – 12/12/12)
  • How Barter Ad Deals Fuel Silicon Valley’s Mobile App Economy - The pros and cons of swapping mobile ads to try to attract users. For those who are just starting out and do not have a lot of DAUs, the return may not be there according to the article.  (AdAge – 12/13/12)
  • Opera sums up 2012 in mobile advertising: iOS, the US and multimedia are the market drivers - Mobile multimedia is on the rise and will continue to do so. Additionally, the report found that Russia and the Ukraine are two of the places with the biggest growth of mobile ad impressions in late 2012.(The Next Web – 12/11/12)
  • Mideast spending on mobile ads goes through the roof - “The potential for mobile display ads in Jordan is large. We see a trend nowadays where businesses in different sectors are seriously considering resorting to mobile advertising to reach out to a wider audience,” Wael Quader, chief executive officer of Noqoush Mobile Media Group, was quoted as saying in an interview with The Jordan Times earlier this month. (Albawaba – 12/9/12)
  • e-Bay Drops Mobile Advertising: Does This Hurt Facebook? - The meat of the Forbes piece is from an article from AllThingsD, where they quoted Devin Wenig, eBay’s president of global marketplaces, as saying, “This year, eBay displayed ads inside of its iPhone app as an experiment, but found that they were distracting and cluttered up the smaller screens. The ads also didn’t deliver meaningful revenue. It’s not worth it.” The AllThingsD piece is here. (Forbes – 12/20/12)
  • Don’t Let Growth Fool You: Mobile Advertising Is Still Failing - A look at “Interruption-Based Banners In Mobile not Working Because they Won’t Scale.” Facebook is growing their mobile ad revenue because they are using non-interruptive banners and advertising.(AdAge – 12/19/12)
  • Facebook and Google Benefit From Mobile Ad Surge - When it comes to those who are making the most money from mobile, Google and Facebook lead the pack with Apple, Pandora and Twitter also doing well. Google was the big winner in 2012 with $2.2 billion in mobile sales, according to eMarketer, up 189% from 2011. (NY Times Bits Blog – 12/17/12)
  • Facebook drives the surge in U.S. mobile ad dollars - Fears of slow growth in mobile ad revenues before and after the Facebook IPO have proven to be unfounded with the social network quickly growing their mobile advertising revenues in 2012, bringing them to a number two spot under Google. (Business Journal – 12/18/12)
  • Facebook’s Wal-Mart Gambit - The Facebook and Walmart ad-blitz experiment on Black Friday this year was successful for both. According to the article, “Facebook and Wal-Mart rolled out the social network’s biggest mobile-advertising campaign ever, consisting of 50 million ads.” Walmart pre-purchased a set number of ad impressions at a special rate. (The Wall Street Journal – 12/16/12)

 

Highlights at AppNation in San Francisco

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our team has just wrapped up at the AppNation conference in San Francisco and they had a fantastic two days there.

Staging their largest show ever this year with over 3,000 attendees, experts from across the broader apps ecosystem, developers and mobile entrepreneurs involved in developing apps across all key native platforms, social platforms, connected TV platforms, and the Enterprise were all present for this insightful event.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We enjoyed chatting to those who visited our booth in the 4A’s AppLab arena. If you didn’t make it this time around or missed our stand, we hope to see you at the next conference venue very soon.

 

Massive Feature Packed SDK Update

Without doubt, this is our biggest release since the launch of our mobile platform 18 months ago. We are very proud and excited to be releasing v4.00 of our Publisher Android SDK which includes some revolutionary new features that are sure to help you monetize your apps more effectively!

The new Android SDK is now available for download from the publisher portal including the updated PDF documentation.

Summary of Changes & Additions
Here are some specific changes and new additions in v4.00 and why you should download/update to this latest SDK version straight away:

QuickStartAds: Integrating LeadBolt’s ads into Android apps is now even easier using Start Ads. Follow the simple integration method for start ads and it will allow publishers to load an App Ad (display ad eg. interstitial), a Notification Ad and an App Icon all at the same time. This quick and easy integration method requires only a few lines of code to load multiple ad formats, making it the simplest and quickest way for developers to integrate our ads at the start of their App.

Audio Ads: Audio Ads and provide the next dimension in ad experience and app monetization for app developers and can work seamlessly alongside app ads. This is a new ad type available for publishers to create and add to their apps. Simply add “App Audio (SDK)” Ad type in the portal and use the loadAudioAd() function of the SDK.

Audio Enhanced Ads: Display ads enhanced with audio functionality provide the next dimension in ad experience by combining display, audio and a gyroscopic trigger to enhance user engagement and move the display ad experience beyond the limitations of the mobile screen. This is particularly appropriate for Interstitials and In-App Alerts. Enable ‘Audio enhancement’ on the ‘Appearance’ tab on these ad types and where available.

Banner Ad Notifications: 320×50 banner ads can now be served in the notification tray of
Android devices, allowing high impact graphic ads to increase performance even further of already effective notification ads.

Notification Ad Enhancements: Publishers can now customize different layouts for their text ads. The new optimized layouts allow text ads to be served with additional lines of ad text, allow the use of custom notification icon or even allow notification without icons on the left hand corner of the ad. This will deliver a better ad experience to app users.

Rich Media Ads: IAB certified, interactive rich media ads that conform to ORMMA MRAID 2.0 standards, offering engaging and interactive display ads for users. Rich media ads typically earn more for publishers due to their higher user engagement.

How To Get Started
You can now download/update to the latest version of the Android SDK by visiting the ‘Help/ FAQs’ tab then clicking on the ‘App Developer SDKs’ tab in your publisher portal. Please read the updated PDF documentation included to migrate to the new SDK version seamlessly.

Login to your Publisher Account and download the latest version of our Android SDK now!

 

 

$250,000 Thanksgiving Weekend Giveaway

In anticipation of the biggest retail weekend of the year, we are giving away up to $250,000 over the Black Friday to Cyber Monday weekend!

Publishers will receive $50 when they go live with any one or more of our ad types on a NEW mobile app* and Advertisers will receive a 10% rebate of their additional spend**

How to register
To take part in this great offer, you need to pre-register by 22 November 2012, by emailing us at blackfriday@leadbolt.com. Please include the subject “Thanksgiving Giveaway” and provide us with the following details:

  • Publishers: Publisher ID number, name of the App you’d like to add our ads to, and app listing URL for the app
  • Advertisers: Advertiser ID number

If you have any questions about this offer, please do not hesitate to contact your LeadBolt Account Manager.

Happy Thanksgiving!

* publishers will receive $50 in their Publisher account during their next account payment cycle when they pre-register, go live with any one or more of our ad types on a new mobile app and get a minimum 1,000 valid impressions per day on this NEW app by Monday, 26 November 2012.

** advertisers will receive 10% of additional spend as a rebate into their account. The increase in spend will be calculated by comparing their average daily spend over the Thanksgiving weekend (23 – 26 November 2012) compared to their average daily spend for the 7 biggest spend days from 1 – 22 November 2012.

 

Launch of the LeadBolt Mobile Portal

We are very excited to announce the launch of our smart phone capable Leadbolt Mobile Portal. It is already live and running so you can quickly check your stats on the go. Just browse through m.leadbolt.net on your smart phone now.

Features Include:

  • Access both advertiser and publisher accounts
  • See summary publisher revenue with drill down by app
  • See advertising spend with drill down by campaigns
  • Enable and pause campaigns, adjust bids and budgets

We are thrilled to be launching this new product for both advertisers and publishers.