Last spring, the mobile advertising network, Reporo, netted 3 billion ad impressions in one month and hoped to reach 4 billion by mid year. Well, it’s mid-year and the firm has more than met its goal by logging 5 billion ad impressions in the month of June.
“That growth has been continuous,” boasts Ben Keirle, global publishing manager of Reporo. “Whatever you want to use to measure our business, be it by impressions, by clicks, be it by revenue, be it by territory growth in terms of how many countries we now are doing paid campaigns, we are smashing through targets. The key message there is that mobile has exploded for us in the last 15 months.
There are some very good mobile affiliate models that do very well for people, but publishers shouldn’t be afraid to try something new and different.
“My boss likes to say, ‘Think globally and act locally.’ In the states, I think people are guilty of thinking locally too much. They are seeing traffic coming from outside the U.S. and Canada, and we try and find ways to make money out of that. That’s what people are using us for.
“The mainstay of our growth has been the continued publisher acquisition. We have a lot more advertisers who have come on board so that we can start monetizing them. It’s given us more traffic to target.”
Reporo deals exclusively in mobile adult and its 5 billion impressions, a number that continues to grow, come via the core nations served by the firm — the U.S., Western Europe, South America, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. Reporo also has decent volume in India and according to Keirle, seven billion impressions per month is a realistic goal before the end of the year.
“For our advertisers, it’s great for them to know that they have large volumes of traffic available in those countries,” Keirle said. “Our success is due to a combination of factors. First, the mobile industry is growing at a massive rate. The i-Phone has been a big help in mobile growth because people trust the brand and enjoy the experience. Add to that the fact that there are a lot more companies that realize there is money to be made in mobile advertising. The average lifetime value of a customer is longer with mobile than it is with the Internet, which adds to the sustainability of the market. The new technology that constantly improves the speed of downloading will only add more customers.”
Reporo specializes in serving publishers of adult content that have mobile optimized websites. The firm enables publishers to monetize traffic and find advertisers that want to target their traffic in foreign countries by setting up a network that allows Reporo to place ads on their sites. This earns money for the publishers who serve ads on the Reporo network and the advertisers also benefit from the large number of publishers and ad impressions that are in territories they wish to target. This onestop-shop model relies on a simple revenue sharing basis which awards 60 percent to clients.
To attract new business, Reporo continues its Turbo Redirect Model which allows new clients to keep all of the gross revenues from their inventory sales during the first month.
“We’ve taken on a lot more redirect traffic in the last couple of months,” Keirle says. “It probably will be our main focus for the next three to four months and Reporo now has local language representation. We now can target and optimize the traffic and opportunities in South America. We have local language representation in Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Chile, and Bolivia. We’re also covered in Spain, where we are recruiting publishers. We’re now making more and more money from that South American traffic, where people were making very little money on it before we arrived.
“We also have local language representation in Italy and France. Those markets are pretty well developed already and are very lucrative. Anyone with U.S.-based profiles of traffic should be looking to use us to monetize those countries as well, because our local language representation gets you much more penetration in those markets.”
Reporo continues to be aggressive in finding new publishers as well as expanding into new territories. The firm offers payment in a flat fee if the publisher chooses to be paid up front rather than enter a revenue sharing model.
‘We analyze the publisher’s profile of traffic and we break it down by geography, by handset, and we work out what their traffic is going to be worth, almost to the penny,” Keirle said. “We’ve learned to look at a publisher’s profile of traffic and be able to put a dollar value on it. That seems to give people a lot more security.
“There are some very good mobile affiliate models that do very well for people, but publishers shouldn’t be afraid to try something new and different. The redirect model that we offer certainly is one that will allow them to do that, and we offer it risk free. We will be more than happy to cover any of their existing revenues in order to try out our service. They won’t be disappointed with the results, no matter how excellent they think their current affiliate model is. It can’t compete with our model because of the very nature of the way it works. If they are redirecting traffic to an affiliate program in Denmark, for example, we have four or five local advertisers in that country that are all bidding for that same volume of traffic. The competitive bidding element allows them to drive the cost per redirected user up to its maximum. This allows us to generate far more revenues than are possible through any traditional affiliate program.”
Keirle adds that Reporo is very pliable when dealing with publishers that have concerns about redirecting their traffic to a landing page that isn’t their own. The firm offers a brand new “M-Dot Domain” solution which does not require publishers to redirect traffic away from their own URL.
In the very near future, advertisers will be able to bid exclusively for redirected traffic through Reporo, according to Keirle. The firm also has signed a partnership deal with MiKandi, the online adult software store, the world’s first mobile adult app store for mobile devices.
