Imagine you’re promoting a mobile marketing campaign and making big bucks, letting all the people in your neighborhood know who’s the king! Then, all of a sudden, your mobile marketing campaign revenue drops to the bottom. You feel low, downtrodden, and are left with no idea of what to do next!
Therefore we've created this article, for you to understand exactly what could have happened with the campaign. This is not really for the users of Smartlink, as the work structure is different, but for those who work with single Offers.
This is important for you to know that you're aware of your moves and cover all your bases.
[Disclaimer: This post was originally published on
Fact #1. In the Advertising realm, size matters
When you’re promoting a mobile marketing campaign you’re also promoting an advertiser. Just like campaigns, advertisers are a diverse bunch.
Reality check number one: not all campaigns are the same.
Reality check number two: not all advertisers are gonna play the same game.
In fact, some advertisers are huge sharks. They’re big corporations with thousands and thousands of employees and unlimited advertising budgets.
On the other hand, some are new-born companies making their first impression in this big, wonderful, hyper-competitive ecosystem. This means that their expenditures are gonna be lower. Indeed, they need to be very controlled at the beginning of their activity. Keep in mind that – in subscription campaigns – carriers pay advertisers from between 90 to 180 days afterwards; in APPs, it also takes months for the advertiser to start seeing some profit.
These enterprises need a huge cash flow (working capital) to keep their activity going during this time without having to pause any campaigns. They spread their budget across several networks to ensure they maintain a steady flow of user acquisition and minimize the risks of not getting any users. In addition – in new campaigns – the advertiser may want to limit the budget to better monitor the campaign’s performance before letting it run loose. The advertiser may also cap the budget at first, in order to examine the user quality before opening the tap.
Fact #2. The Nightmare of Payment Delays
Every now and then, an advertiser gets behind on their payments. They start to delay, and delay, and delay. This happens when advertisers make bad decisions setting up the payouts or when they choose bad traffic partners to promote their campaigns. When something like this happens the next move is simple: campaigns need to be paused if they’re impacting your results.
Fact #3. The Imperfectly Perfect Tech World
There are hundreds of different servers that are being used by each given advertiser or a tracking company, not even speaking of carriers! This means that every now and then someone makes a mistake, or the hardware crashes, or the software updates but not how it’s supposed to and, all of a sudden, notifications stop being delivered. This immediately impacts your revenue and forces you to make decisions, stop campaigns, or remain strong and willing, fighting against the current.
These situations are unpredictable and can impact your campaigns a whole lot. The worst thing is if something like this happens on a Friday afternoon, and advertisers only fix it on Monday!
Fact #4. Let Me Just Change This Button
Sometimes, a mobile marketing campaign drops its performance because advertisers are performing tests on the landing pages and optimizing every aspect that impacts acquisitions. Sometimes they get it right; others … not so much. And you might not even know about it!
This is all temporary, though - as soon as the advertisers notice the mistakes, they will get right back to the best performing elements of the page.
Fact #5. Contracts and All That Carrier Bureaucracy
Every advertiser working with subscription campaigns has a signed contract with a specific carrier for a limited period of time. When this period is approaching its end, negotiations will take place so as to renew it.
Even so, as in every negotiation, some go well and some don’t. Metrics such as user complaint and user profitability are taken into consideration and may lead to campaigns being closed.
Fact #6. Mobile Marketing Campaign – Game Over
This is the worst case scenario. The advertiser found an ad that is misleading users into acquiring their services (such as the wrongful usage of the word “Free” for premium services). This specific ad causes many of them to leave services sooner than expected.
Or maybe the advertiser sees someone doing iframing on their services (users are basically being subscribed without knowing or even seeing the actual landing page). This causes advertisers to stop the promotion of services and even makes carriers suspend and block advertisers.
Never forget: if you wanna play the game, you’ve gotta keep it clean!
Find the missing 2 facts in the original version of this article on