Interview with MBT: about advertising apps on Instagram

MBT, a company specializing in mobile app advertising, in an interview with us told about a new way of advertising – using Instagram.

The promotion of applications, including gaming, is a sore point for many. From whom and for how much and what kind of traffic to buy, how else to improve the visibility of applications, where to place ads, and so on. 

This issue is becoming noticeably acute, given the high cost of mobile users and, accordingly, mobile advertising. This raises the threshold for entering the market, closes access to it for indie developers. 

What should I do? 

Publisher, marketing credit, unusual advertising? 

There are many ways. MBT (Mobile Business Technologies) offered one of the possible ones by launching the InstaZebra advertising grid. We talked about it and the mobile advertising market with Kristina Nikulenkova, MBT’s C Vice President of Marketing. 

Kristina NikulenkovaKristina, first of all, please tell us about your company.

When did they appear, why did they decide to engage in advertising in mobile applications?MBT company appeared in early 2012 as a developer of mobile applications.

We immediately realized that we needed to learn how to promote our applications, otherwise we would not survive in such a fast-growing market. We wanted to be ready for the appearance of our first app on the market and decided to learn how to buy installations. This is how a branch of the company called Mobbnet appeared, which to this day successfully sells (mostly its own) mobile traffic (clicks, installations) to developers, agencies, publishers. In 2013, we have already created the InstaZebra network. 

Now I’m going to ask a difficult and very, in fact, big question, which is difficult to answer, but I can’t not ask it either. What is the overall situation on the mobile advertising market today? How do you see him? How does the company see him?The question is really complicated and big.

Today, the need for mobile advertising is growing along with the mobile application market. But the tangle of traffic dealers (agencies, affiliated networks) is getting more and more confused. Few developers can afford to buy installations, it is necessary to have a sufficiently high ARPU so that such a method of attraction justifies itself. And the format of mobile advertising (banners) copied from the web leaves much to be desired. Everyone is thinking about new, native advertising formats that are simply necessary. We are also trying to occupy this niche by launching a new InstaZebra project.

What difficulties does an advertising company face today in the mobile market?High competition requires the introduction of innovations, but most advertisers are skeptical about innovations and are more inclined to proven advertising methods.

What difficulties does a mobile developer have to put up with when it comes to mobile advertising?Getting loyal users.

No one can guarantee that using one or another source, the developer will get loyal and paying users. Therefore, the developer needs to be patient and be ready for the good old trial and error method.

You recently launched InstaZebra. Tell us about this service.Promoting our InstaRepost app, we have gathered a large database of owners of large Instagram accounts who have told their followers (subscribers) about us.

Having received loyal users (users who have completed at least 30 sessions in a month) for $0.29, we realized that this could become a new available advertising format. And we created the InstaZebra grid, which unites popular instagrammers who want to earn income from their accounts (by posting paid posts) and advertisers who want to present their products to the Instagram audience.

The goal of the project is to make the interaction between them more convenient and systematic. So advertisers have the opportunity to engage a large audience at once (currently more than 28 million users). Instagrammers, in turn, receive a large number of offers with high-quality advertising and guaranteed payment.

Did I understand correctly that developers will be able, roughly speaking, to share screenshots from their games /applications in popular public sites?Of course yes.

Anything can become an advertising post – from teasers to application screenshots. It is important to understand what can hook the user, and also take into account the subject of accounts.

What is its competitive advantage?To be honest, we don’t have many competitors yet.

Our main advantage is the native advertising format. In Instagram, an advertising post will not be an intrusive banner, but a recommendation from a favorite account. This significantly reduces the cost of a loyal user for developers and makes advertising more accessible. If you think that Instagram has your target audience, then you can interact with it through Instasebra.

Will your team help with the design of the screenshots so that they look delicious? Or will developers have to learn the correct design again by trial and error?In fact, we have a self-service platform, but we are always ready to help with the selection and submission of material.

There are advertisers who ask about holding the RC in a different format (video, contest, etc.), so in the future we plan to offer our services also as an agency.

Since we are talking about Instagram, the question is – how segmented is the market today, how, in general, can it be segmented? Instagram is segmented by the interests of users.

Inside it, in addition to personal, popular public accounts of various topics are growing: fashion, cars, movies, humor, nature, tattoos, photography, etc., etc. It is on these topics that the advertiser will be able to target users inside our Instasebra.

Will you promote applications among your entire database at once, or will you be able to provide targeting?In Instasebra, you can target by interests – accounts are divided into thematic categories.

At the same time, the following indicators are available for each account: the number of followers, the cost per post, the level of audience engagement, etc. This allows you to independently create the most effective campaign for the existing budget.

The official website of the new service is located at this link: http://instazebra.com