Undoubtedly, mobile sector in online advertising is gradually growing more and more popular in the industry, much due to the rapid swell in development of both smartphone and tablet markets. Therefore, the mobile ad niche has, naturally, become one of the most profitable ones, which can’t but create higher requirements for third-party mobile ad servers.
The overall importance and numerous advantages of using an ad server, if you wish to maximize your profits as a publisher, have already become quite the common knowledge. It can simplify ad campaign management to a considerable extent and increase campaign effectiveness, especially if the service you’re working with has got intuitive UI and qualified support team. Certainly, the functionality of an ad server plays the prior part, but the major rivals on the market have already got a great deal of useful features to offer. Yet, it depends more on the support team and the UI, whether you’ll learn how to apply the whole range of features, or not.
As for the current selection of mobile ad servers on the market, the common requirements happen to be rather similar to those, mentioned before in relation to ad servers in general. These, in particular, include an available selection of optimization options, deep targeting, support of all mobile formats, including rich media, multi-screen ad support, real-time ad campaign report and analytics delivery, not to mention a possibility to create customized ad campaigns, etc. In addition to that, one of the important aspects is the availability of SDK’s, aimed at running in-app ads of various kinds. Thus, the offered UI should be absolutely intelligible for a user, so that it’s possible to apply any of the mentioned features in the right way and, consequently, run profitable ad campaigns.
The array of ad servers providing their mobile solutions to clients is, undoubtedly, rather wide, yet, this doesn’t mean that all of them are equally beneficial to use. The most popular players in the field are generally considered the old-known OpenX, DoubleClck or Zedo and the relatively younger Epom, which still has much to offer.
Mobile Ad Servers Chart
| Criteria | OpenX | DoubleClick | Zedo | Epom |
| Ad Campaign Optimization | √ | √ | √ | √ |
| Targeting | 7 out of 10 | 5 of 10 (for free users), 8 out of 10 for Premium | 8 out of 10 | 9,5 out of 10 |
| Support of All Mobile Formats | √ | √ | √ | √ |
| Banner Selection | Both standard and custom banner sizes | Both standard and custom banner sizes | Both standard and custom banner sizes | Both standard and custom banner sizes |
| Video& Rich Media | √ | √ | √ | √ |
| SDK’s | No info provided(perhaps, available upon request) | SDK’s for iOS & Android – for Premium users | No info provided(perhaps, available upon request) | SDK’s for iOS & Android – free for all users, cross app user detection |
| Ad tags | Supports JS, Iframe, image tags, API returning XML, JSON, and HTML response | Supports JS, Iframe, image tags | Supports JS, Iframe, image tags. Provided iPhone and Android app tags | Supports JS, JSONP, Iframe, image tags |
| Real-time Reporting and Analytics | √ | √ | √SMS-reports, Zedo AdMagic | √custom view (graphics, diagrams, etc.) on dashboard and analytics tab |
| Mediation Partners | OpenX Market | Google AdSense, AdMob, DoubleClick Ad Exchange | No public info (perhaps, available upon request) | InMobi, AdMod, Smaato |
| Cross-Platform Support | √ | √ | √ | √ |
| UI | Too bulky (user guide is indispensible) | Too bulky (user guide is indispensible) | A bit clunky, but rather intelligible | Plain and intuitive |
| Support | 2 out of 10 | 3 out 10 for free users, 7 out of 10 for Premium | 9,5 out of 10 (24/7 qualified support) | 9,5 out of 10 (highly-qualified personal assistant provided for each client) |
| Pricing | Free (Open Source) and OpenX Enterprise (pricing provided upon request) | Free Small Business DPF (substantially limited functionality) and DFP Premium (pricing provided upon request) | Pricing Provided Upon Request (high pricing+ a set-up fee+a monthly fee) | A free version (< 250K monthly impressions), a prepaid version and a trial version. Pricing is public, no set-up or monthly fees, discounts for large publishers. |
