Identifying the right app monetization strategy

If you were at either CES or Mobile World Congress, you know 5G is going to be big in 2019. The ultimate goal of the technology is “to have far higher speeds available, and far higher capacity per sector, at far lower latency than 4G.” This will allow for the development of new applications like smart bandages that track your healing and faster load times for applications that currently exist, thus building a framework of increased online connection at higher speeds. While we’re still in the early days of 5G, publishers need to start rethinking how they want to monetize for a future of reduced latency.

The age old question: Subscriptions or advertising or both

The question of how to monetize a media platform has existed since the dawn of newspapers. Obviously, it was a less saturated market when The New York Times sold its first paper over 168 years ago. Advertising supplemented the cost of the paper and continued to do so until the digital age. Since the proliferation of digital media consumers, and the introduction of hundreds of thousands of new resources for content, publishers have been tasked with being increasingly strategic with how they monetize their content. This is challenging for developers, as selecting the right monetization strategy is more important than ever.

Many developers go exclusively with an in-app-purchase (IAP) based revenue model and users either subscribe or pay on demand to access content, services, and experiences.  Other developers choose to offer their app for free. They earn revenue by displaying ads within the app and generate significant ad revenue by attracting large quantities of engaged users. This approach works as long as a developer is leveraging customer data to update the app frequently to add new content and experiences.  And then there are developers that take the freemium route — free content supported by ads and premium content supported by IAP.

No matter which of the last two approaches a publisher takes, they have much to consider and they aren’t alone in their discovery and deliberation efforts. By selecting the right partners, they can develop an advanced, technology-driven strategy to monetize the right users and ensure success.

The solution is leveraging mediation of the future, which is centered around the user. If developers plan to leverage mediation to improve revenue, it’s critical they understand the source of that revenue, which is the user. And the best way to understand them is by having visibility to the entire mobile user journey of that user. MediaFem’s technology will help to achieve .

With the average American spending five hours per day on mobile, the industry is evolving to meet the demands of evolving users. The barrier to entry is lower than ever, but the barrier to success has never been higher. You need the right users to monetize, and the right technology partners to ensure your app is positioned for success.