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The reality is that the big ad revenue is with brands. In one case, brand ads took precedence over gaming ads and the branded rewarded video delivered eCPMs of $150. Though brand advertising is moving more and more in-game, there’s still a lot of work to be done - a brands don’t fully understand the mobile game landscape or the value, and they view the mobile game metrics with skepticism.  

In order for game developers to bridge that gap and be able to educate brand advertisers, they need to understand the common terminology that brand advertisers use. Let’s look at some of the language and for more details check out our glossary here.

Basics of branding 

1. Brand advertising: Campaigns that establish connections with consumers, which builds awareness and a reputation for the brand. Brand advertising builds long-term value for the mobile game.

2. Performance advertising: Campaigns that are data-driven, measuring everything from the cost of acquisition to incrementality. Mobile game advertising is largely built around performance advertising because it is direct result-oriented. 

3. Brand identity: The visible elements of a brand (color, design, and logo) that identify and distinguish the brand in consumers' minds. Having a strong brand identity builds brand loyalty as consumers are likely to use a brand they recognize.

4. Market leader: A company that has achieved a dominant position within its industry. 

5. Parent brand: A brand that endorses sub-brands. 

6. Rebranding: Updating or revising a brand identity, such as, the name, icon, colors, type font and tagline. The main goal is to reach a new audience. 

7. Repositioning: A brand can also target a new audience without rebranding and changing its whole identity. This entails changing how users associate with the brand, such as, personality and promise. 

8. Touchpoint: The interactions that a brand has with its target market. These touchpoints can be through emails, direct mail, events, Google search ads, etc. 

9. Qualitative research: Research from interviews, focus groups and any form of observation.

10. Quantitative research: In contrast to qualitative research, quantitative research provides numerical observations through surveys, polls and questionnaires. This is also important because it is number based and offers real, tangible data to advertisers about their user behavior. 

11. UBP (unique buying proposition): The elements of a particular brand and how they are perceived by a buyer as the reason the product or service is more desirable than the competition. These elements can include social status, value, security, etc. 

12. USP (unique selling Proposition): The elements inherent in a particular brand and the way those attributes are presented by a seller as the reason their product or service is the best. These may include words such as the "lowest cost," "the highest quality," or "the first-ever." 

Goals of brand advertising

13. Awareness: Consumer recognition of a product by its name and the goal of most brand advertising campaigns. 

14. Education: Helping individuals to understand the essential concepts of brand management and overall branding. 

15. Consideration: Measures the likelihood of a consumer purchasing the brand if they are aware of it. 

16. Purchase intent: Probability that a consumer will buy or download the product.  

17. Brand image: Perception of a brand to consumers.

Components of branding

18. Mission statement: A formal declaration of the company’s goals, values and purpose. A mission statement holds employees accountable for accomplishing the goals they have set forward. 

19. Tagline: A concise embodiment of the brand positioning. Famous taglines include, Nike’s “Just Do It,” and Apple’s “Think Different.”

20. Value proposition/statement: A declaration of a brand’s standards, principles or ideals targeted towards consumers and stakeholders. Users trust brands that have a deeper purpose in the world and value social awareness. 

21. Vision statement: The brand’s current and future objectives. 

22. Equity: The value of a brand’s financial and non-financial assets, measured by consumer perception of the brand. 

23. Valuation: The estimated financial value of the brand’s tangible and intangible assets. 

Advertising

24. Ad exchange: Online market where individuals can buy and sell ad inventory from each other.

25. Ad fraud: A set of techniques employed by fraudsters to deliberately serve mobile ads that have no potential of being viewed by humans -artificially inflating the number of ads served and subsequently making money from mobile advertising spend. For brands, fraud is a #1 concern. Having clean traffic and clean supply is key to getting brand dollars. 

26. Ad inventory: The total amount of space a publisher has available for ad placements. 

27. Ad network: A company that sells ad inventory to advertisers. 

28. Header bidding: Monetization model that offers publishers the opportunity to achieve maximum value for each impression through an auction, in which ad sources bid for impressions in real-time.

29. Programmatic advertising: Automated process for buying and placing ads on websites or apps. 

30. RTB (real time bidding): Automated auction for buying individual ad impressions. 

31. SSP (supply-side platform): An ad technology that allows publishers to offer their available ad inventory for sale to ad exchanges, demand-side platforms, agency trade desk, and other clients. 

32. DSP (demand-side platform): An ad technology that lets advertisers buy ad inventory from ad exchanges, SSPs, and other supply sources, while managing their advertising campaigns. 

33. Ad agency: An ad agency creates the advertising and marketing plan for a business, product, or brand. Media agencies advise on how and where to advertise and creative agencies help with creative strategy, work, or promotion.

34 Agency trading desk: The technology or services provided by a media agency that help the brand plan, buy, manage and optimize their programmatic advertising campaigns.

35. Client direct: A client that uses their own internal sources to create ads. 

Important advertising measurements

36. Impression: Counted whenever an ad is displayed.

37. Reach: The number of unique people who are exposed to the ads. 

38. Frequency: The number of times an individual is exposed to the ad throughout the campaign.

39. eCPM (effective cost per mille): The ad revenue generated per 1,000 ad impressions. 

40. vCPM (viewable cost per mille): The cost per 1,000 viewable impressions. 

41. CTR (click through rate): The percentage of users who saw an ad and clicked on it.

42. Engagement rate: The percentage of users who actively engage with ads in an app.

43. Viewability rate: The percentage of ads that are seen by a user. 

44. CVR (conversion rate): The percentage of users who saw an app-install ad, clicked on it, and converted through some pre-specified action.

45. CPA (cost per action): A pricing model in which advertisers choose a post-install action to measure, and only pay for users who engage in that action

46. CPO (cost per order): A pricing model where advertisers pay when there’s an order. 

47. ROAS (return on ad spend): Calculates the efficiency and performance of digital advertising spend.

48. Brand lift: Measures consumer-brand interaction post-marketing campaign. 

Let's put these tips to good use

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