Every digital advertising professional wants their mobile ads to reach their target audience at the right time, all of the time. And of course, they want their mobile ad campaigns to produce the highest possible ROI.

Sounds like the things mobile advertising dreams are made of, right?

Well, it’s time you awoke to the fact that advancements in mobile ad tech can actually make all of these things possible. And it all starts with the idea of yield management.

This 101 guide to mobile advertising yield management will help you understand what it is, why it’s important, and how it can help you run an even more successful mobile ad campaign by distributing the right ads to the right consumers, at the perfect time – all while allocating advertising dollars to achieve maximum effectiveness.

Mobile Advertising Yield Management Defined

To understand yield management as it relates to mobile advertising, you must first understand the general idea of yield management itself.

Basically, yield management is an approach that you can use to maximize revenue when your business has a fixed, perishable resource and can “place” customers into select groups that will pay different prices for the same resource.

A good example of yield management is airplane seats. The seats on an aircraft are considered “perishable” because once a plane takes flight, the potential to generate revenue for the seats disappear.

You see, airlines want to sell the perfect seat to the right passenger — and at the right time and price for each passenger. Yield management algorithms help this process along.

This approach is practically the same when it comes to mobile advertising campaigns, but on the buy side.

Mobile advertising yield management helps advertisers maximize ad dollars by matching the right ads with the right mobile users. In this sense, ads are perishable. Once the ad is served to the wrong customer, the opportunity is lost.

Why Mobile Advertising Yield Management is Important

So why should mobile advertising yield management matter to you?

From a digital advertising perspective, it’s the ideal model for distributing mobile ads. Advertisers want to target the right consumers by placing the perfect ads within the right mobile app or site at the best possible price.

Yield management gives advertisers an incredible opportunity to maximize the value of ad impressions, control ad size, retarget ads based on their effectiveness, and ultimately increase ROI.

Making Mobile Advertising Yield Management Work

In order to produce the type of killer mobile advertising campaigns which maximize ROI, you must understand how to make mobile advertising yield management work effectively. As you now know, yield management can help increase mobile ad revenue by placing the right ads in front of the best possible consumers. But what does this process look like, exactly?

Increasing a mobile ad inventory’s value requires that multiple advertising networks be connected to ad exchanges on mobile websites and within mobile apps.

A data management platform (DMP) can ensure that the right ads are targeted to the right mobile users, increasing ad engagement and maximizing revenue for advertising companies, brands and publishers alike. The sophisticated technology of mobile DMPs actually gather and sort all types of mobile data, providing an in-depth look at mobile user behaviors; from the purchases they make, to the mobile sites they visit, and even their location.

Integrating a DMP with a mobile demand side platform (DSP) helps to produce an even more effective mobile advertising campaign, as a DSP automates ad buying based on the key data that DMPs offer, ensuring the right ads are bought and delivered to the key consumers.

The Bottom Line

Yield management is something which everyone in the mobile advertising industry should pay close attention.

Gone are the times of simply daydreaming about reaching the right target audience and producing more profitable mobile ad inventory. Mobile advertising yield management isn’t just another possibility in the grand advertising scheme.

It’s here. It’s real. And if you aren’t utilizing a DMP and its yield management capabilities, you will miss out on the right customers that will surely direct their attention to your competitors.