Get Down With Mobile SDKs

Mobile SDKs are a great mechanism to help us develop targeted acquisition campaigns to get the right folks downloading and using our apps. The great news is that there are many mobile advertising companies that offer theirs for free, and implementation is fairly straightforward.

The benefits of implementation invariably include a dashboard that provides rich insights into what your most profitable customer segments are, and where they came from. Based on cost (again, we’re talking free 99% of the time here) and ease, it’s tempting to jump feet first with the first vendor that comes around.

Credit: RadiumOne

There are some questions you should first ask, though, including the following:

What’s your ability to post back to publishers?  You’ll want your publishers to have a reasonable feedback loop on performance so they can proactively optimize for better results. Some SDKs aren’t able to accommodate this at all, which is less than ideal.

Do you track lifetime value?  Getting the install is fantastic, but as with email, there are different values to be assigned based on someone’s engagement and post-sign up activities.

What usage metrics are available?  You’ll want to work with someone that can provide a list of customers/segments along with how recently they’ve used the app.

How do you charge?  The two most common approaches are to charge per event (e.g., click, install, post-install action) or to bundle apps into levels (i.e., pay $Y to get up to X events per month). Unless you’ve got a money tree in the backyard, you’ll definitely want to know this.

The answers to these questions will help you understand how each SDK is different from one another. Best of all – the questions are applicable to all companies, allowing for an easy apples-to-apples comparison to see which offers the optimal mix of capabilities and features to meet your goals.