You probably have already tried a fistful of mobile ad networks, investing the considerable part of your day juggling your mind to try them out and have experienced so far both feelings of disappointment and satisfaction. If it is so, you are not the only one.

The road to building a successful app business is not at all an easy task and you must constantly experiment with the latest ad networks and technologies available in the market to find the one that best matches your marketing’s unique needs. It does not have to be necessarily a painful experience though.

To make your path easier we are here with the 5 most important angles to look at a mobile ad network before you decide to invest your time and give it a try.

1. Fill Rates:

A quick glimpse at your mobile analytics provider will show the countries or regions most your users are coming from.

Demography: If most of your users are coming from Southern part of India, for example, you should look and search for mobile ad networks that have a high fill rate in this specific demography else, you will not be able in making money at your fullest potential.

Consistency: This is a bit tricky to figure out beforehand, but you should target for a monetization partner that in the last 3 months had consistently high fill rates in the regions you are most interested.

Multiple in-app advertising solutions have developed interposition technologies and partnerships with ad exchanges to fight these issues and while endorsing near 100% global fill rate, make sure that you evaluate on achieved numbers that are hard facts and not just marketing talk.

2. eCPM:

Selecting a mobile ad network based only on its average eCPM has a limitation because eCPM calculates the performance on a relative basis. Only when merged with the fill rate and your estimated monthly ad requests you can get a good sense of your anticipated earnings in accurate terms.

Keep in mind that there are many additional factors that will cause significant changes on eCPM, including the seasonality of advertising campaigns and the nature of traffic you send from your apps. You should presume fluctuations, especially when you are working with a single mobile ad network, and use the network’s average eCPM to get an idea of size and quantity on what to expect.

3. User Experience

People downloading a free app are well-aware of the fact that it must be sponsored somehow and they presume that the app might contain some form of advertising.

App developers, however, have an option whether they want to deliver a spam user experience or break the normal user flow to display ads and by deciding to do so they knowingly take the risk that user retention can fall significantly.

If high graded and good quality user experience is key to your app, some mobile ad networks are more open for change than others and have started accepting deep-rooted advertising technologies to offer the developers more control on how and where the ads get displayed.

4. Technology:

You can also assess a mobile ad network based on the technology it is up to.

Dashboard: A fully-featured dashboard can facilitate you to monitor and effortless fine tune your campaigns which helps in both maximizing the revenue and increase the transparency.

Additionally, a good ad server and SDK can prove to be the backbone of your monetary growth. Hence, everything should be considered with utmost care.

5. Payment Options:

We are already well-aware about the different payment options offered by major mobile ad networks and it is important to be familiar with all of them well in advance to avoid unpleasant surprises.

Payment methods: Mobile ad networks often support a limited number of payment methods and you are supposed to make sure your personal circumstances can be taken into interest before you start the integration.

Payment schedule: This is usually not a deal breaker, but some networks do offer a faster payment schedule as compared to the others.

Trying out various solutions to find the ones that best fits your needs is grave for a successful app monetization strategy but due to the excessive or let’s say sheer volume of mobile ad networks available out there it can quickly get overwhelming.

We have explored here 5 different aspects that can hopefully help you get an enlightened picture of any mobile ad network that you come across and quickly get to decide whether or not to invest any of your time to give it a try.