The social network VKontakte is the most popular in Russia, and the number of daily active users on it exceeds several tens of millions of people. It is used on computers, tablets and mobile phones, and almost any operating system has a special client for working with the social network.
VKontakte is monetized through targeted advertising, which is shown to users. In the browser version of the social network, this advertising is located in the left sidebar and in the news list. As for mobile clients, it appears in the news feed, where the user can from time to time see information from advertisers: various advertisements, offers to download and install the game, news about discounts in stores, and so on. Advertising in the VKontakte application for Android is built in harmoniously, but this does not mean that all users want to see it in their feed. In addition, there is a way to remove VKontakte advertising on Android, and it’s quite easy to do.
What is the application debug menu
Mobile application development is a complex process that requires attention to many details. The Android program should run smoothly on thousands of devices with different characteristics screen, hardware, operating system versions, third-party shells and other parameters. Accordingly, developers must control the operation of the program directly on the device, and for this they introduce a special diagnostic menu, access to which is usually intended only for testers.
Android has an app called Secret Codes that aims to discover hidden features. various programs. Once installed, you can learn about the diagnostic menus of various applications installed on your phone. Thanks to this program, we were able to detect the debug menu for the VKontakte application for Android.
In the debug menu you can see fields for entering various commands, testing functions, as well as many hidden options. For example, from the VKontakte debug menu you can download all the music saved in the audio recordings of a user whose account is in this moment active in the application.
How to disable advertising in the VKontakte application on Android
Note: Next to the option to turn off advertising in the VKontakte application, there is an option to switch to “Invisible Mode”. If you activate this setting, you will be able to use VKontakte, and other users will assume that you are offline.
Having set all the necessary settings in the debug menu of the VKontakte application, you can go to the main desktop and continue to work with the phone in standard mode. From now on, advertising will no longer appear in the news feed of the VKontakte application.
VKontakte is launching advertising that will be shown on mobile devices ah in the mobile version of the site and in the user’s mobile news feed in VKontakte applications. This was done to help developers promote their applications in Russia.
Mobile marketing in Russia is still in its early stages. Over the past few years new mobile networks- some good, some not so good - appeared in Russia and use mobile internet continues to grow.
Surprisingly, none of the Russian Internet giants paid too much attention to mobile advertising. Of course, there are mobile ad formats on Facebook, whose audience in Russia is very limited, and Google, whose market share in Russia is only about 25-30%. Neither Yandex nor any of the major social networks have yet created a single specific mobile advertising product.
Almost exactly two years ago, Facebook revolutionized mobile advertising, allowing you to install ads in applications. Twitter did the same earlier this year by introducing its own formats. Last week, Russia's largest social network VKontakte, VK or vk.com, also announced it was setting up ad formats for mobile apps to help app developers market their apps in Russia and the CIS.
Format and targeting
VKontakte ad formats are very similar to those offered by Facebook. Possible targeting settings:
- Geography
- Demography
- Interests and categories
- Education and work
- Other options such as operating system, devices, and user audience
In terms of pricing, ads will initially be shown on PDA devices. The advertisements themselves will consist of:
- 25 characters - title
- 90 characters of text - description
- 600×336 graphic banner
- app rating
- button to install the application
The difference between VK application ads is that, unlike Facebook, they allow you to track links up to three levels.
Official message and data: download
VKontakte mobile audience
VK.com is Russia's largest social network and is one of the most commonly used mobile applications in the country. The mobile audience has been growing rapidly in the last few years and by the summer of 2014 reached 24 million users. 
Most mobile VKontakte users use Android devices, mainly smartphones. Most iOS traffic comes from iPhones, but iPads also show significant volumes. 
Mobile users of VKontakte are mainly young people aged 18 to 34 years, the number of women is slightly higher than the number of men. 
Installing ads in mobile applications of the social network is not yet available in the VKontakte advertising interface. The launch of the new product is scheduled for September 15.
Many of us are registered in the largest Russian-language social network - In contact with, especially it concerns younger generation users. In our country, this social network is the most widespread, it is added to the browser bookmarks on the computer and installed on every smartphone and tablet, many even start their morning by reading the news feeds of friends and groups, while others are online around the clock.
Recently, advertising has begun to be displayed in the official VKontakte application for Android and iOS; it is called “Recommendations for Users”. I think almost everyone has seen this; it appears when viewing the News Feed in the form of an advertising message for some application with an Install button. Honestly, this is starting to irritate, because everywhere you look, there is advertising everywhere - advertising on TV (every 5-10 minutes), radio, newspapers, on the Internet, even our favorite applications are becoming filled with various advertising products - they are too tightly integrated into our life.
But fortunately, for owners of smartphones and tablets on the Android operating system, the issue with advertising on VKontakte can be resolved, which cannot be said about the owners of iPhone and iPad - although... you can install version 2.0 of the application and not update it.
How to remove ads in the VK application for Android
Step 1 Open the installed VK application on your device
Step 2 Go to the application menu and select Settings.
In older versions of the application, the icon is in the upper left corner
In new ones - open the user page and click the gear icon in the upper right corner
Step 3 Scroll down and click on the About menu item. A window will appear in front of you indicating the version of the program. Click on the icon 3 times, you will not see any changes
Step 4 Move to the desktop or menu with all installed applications and open the Phone program. If you are using a tablet that does not have such an application, then download from the store Google Play any application for making calls. Then in the dialing field enter secret code: *#*#856682583#*#*
Step 5 After entering the code, you will be redirected to the developer page. Scroll to the bottom of the page and check the box Disable recommendations for older versions of the application or Disable advertising for new ones
Now you can return to the application and enjoy reading your news feed without annoying ads. This flaw is currently available for activation by any user, but who knows what will happen with the next app updates, perhaps the developers will remove this feature.
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Subject: Bulletin board.
Promotion region: Ukraine.
Promotion period: 1.01.2014 — 31.03.2015.
Platforms: iPhone (OS 7+), Android phone(OS 4+).
Not so long ago, a mobile app was a beautiful website. But today, 86% of US mobile device users make purchases from apps (6 times more often than from mobile search). By the way, Americans download 4,000 paid (72,000 free) applications every day. The app market in the CIS countries is also gradually heating up: according to GoGlobe, Russian Federation with an indicator of $1.30, it ranks ninth among countries with the highest average revenue per install. Every month more clients appear at Netpeak with clear goals for promoting their mobile applications in iOS and Android.
Paid traffic department specialists achieve these goals using Google Ads, which is our focus, and other tools.
Goals
- New application downloads (iOS, Android).
- Increasing conversions to postings from a unique user.
- Increased audience activity.
Work plan
Due to the fact that the client is interested in the success of the project and is ready to provide necessary materials(various banner formats, videos), we have the opportunity to experiment, analyze, optimize and identify the most converting formats. It is very important that the client was ready to work on the project together with specialists, which, as we know, is the key to a successful campaign. As a result, we developed the following campaign launch plan:
- Launching mobile app advertising on iOS and Android in Google Ads.
- YouTube iOS and Android video advertising in Google Ads.
- Advertising a mobile application on iOS and Android VKontakte.
- Video advertising for mobile applications on iOS and Android on Facebook.
- Remarketing iOS and Android on Facebook.
Featureing(demonstration of the product and its advantages) involves demonstrating the application in the promotional block of the application store. These can be horizontal or vertical ribbons of icons. For example, in the AppStore, featuring is possible in the “banner carousel”, “best new applications” and “best new games” feeds.
At the moment, distribution channels continue to expand, we are enriching advertising campaigns with new ad formats, for example, Video app install ads from Google and soon - Search Ads in Google Play. To analyze the effectiveness of channels, we used Google Analytics (for the mobile application), Ad-X and internal statistics of advertising systems.
Ad-X system specializes in tracking mobile application installations. The creators of the system have found a solution to carry out tracking in real time without collecting personal data from users. In August 2015, the service ceases operation. Therefore, now we are already using the functionality of another tracking system - Adjust.
Launching mobile app advertising on iOS and Android in Google Ads
For each platform (iOS and Android), display network campaigns were created with different types and formats of ads available in the “Ads in Mobile Apps” campaigns (examples hereinafter for illustration):
After the necessary data for analysis was collected, ineffective types of targeting were excluded, the target audience was determined, as well as the most converting ad formats, which made it possible to manage bids more flexibly. More details about fine-tuning mobile advertising can be found. Next, we connected search campaigns of the “Mobile app installs” type.
To launch them, the most converting ones were identified keywords, which we divided into groups.
An example of displaying banners on mobile and tablets.
We launched “Mobile App Installs” campaigns on the Display Network with all available formats (similar to the “Ads in Mobile Apps” campaign). Added extensions like “Mobile app installation” to all campaigns.
We were only interested in new users, so we used a Target CPA bidding strategy, connected Google Ads Conversion Optimizer, and targeted new devices.
The most popular banner formats are: 300x250, 320x50. Google Ads covers not only the Google Display and Search networks, but also the AdMob network. This is currently the largest source of traffic.
Video advertising YouTube iOS and Android in Google Ads
We have launched YouTube video campaigns for iOS and Android in test mode. After advertising the app for a month, they decided to disable video campaigns on iOS due to high CPI (almost 6 times higher than Google Ads search and display campaigns).
Advertising a mobile application on iOS and Android VKontakte
After the social network announced the possibility of launching mobile advertising, we immediately decided to test it, especially since it was possible to integrate with the Ad-X system. After a month and a half of cooperation, VKonakte announced that advertising of the mobile application will be carried out through the myTarget system: it provides greater coverage across social networks and is highly flexible.
All campaigns were divided into three categories:
- Tablet users.
- New mobile device users.
- Smartphone users.
When the client made a video to advertise a mobile application, we launched ads with the video and began testing ads based on the created custom audiences. It’s too early to talk about effectiveness, since the video was launched only a week ago. Remarketing was also launched for users who visited the site or mobile version site for 30 days, but do not use the application.
In addition to the main systems, we were actively looking for new advertising opportunities. For example, we were interested in Apple's advertising platform.
This system offers several ad formats and a built-in template-based banner generator, which can significantly speed up the launch of an advertising campaign. We started working with the system with standard banners, after which we decided to also include Full-Page and MREC (Medium Rectangle) format ads.
Yandex Store caught our attention as an additional promotion channel. YaStore has some pretty interesting features, namely the mobile app advertising format - featuring on home page. True, there is a significant drawback. The system does not yet integrate with any analytics systems, and downloads can only be tracked on the developers page.
conclusions
Practical notes:
- When testing various types targeting is able to achieve a lower price per CPI.
- New sources do not always provide a large number of downloads, but, as a rule, the price is lower.
- Despite the fact that Google recommends combining all ad formats into one group, this gave us negative feedback.
- For more flexible bid management, it is necessary to identify the most conversion sites in GDN. It is worth taking a long period of time for analysis.
- In YouTube video campaigns, it is worth initially excluding placements with cartoons and excluding similar keywords, there is a lot of traffic from these types of sites, which means a large percentage of accidental downloads by children.
- There is no need to limit targeting by language, because the user’s store can be configured in any language.
- It is worth carefully studying where your ad was shown, so you can see that on one site there was one click, but 30 installations. Google Ads cancels spam clicks and does not charge money for them - this is a plus, but the quality of such installations is very questionable.
- To evaluate the results, it is better to rely on several sources of analytics at once - internal statistics, Google Analytics and a third-party tracking system, since Facebook, for example, counts a conversion if the download occurred within 28 days after viewing the advertisement, but the tracking system can only count the actual installation .
- The reluctance or reluctance of developers/clients to implement SDK or conversion codes into the application can throw you back into the distant past, because one banner is no longer enough in such a dynamically developing area as mobile application advertising.
According to the agreement with the client, we cannot disclose the price order and the exact number of installations in this case. But it’s worth noting that in March we received 28.64% of installs from paid traffic (of the total number of downloads) with an average CPI of significantly less than a dollar.
KPI table in various systems:
In this case, we used a combination of standard and specialized contextual advertising tools for mobile applications. Classic platforms like Google Ads and Facebook are still relevant. The fact is that in developing markets (in Ukraine, for example), the audience of many narrowly targeted sites is limited, so only a campaign for a popular product can be successful. Will it be effective? contextual advertising on the specified sites for your application? If you want to know for sure, leave a request on our website. We will be happy to take on several more projects.
" From it you will learn how to remove advertising on the Internet, games and programs (and it is possible to do this without root rights), but in this way get rid of advertising offers in mobile application VKontakte will not work. In this instruction, we will supplement the previous article with information on how to disable VKontakte advertising on Android.
All you need is to carry out simple manipulations in the application and use a special one to enable additional VKontakte settings.
Useful articles on the site on the topic:
Removing VKontakte advertising on Android
1. Open the VK application on Android and go to settings.
2. Select “About the program”, after which information about the application version and a picture with a dog will appear. Click on this picture 3 times (nothing should happen). This action must be performed to activate the ability to disable advertising!
3. After that, open your dialer and enter the code: *#*#856682583#*#*
If you have a tablet and don’t have a dialer, just enter the query “Dialer” in Google Play and install any dialing application.
4. “VK - debugging” will open. Scroll down and you will see the “Disable Ads” option. Activate it by checking the box next to it.
