Our smartphones follow us everywhere: we have bank apps, our music apps and online libraries, food delivery and social media all in one place. We surf the internet on our smartphones. Which presupposes we also buy things with our smartphones and subscribe to various services to make our lives easier.
With such popularity of mobile internet, it’s only natural that mVas (mobile value added services) will also be at their peak. And companies will look for affiliates to promote these services.
In this article we’ll be talking about what mVas offers (or WAP-click offers) are, their advantages and how to work with them.
What are mVas offer?
It still boggles us how this vertical is not as popular among publishers as nutra or sweepstakes. With the amount of money you can earn by working with them it should have at least as big of a fanbase, as any other. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
mVas offers are essentially the offers where you’re paid for any mobile subscription or product a user gets. It can be anything: from antivirus to horoscopes to new ringtones. Anything that a user can pay for. And then you, as a publisher, can see a conversion either once the subscription is completed (non billable offers) or once the user pays (billable offers).
What are the advantages?
There are so many advantages, we'd have to have a separate article for this. So here are some of the most convincing ones:
- Wide GEO range: you can work with LATAM countries, MENA, Arab etc.;
- Basically no restrictions in terms of traffic (they do not tolerate bots or fraud though);
- Different types of flow: click, PIN, IVR (if you are not really familiar with the terms, let us know and we’ll make a post about them);
- Work with applications directly: with no landings or prelandings.
What to consider before taking an mVas offer?
First of all, the type of subscription confirmation. Here we can single out two main scenarios: Single Opt-in and Double Opt-in. The main difference here is that a user either clicks on one button submit/subscribe/confirm (Single Opt-in) or has to confirm the subscription again through a link in their email or SMS box.
As you can guess, Double Opt-in has a lower conversion rate: with one click everything is simpler. Yes, the content and creatives should be engaging for the user to subscribe even without additional actions. But with two clicks the user should really be interested in whatever you offer for them to go into so much trouble.
When a user subscribes to some content/service, the bill is instantly directed to the phone account. Which means, users don’t really need to provide their credit cards to pay for the subscription.
If the operator can identify MSISDN (or phone number), the process is even simpler: once the user confirms the subscription, money is paid from his phone directly (this is called direct billing). If not, the user needs to type his/her phone number, get the SMS and then confirm the subscription through it (SMS-billing). The latter is more common for offers where the user uses Wi-Fi connection.
What types of subscription confirmation are there?
This process of subscription confirmation is generally called flow. There are many different variations, so we gathered most of them here for you.
Flows with clicks:
1click — subscription confirmation with one click;
2clicks — client clicks “subscribe” on the prelanding page and then goes to the payment page and with a second click confirms the subscription;
3clicks — the same as with 2clicks, but the user also has to confirm their phone number and then confirm the subscription;
HE (Header Enrichment) + click — the user opens the landing page where his/her phone number is already filled in and has to confirm it, then goes to the payment page and confirms the subscription there;
click2sms — the user has to send an SMS message with a keyword to a short phone number or fill in their phone number on the page;
click2call (IVR) — the user has to call a certain phone number to complete the subscription;
Each click flow has its own peculiarities. For example, for IVR offers the conversion goes through only once the call is made. Make sure to learn about this before you start the campaign.
Flows with Pin Submits:
MT (mobile terminated) — the user get an SMS message with a code to verify on the landing page;
MO (mobile originated) — the user sends an SMS message to a certain phone number with necessary text;
HE+PIN — the user’s number is determined automatically and the subscription is confirmed with a pin code based on MT or MO models;
OTP — the user doesn’t give their phone number, the subscription is confirmed through a password in SMS.
Where do I start?
Now that we’ve discussed click and pin submit flows, it’s time to see how you can make the most out of it.
As you can guess, the conversion rate with Double Opt-In will be significantly lower than with Single Opt-In. However, with Single Opt-in you run the risk of having numerous misleads and complaints to mobile phone operators.
Different GEOs also perform differently with different types of flow. For example, 1click offers are more typical of 3 tier countries with less elaborate flow systems (with top GEO for 1click being Indonesia). This can be explained through the differences in the mindset and behavior, thus - different regulations from phone operators.
Most tips that you can come across say that you should first start with 1click offers only since they are believed to be easier. However, we believe that beginners can also start with pin submit offers if they analyze the GEO, the offer itself and launch the advertising campaign.
What we would suggest is starting with Tier-3 countries and working your way up to Tier 1 and 2 with more complicated schemes. You can start small with lower rates to see how it’s working out and then move to other offers with higher payouts.
Some of the top GEOs for mVas offers are Thailand, Peru, Paraguay, Brazil, Argentina, Colombia and Mexico, Arabian countries.
What type of traffic to choose?
You can work with literally anything:
- Pop-ups and push notifications;
- In-app;
- Facebook;
- Tiktok;
- PWA apps;
- Google Ads;
- Etc.
Summary
2021 has shown us that mVas vertical can be extremely popular and profitable. New markets in different countries emerge all the time. You can always test new and unworked GEOs to see how much profit you can get.
What’s more, phone operators do not impose new restrictions on subscriptions, which makes work with it easier. Also with the implementation of different antifraud softwares (Empello, Opticks etc.), the vertical becomes even more legit.
Let us know if you've had any experience with mVas offers. If you have questions or suggestions, we’d be happy to discuss them.
