In the past few years, WiFi ads have become increasingly popular as a way for businesses to reach consumers and grow their profitability without changing their business model.
In fact, WiFi advertising offers fantastic opportunities to business owners, whether they want to promote their business with those channels or monetize their WiFi.
In this article, you will learn everything you need to know about WiFi ads, from how they work, to how to use them and whether or not they’re worth your consideration.
What Are WiFi Ads
If you’ve ever been in a public space like a coffee shop, library, or airport, you’ve probably seen WiFi ads.
These are the ads that appear on your phone or laptop screen when you try to connect to a new WiFi network or during your internet navigation. Many people don’t think twice about them, but there’s actually a lot of information that can be gleaned from these ads as well as profits.
Moreover, the great advantage of WiFi advertising is that your users do not need to sign up for a service. They have to accept your Terms and Conditions, and they will start to enjoy your WiFi.
WiFi ads create another source of income for business owners that can become quite relevant and increase their margins. Thus, WiFi commercials are mostly used by business owners who consider their WiFi an asset that needs to be directly monetized instead of free service for their customers.
What Type of WiFi Ads Exists
WiFi ads come in different forms and you probably experienced most of them just by using the internet. The most popular form of WiFi ads are pop-ups, which are sort of banners that pop up while a user is visiting a web page or an app.
Another popular form of advertisement comes in the form of banners. These are similar to the billboards you can see while driving your car on a highway. The difference is that they stand on a website, not on a road. When you see a banner with an Ad, it means that the website owner is renting that space on its site to advertisers.
As advertisers are always looking for innovative ways to promote their products, with the advancement of technology, also ads will evolve.
The type of ads shown as well as where and when they will appear is typically a decision of the WiFi owner.
The most common and popular type of WiFi ads today come in the form of:
- Pop-Ups
- Banners
- Video
- Links
- Interactive Browser Games
- Animated Ads
- Expandable Ads
- GIF
Benefits of Using WiFi Ads
The main benefit of using WiFi ads is that they can constitute another source of income within your business model. WiFi ads can impact your profitability if you have a strong WiFi connection, and your business is attended by many people systematically.
However, there are other benefits that you should know and evaluate:
- Understanding of customers. By using WiFi ads you can learn what they like and appreciate. Thus, you can show them ads that are interesting and relevant for them.
- Creating a list of contacts. With WiFi ads, you can collect data and personal contact that you can reuse later for other marketing initiatives.
- Promotion and sales. If you publish your ads, you can effectively promote your business with flash offers, seasonal pricing offers, and more. Ultimately, you can use ads to win new customers.
As you can see, there are many reasons why using WiFi advertising, however, there are also cons that you need to properly evaluate (more on this later).
Which Businesses Can Use WiFi Ads?
WiFi advertising can be used by individuals as well as businesses. Typically, the businesses that can get the most out of WiFi advertising are those in the hospitality field. However, even other types of businesses can use WiFi advertising and take advantage of it.
- Bars, Cafes, Restaurants
- Tattoos and piercing studios
- Gyms
- Hotels & Lodging businesses
- Retails and services
- Universities and Colleges
- Travel and Transportation
As long as a business is close to a high-traffic area and can provide a solid WiFI signal, there are not many reasons not to use WiFi advertising and raise its profitability.
Let’s now see how a WiFi ads system drives revenues, to then learn how to monetize your WiFi.
How Do WiFi Ads Drive Revenues?
WiFi ads drive revenues in different methods. Depending on the network, the type of ads, or the agreement you can get, your revenues will change accordingly.
Typically, revenues are calculated following three methods
- CPC. Cost-per-Click means that anytime a user clicks on the ads you are showing, revenue will be assigned to you.
- CPI. Cost-per-Impression means that anytime a user sees the ads you are showing, revenue will be assigned to you.
- Private agreement. With a private agreement, you make a deal with another business to show their ads either on your captive portal or at another moment while people are navigating with your WiFi.
Ultimately, if you use WiFi ads as a provider, you will charge vendors to advertise across your network.
Steps to Monetizing Your WiFi With WiFi Ads
To monetize your WiFi by using WiFi ads you need to find an advertising platform that suits your business and offers you a way to control what ads will be shown.
Understanding how the WiFi software works is fundamental to providing a smooth WiFi experience to your user, who needs to navigate the internet in a pleasant setting, without ads invading and ruining their experience.
There are a lot of WiFi advertising platforms that offer business owners an intuitive way to turn their free WiFi into a comprehensive Marketing infrastructure.
Social WiFi hotspot providers typically offer this kind of service, as it allows business owners to get full control over the WiFi experience of their users.
For example, your captive portal might show your latest social media post, or it can show a banner from another business that wants to get the attention of users attending your venue.
However, if your WiFi marketing provider does not offer this kind of service, there are external networks of advertisers that you can integrate with your WiFi.
Mastering WiFi Advertising Software
WiFi ads are marketing initiatives based on the proximity of users. Anytime a user is close enough to reach your WiFi, the user has the chance to connect to your WiFi and be shown ads
In other words, you can target your customers as well as anyone nearby who is looking for a WiFi signal.
When it comes to WiFi ads, what really matter is being able to control what type of ads show up, what triggers them, and how this affects your customers’ experience.
Proper WiFi advertising software gives you control over your publications. Choose the type of ads that drive the best return without being invasive to your customers. You must always keep your user experience in mind instead of how much you can make with WiFi advertising.
What to Do When Ads Pop up on Android Phone After Logging Into Public WiFi
If you are wondering why ads pop up on your android after logging into public WiFi, it is because you accepted ads to be shown to you when you accepted the WiFi terms and conditions.
However, WiFi ads might keep popping up even when you switch off the network or use other WiFi connections.
To get rid of it, you need to clear your cache and verify what permission you are giving to specific apps.
Cons of WiFi Ads
Although running WiFi ads on your network offers several benefits, there are also a few cons that you should consider before using WiFi advertisements.
Particularly, WiFi ads can slow down your network. In fact, every time your network has to upload an ad, it will use bandwidth that can reduce the performance and responsiveness of your internet connection. Thus, creating an unpleasant WiFi experience for your clients.
Therefore, you want to be sure that your WiFi signal is strong enough to upload content and ads, without damaging the overall customer experience.
However, there’s another aspect to consider. In fact, your ads should not be invasive. In other words, your ads can stand and appear throughout the navigation experience of your customers, but they should never ruin their experience.
In other words, you can show ads that help you monetize your WiFi, but your primary goal should always be to provide a smooth and pleasant experience to the users connected to your network.
WiFi Ads and WiFi Marketing
WiFi ads are an exceptional way to leverage the free WiFi you are offering to your customers and make money out of it. However, your free WiFi doesn’t necessarily need to be transformed into an advertising platform to make it valuable for you.
Instead, you can use your free WiFi to create a better experience for your customers and improve the profitability of your business. How to do so? You can use social WiFi marketing solutions for small businesses like Beambox.
A social WiFi marketing system offers you many opportunities to grow your business. You can:
- Get reviews on autopilot and grow your rating
- Create a branded WiFi experience
- Connect with your real customers and learn about their preferences
- Build up a contact list for email marketing and SMS marketing initiatives
- Grow your social media pages
- Secure your network from malicious actors
- Manage your online reputation on review sites from one single dashboard
Beambox is an all-in-one WiFi marketing solution that allows your business to collect relevant customer data, get actionable reports, and automate your marketing initiatives.
Over 12,000 venues use Beambox to grow their business and profitability through social WiFi marketing. Do you want to give it a try?
Check out our Beambox 30-day free trial and start growing your business.
Get Started With Free WiFi Marketing
Beambox helps businesses like yours grow with data capture, marketing automation and reputation management.
Sign up for 30 days free
