Mobile Ad Networks: What's there for startups?

Though the well accepted industry definition of "Mobile Ads Networks" as found in Wikipedia and MMA includes SMS/MMS advertising (which also happens to be more than 90% contributor for MobileAd revenue) but let us not confuse this topic with SMS advertising/spam and rather focus on companies that use the mobile web to deliver targeted/untargeted ads as ad impressions on mobile websites or inside mobile software applications (eg. iPhone apps).


It's interesting how iPhone apps and the significant increase of the use of mobile internet in general has given rise to a booming industry in Mobile Ad Networks. Two such prominent names which come to mind when we talk of Mobile Ad Networks are Admob and Inmobi (A Bangalore start up that has received 2 rounds of funding). Admob serves 7 billion ad impressions on iPhone applications and the mobile internet PER MONTH.

The entry of big players such as Google and Apple clearly indicate a massive trend and that there is something lucrative about this rapidly growing industry. Google acquired Admob for $750m and Apple soon followed with acquisition of Quattro Wireless for around $275m. Not that this has been the only acquisition in this space. The rise of in-app ads has led to a rapid expansion of the space since 2007, when AOL acquired Third Screen Media, Yahoo picked up Actionality, Microsoft bought ScreenTonic and Nokia acquired Enpocket.

In spite of this industry being ridden with plenty of investor money through M&A activity there are very few start ups that are trying to capitalize on this trend? There are currently only about dozen significant companies GLOBALLY doing what Admob and Inmobi do. Why? We would expect "me too" companies to crop up by the dozen every week, but that seemingly isn't the case. 

The reason is because this is a tough market. Running Mobile Ad Network over-the-top is a rather difficult game, and Operators have several tricks up their sleeves which make Mobile Ads lot more attractive, effective and acceptable, if you work with them. This is what makes lives of Startups bit difficult, than what it would be with just over-the-top MobAdNets.

Admob

Admob, was the pioneering company that gave shape to this industry. It was founded in 2006 by MBA student Omar Hamoui at Wharton, part time while he was studying. It is amazing to see that something that he started from his dorm room eventually sold to Google for $750m. 

Great article again by mobithinking and an interesting interview with founder Omar Hamoui by Fast Company, puts this deal in perspective.

InMobi

Inmobi, a Bangalore start-up (2007) was formerly known as mKhoj. The mKhoj business model wasn’t working, so the founder Naveen Tewari quickly noticed in 2007 how Admob was making waves in the west. mKhoj cleverly copied Admob’s model and rebranded as Inmobi. While Admob was busy monopolizing the western world, Inmobi used the ‘reverse market strategy’ where they tested developing nations like India, Bangladesh, Far east (Indonesia, Thailand etc) and slowly took over as the leading player in Asia. They have recently (October/November 2009) entered USA and England to cash in on the huge constant increase in Smartphone use, especially iPhone and Android. 

What is there for startups?

These success stories do lead us to think that there is no scope for start-ups now, big players have already entered the industry and that we are too late. But that’s not the only point. As Founder and CEO of Inmobi, Naveen Tewari, said, “The numbers of people that need to get into mobile advertising are far more than the number of players that exist”. 

However, this isn't a nascent industry either and unless one has a tremendous differentiator, or an absolutely novel business-model, the first mover advantage isn't there, and you can only compete in offering bigger commissions or lower CPI. Some of the key factors which a start up needs to watch out for, include

• Inspite of massive increase in inventory for advertising made possible by launch of Appstrores, there aren’t enough advertisers yet.
• over-the-top Ad Networks are soon expected to be surpassed in terms of effectiveness and click-thru's for Operator support AdNetworks, thanks to things like DeepPacketInspection, which is becoming omnipresent quite fast especially for high growth mobile-internet markets
• the biggest challenge in building a formidable network is in "seeding" it. That takes deep pockets, strong execution capabilities, existing traditional networks/channels and fighting off biggies isn't easy. 

The bigger players have an aggregation of thousands of publishers which may not be available with a startup but still there are 1.1million mobile sites out of which Admob’s total publisher list is around 15000 (including iPhone apps). Inmobi has around 2000. Though not all of these 1.1 million websites are high traffic ones, but then there is a big difference between 1.1m and 2000.

Here are links to some of the interesting articles I found on this topic

• Article by VC Circle 
• A Video - only the first half seems relevant 
• How the iPhone built the mobile ad market, even as the rest of the economy tanked 
• Mobile Ad network directory 
• Rob Jonas Interview (ex-googler who joined Inmobi in late 2009) 
• Great article on how Apple swallowed up Quattro just before releasing the iPad. This article shows that Apple know the industry is going to be huge. 

How can a start up compete? 

Let us start with looking at companies like Smaato who work as “Ad enablers”.

Ad enablers allow Ad Networks like Admob Inmobi etc to use their (the enablers’) inventory. Smaato for example has relationships with thousands of publishers. With a simple API, Admob, Inmobi or any start-up can have access to Smaato’s thousands of publishers. This works on a revenue share model with smaato out of the total CPC/eCPM. 

So since we have established how easy it is for an ad network start-up to get access to inventory, the only missing part of the equation is ‘advertisers’. With some of the most popular brands on your inventory list (ebuddy, bollywood mobi sites, zedge, fring etc), advertisers/brands will be so much keener to sign up and advertise with your start-up. Doesn’t all this seem too simple?! Or am I missing something? 

Of course the question is if a start-up use Smaato and have their inventory, Inmobi will have the same plus more. So why would the advertiser/brand not chooseInMobi? 

Simply because the advertiser/brand doesn’t know better. This is a very new sector. Brands will probably just try out a start-up if it seems professional and have a decent publisher list. They don’t know that Inmobi has way more. Maybe I am wrong? 

The point to note is that if people like Smaato are really filling the niches that are hitherto ignored by the existing players, then that's a perfect startup situation.

The sinker

Before I close this article I would like to share the latest news which has come from Apple and which I am sure will put lot of startups further in the back bench is the strange move by Apple. Apple have warned app developer to avoid Location based targeted Advert. It’s little strange because 

1) Many believe that Location sensitive advert is next big thing 

2) Apple them self own an Add company now 

3) Loopt do exactly same thing (via cell ID triangulation) but they were allowed to present at WWDC'08  

I wonder what caused the change of heart?  Is it because they want to have exclusivity on LBS Adverts on iPhone??

The iPad Factor – Impact on Consumer and Enterprise Mobility

Vinay Shukla analyses the impact of iPad

Anyone would fall in love with iPad, Apple’s new innovation, when it was announced on Jan 27^th. I was even more excited to see that Steve Jobs chose one of our partner application ("Seven Wonders") for demonstration while launch. Endeavour is New7Wonders mobility partner and assists N7W in enhancing its mobile digital marketing space.

Steve Jobs has been dreaming about tablet device for long time now and I think this is the right time to launch it because the entire ecosystem for this device is ready. Why? According to Tal Kerret Group, 65 percent of the 2 billion apps downloaded from Appstore are games. Due to high retention rate of gaming applications on iPhone and seemingly demand for e-books applications on Appstore and Kindle, iPad becomes just icing on the cake for already popular iPhone and iPod Touch devices. There is already an infrastructure available for all the 3 powerful features highlighted by Apple e.g. e-books, games (thanks to its LED powered screen!) and rich media. Launch of iBooks opens new opportunities for developers to mobilize rich digital content on iPad. This would drive a demand for music, rich media (audio/video) and messaging applications.

In short, iPad as iPod Touch and iPhone would also be driven by “applications”.

With 10 hours of battery life (good but is that enough as compared to other mobile gadgets in the market?), I see a huge demand among the youth specially students as it provides iWorks, internet, a user friendly keypad.

On enterprise side, everyone was expecting an announcement for new OS release (v4.0) with multitasking capabilities from Apple. Apple wants us to wait! The good thing is that iPad is powered by iPhone OS so any future updates on iPhone would also apply to iPad. This makes enterprises to adapt new device without much hassle from maintenance point of view. Enterprises would have to deal with supporting iPad any way as when it is shipped in 60 days people will start bringing iPad to corporate networks and this would open up demand for its support in corporate infrastructure e.g. mobile device and user management, integration with mobile middleware platforms etc. Boxtone, MobileIron, Good may be rushing to grab the opportunity to become forerunner in this space.

The GPS feature and user friendly bigger interface of iPad particularly opens adaptability in verticals like CPG, healthcare supply chain, retail, inspection and audit, compliance for mobile staff to use this platform as sales force automation tool. Apple has made this simple by announcing accessories e.g. casing, keyboard, dock etc along with iPad.

Apple claims to ship 10m devices by end of this year 2010. How much they succeed we would see in due course!

Web Developers can rule the Mobile Development

A lot of application providers who have their well defined means to market their applications are nowadays disappointed with the fact that they have to share their revenues with the device manufacturers and are looking for options which can help them avoid the same. On top of that there is almost a new device coming to market every other day thereby putting enormous pressure on their profitability.

Can a Mobile Browser application be a worthy option !!!

Here I have tried to look at the challenges faced while mobilizing an Internet Website and the key considerations for designing a Mobile Website.

The early development environments felt too sandboxed and needed resident applications to access the core features of the mobile phone. Today, things are changing. A lot of features however are now beginning to be found within the web browsers (vibration, accelerometer, geolocation).

With support from tools like jQTouch, it's shockingly easy to create apps that feel like they belong on the mobile phone using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. With PhoneGap, you can reach out to features like vibration, accelerometer, and geolocation. What's more, Mobile Browser lets you target your application to multiple platforms, so you're not even locked into the manufacturer’s tightly-controlled universe of Application Stores and need not shelve the hard earned dollars.

The world, of course, includes Google, which last week in a somewhat more modest development bypassed Apple’s iPhone app blockade by unveiling an html5 version of Google Voice, which takes full advantage of mobile Safari on the iPhone. Wired.com found it to be an impressive variation of the app Apple has neither approved nor officially rejected.

Add to that Endeavour now also offers a "Hybrid Approach" which brings together the benefits of both the native application and the Mobile Browser (am purposely not disclosing too much here but can be shared on request).

Having said that, developing a browser application has its own challenges.

Every year hundreds of devices flood the market with different browsers, display capabilities, screen sizes, and keypads — making designing a consistently good experience both an expensive and time-consuming process. The companies should not go by the initial hype created about Mobile Web being Device and platform agnostic which is not entirely true. The firms need to adequately balance the quality of the customer experience with both the size of the target audience and the costs associated with Mobile Web approach vis a vis a native application.

To approach the mobile Web in a systematic fashion, Endeavour therefore recommends that companies should take the following approach:

Deal with widely different interfaces. There are hundreds of mobile devices on the market, and they differ in screen size, resolution, orientation, keypad, and menu buttons. Different device manufacturers adopt proprietary technologies and operating systems, fracturing the device landscape even further. Updates to existing devices can even introduce minor behavior differences between two versions of the same phone. It is therefore important to identify the manufacturers (and devices, if possible) which needs to be supported.

Support a plethora of browsers. Unlike desktop Web developers who can limit their testing to three major browsers viz Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari the Mobile Web developers must contend with more than 40 mobile browsers — including Microsoft, Motorola, Nokia, Openwave, Opera, and RIM. Mobile service providers aggravate the problem by customizing mobile browsers on their devices. Since most devices do not allow over-the-air updates of software, faulty browser devices are simply replaced with newer versions on the next release of the phone. This often leaves multiple versions of the same phone with different capabilities. Most mobile service providers also recommend that application and site developers support devices for two years. It is important to design and develop the Mobile Web keeping in mind not only today’s phones, but should also take into account the past and evolving technologies.

Once the decision is taken on going the Mobile Web route a six step approach is recommended in order to have a website that is supported on maximum number of browsers and handsets:

Even well-designed sites can render drastically differently across a few common devices. Since the differences in browsers and devices are outside of a company’s control, site designers must factor in development, testing time, and cost when deciding on a mobile strategy. Most mobile design firms have expertise in developing for many devices; however, companies should always inquire about a firm’s design and testing plan across their devices of interest.

Endeavour recommends one of FOUR basic approaches for companies considering a mobile Web site.

A detailed technical note on designing of Mobile Web Application is available on request.