Awards Preview – Most Effective Mobile Advertising Platform/Network

With the Effective Mobile Marketing Awards Ceremony taking place in London in four weeks’ time, on 28 November, we are previewing the finalists in each category day-by-day between now and then.

Yesterday, we looked at the finalists in the Most Effective Tactical Messaging Campaign category. Today, we look at the contenders in the Most Effective Mobile Advertising Platform/Network category. 


AdColony HD Instant-Play

AdColony’ Instant-Play technology is designed to solve the problems often encountered when users try to engage with streaming video content on mobile, such as grainy, choppy videos and long load times. The company estimates that over 200,000,000 user/seconds (or 55,000 user/hours) wasted a day by mobile users waiting for video ads to load, which leads to lower engagement rates for mobile advertisers. AdColony’s Instant-Play tech delivers ads instantly and in high-definition, for superior engagement.  

 

Airpush

Airpush is on a mission to redefine mobile advertising for publishers and advertisers. More than 100,000 apps and 5,000 advertisers rely on the company to deliver high-performing ads. Using Airpush’s DSP platform, advertisers can run campaigns across all major mobile RTB exchanges and SSPs, including Inneractive, MobClix, MoPub, OpenX, Smaato and other mobile RTB supply sources around the world, from a single interface, using advanced optimization and audience targeting tools.  

Founded in 2011, the company has approximately 140 employees and offices in Los Angeles and Bangalore. Its revenue has grown 300 per cent and 170 per cent respectively over its first two years, hitting $47m last year, and on track to reach between $130 – $150m this year. 

 

Amobee

Amobee provides mobile advertising solutions to large mobile operators, publishers and brands worldwide. SingTel Group acquired Amobee in early 2012 for $321m in order to leverage its 480m-strong mobile subscriber base across the APAC region. Since then, Amobee has become the exclusive mobile ad partner for SingTel, Globe, Optus, and Telkomsel. 

The company has also expanded its suite of rich media tools in the past twelve months. These include PULSE Create, a mobile ad creation platform that enables advertisers and publishers to create rich media and 3D mobile ad campaigns that do not require special glasses or hardware to be enjoyed. In Q4 2012, Amobbe reported revenues of $22m. 

 

Fiksu Mobile App Marketing Platform

Fiksu is a high-performance mobile app marketing platform that delivers quality users at scale. The Fiksu Mobile App Marketing Platform combines centralized media buying from what the company claims is the world’s largest mobile advertising inventory, with advanced optimization technology, to help app marketers deliver exceptional results. Fiksu says that its algorithm-based, real-time ad buying platform secures the lowest possible cost-per-install, and targets high-quality, loyal users for an app. Developers and brands using the platform include Coca-Cola, Zynga, Rovio and Disney.

 

InMobi

The InMobi ad network covers 165 markets, with local expertisedelivered  through 25 regional offices, reaching 671m global mobile users and 40 per cent of the world’s smartphone users through inventory in more than 25,000 mobile sites and apps. InMobi is the one-stop destination for Mobile Advertising. The company offers insight-based performance advertising, rich media advertising at scale, and targeting capabilities through its AudienceID solution. 

InMobi is also committed to advancing the art of mobile advertising through research, providing monthly reporting from the consumer perspective on the state of mobile advertising to larger consumer research about mobile shopping or tablet consumption to mobile ad effectiveness. The company also offers the InMobi Lifetime Value Platform, a free-to-use game monetization tool. Developers can segment users based on their unique behavior inside the app and send targeted and customized in-app messages to maximize revenues. InMobi is backed by Softbank, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sherpalo Ventures.

 

Leadbolt Mobile User Acquisition and Monetization Platform

Leadbolt offers a Self-Serve, Real Time Bidding Cost Per Click (CPC) platform that it says is perfect for affiliate marketers, brokered offers and non-developers, giving advertisers full control to target, bid, allocate spend and track results.  

For media agencies and brands, LeadBolt has a Cost Per Engagement (CPE) fully-managed solution that it says delivers unlimited access to highly engaged consumers. Video, sweepstakes and full sponsorship integration are available. And for app developers, LeadBolt offers a Cost Per Install (CPI) Fully-Managed solution designed to deliver quality traffic to drive user acquisition, in a 100 per cent non-incentivized environment.

One of LeadBolt’s standout ad units is the Audio Ad, which uses gyroscope technology to capture user responses. The Audio Ads combine display, audio and a gyroscopic trigger to enhance user engagement and move the display ad experience beyond the limitations of the mobile screen. LeadBolt says that Audio Ad response rates are 600 per cent higher than standard display ads.

 

Qriously Opinion Targeting

Qriously has built the world’s first ‘Question Network’ for brands and introduced a novel channel to reach consumers across it that is calls Opinion Targeting.

Underpinning both is real-time platform that lets agencies buy questions to target mobile ads based on declared consumer interest; consumers self-select the ads they are exposed to by expressing their opinion in response to these questions. Qriously uses the opinions generated to uncover consumer intent and match this with advertiser’s ads on smartphones. Once the link between consumer intent and relevant mobile ad is made, the company re-targets the consumer across brand-safe mobile apps to affect brand attributes, while respecting consumer privacy. The idea is to draw consumers into different levels of the brand funnel through exposure to sequential creative stories, using static, animated or rich mobile ads. The company says its approach insures consumers against ad-irrelevancy and shifts mobile display advertising from passive to participatory.

 

Smaato Mobile RTB Ad Exchange

Smaato operates a global mobile RTB ad exchange and mobile Supply Side Platform (SSP) which helps mobile app developers and publishers to increase ad revenues. More than 70,000 app developers and publishers use Smaato to monetize their content in 230 countries. Smaato says its unique feature is the aggregation of 90 ad networks and 100 DSPs to maximize mobile advertising revenues. Through an open API and wide range of SDKs, Smaato technology can be easily integrated with ad networks, ad inventory owners (publishers and app developers) and third party ad technology providers. 

The number of brand advertisers shifting their marketing budgets into RTB platforms is growing every day; Smaato says two to three new DSPs are integrated every week. The company says the introduction of RTB has helped to strengthen its position as a leading global mobile ad exchange and mobile SSP. It adds that RTB has a positive impact on eCPMs which are up to four times higher compared to non-RTB. Publishers of all sizes gain huge benefits from more competitive bids, because interested advertisers bid at the same time, and the best bid wins. Based on the second price model, they only have to pay the second highest price. All this happens in milliseconds based state-of-the-art technology and intelligent algorithms. 

 

Tapjoy Mobile Advertising Platform

Tapjoy is a mobile performance-based advertising platform that aims to drive deep engagement and monetization opportunities for app publishers, while delivering valuable, engaged consumers to some of the world’s biggest brand advertisers. 

The company has a reach of more than 435m mobile users each month, and its “Mobile Value Exchange” model allows users to receive premium content in exchange for their engagement with advertisements.

Tapjoy is backed by investors, including J.P. Morgan Asset Management, Rho Ventures, North Bridge Venture Partners, InterWest Partners and D.E. Shaw Ventures. Headquartered in San Francisco, the company also has offices in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Santa Barbara, Atlanta, Boston, Paris, London, Beijing, Shanghai, Seoul and Tokyo.  


Textlocal Messenger 2.0

Messenger 2.0 is a bespoke platform designed to empower businesses to create and send mobile messaging campaigns. It enables businesses to instantly deliver news, alerts, confirmations, and offers directly to the mobile handsets of their customers, prospects and employees. 

The company’s ethos is to provide a self-serve, easy-to-use, online system that enables the user to craft mobile messaging campaigns, develop messages, automate sends, create surveys and pay online in a matter of minutes. 

Campaigns can be scheduled to reach different recipients at specific times. And for larger organisations, Messenger 2.0 can connect with any CRM application through Textlocal’s API code, allowing appointment- or renewal-led organisations to automatically send reminders and confirmations directly to their customers’ handsets. 

Although the system is self-service, Textlocal supplies account management for every business and round-the-clock support for when it’s needed. Additionally a set-up wizard has recently been added to the platform to guide users through the system step by step.

Over the last 12 months, Textlocal’s 105,000 customers have sent an average of 30m messages a month. 

 

Trademob

Trademob is a mobile app marketing platform that offers mobile advertisers an easy and efficient opportunity to promote their apps globally by maximizing mobile marketing goals and budgets. The company’s optimization engine and data-driven approach seeks to amplify active users, in-app engagement and mobile revenue.  

 

Upstream MINT

MINT is Upstream’s mobile marketing technology platform. It is connected to mobile operators in 40 countries and to date, has delivered over 160,000 mobile campaigns in 23 languages. In total, it has managed more than 30bn mobile interactions. 

The platform aims to enable brands and operators to monetise mobile in the most effective way. It provides a range of advanced sales mechanics to engage different types of customer, with the objective to drive up purchase rates in a variety of ways. These include promotions, loyalty programmes, content publishing and credit provision. The platform is fully hosted solution, and Upstream says it is easy to manage and scale, offering customers simplicity and speed to market, and enabling them to focus on their own technology.

 

The Awards Ceremony takes place at the London Film Museum on the evening of 28 November. You can book your seat at the awards here. Or call Lisa Slavin on +44 (0) 207 183 5285 or email lisa.slavin@mobilemarketingmagazine.com

A table of 10 costs £2,250. Individual seats cost £250. There are 250 seats available on a first come, first served basis. We expect seats to sell out quickly.