Does your brand need a mobile DSP?
Should your mobile DSP be standalone, or a component of digital? With mobile-specific formats, tracking techniques and a different data economy, how can mobile ad buying integrate into an overall proposition? As the market matures, online DSPs must decide if they should build, buy or partner to strengthen their products.

Against stiff competition the numbers slowly but surely came in, and we emerged as the winners.

Fast forward a month, and Emmet Geaney, our Business Development Director Enterprise Solutions, took a packed house through the issues, outlining the critical differences between desktop and mobile, the ways in which Adfonic is tackling them, and offering insights into the latest figures from our buying platform with some compelling case studies from Sky and Universal Pictures.

You can see the presentation below, or go to the full version at Slideshare and download it. The video will be coming online next week, so watch this space for the full multimedia experience.

In his latest column on Fourth Source, he lists the reasons for reticence, and offers solutions. In the main, brands tend to worry about inappropriate placement and ROI. The fix is a mix of premium advertising and Real-time Bidding, which can yield cost per engagement figures at less than a quarter that of desktop bidding, and by its very nature selects the right audience and publication for a brand’s ads. As Victor puts it, “you simply cannot get more optimised, relevant or brand-safe.”

He also looks ahead to the rise and rise of Demand-side Platforms (DSPs) such as Adfonic’s Madison, which offer more transparency, control and efficiency for large agencies and brands, and  and Supply-side Platforms (SSPs) which are bringing in new premium inventory. And he recognises that education really is key.

At which point, if you’re a brand, and  want to be educated, pop across to Fourth Source: Reasons RTB Cheerful, and learn how to love mobile advertising.

Let’s think about this one for a moment. Not 12 months ago it had exposure from several fronts: its reliance on advertising revenue, dependence on competitive platforms, and lack of mobile clarity in a mobile world. Yet here it is with a significant proportion of revenues coming from mobile advertising, a much clearer mobile strategy, and a breathtakingly audacious move to turn Android phones into Facebook phones.

Against this backdrop, our CEO and co-founder Victor Malachard was approached by The Drum for comment. His view: that anyone who can demonstrate mobile advertising’s effectiveness helps the community spread the message, but specifically, he says that Facebook’s results prove that data-driven mobile advertising works – and that is good news indeed for programmatic buying, or Real-Time Bidding (RTB).

Victor is joined by other prominent mobile advertising influencers, so take a look at The Drum page for the full piece.

Our co-founder and CTO, Wes Biggs, visited ExchangeWire Towers to take them through Adfonic’s platform, and you can watch it below:

In the first five minutes Wes explains the essential differences between desktop and mobile, granularity and accuracy of operator data and the audience buying opportunity that affords. In the last ten minutes goes on to outline Adfonic’s tech infrastructure – SQL v NoSQL, Oracle and MySQL, asynchronous messaging, the distributed hub/spoke topology of our bidder processing environment – and what happens to serve an ad and then gain insights from that using our algorithms.

So, if you’re a developer, database specialist or data scientist, take a look at the first five minutes to see Adfonic’s take on our data capabilities. If you’re a marketer, brand manager or work in a digital agency, watch the last ten minutes to get an insight into the tech that powers our solution.

“Agencies will be spending a lot more and Apple and Samsung will continue to dominate. Weve will do great things and the launch is a positive move for the industry, which is likely to inspire other mobile operators and remind them that they have a huge role to play… There’s no doubt mobile advertising will explode, it’s just a question of when.”

What happens when you bring two co-founders together and ask them to talk about mobile advertising?

You get Insights into the mobile ad business, how it will affect brands, how RTB is taking off, and what the future holds.

Victor and Wes talked to Mobile Entertainment recently, and you can read the full piece here.

Of these, the biggest impact by quite some distance has been from our Tablets AdSnap. We released it over two weeks ago and we’re still seeing people tweet about it. But don’t just read about it here – take a look below at the other things we’ve been writing and reading…

We’ve been writing this…

“Last time there was this much excitement about a tablet, it had some commandments written on it.”

When we released our Tablets AdSnap research towards early March we expected some interest (that is, after all, why we do this), but did not anticipate the huge amount of copy it received. So, for his regular monthly column on Fourth Source, our CEO and co-founder, Victor Malachard, gave his view on why tablets outperform smartphone CTRs for any campaign type, and outlined how usage profiles on smartphones can complement those of tablets for smarter mobile ad planning. And the answer? Well, as he concludes, nothing is set in stone, but for why he says that, hop over to Fourth Source, read the piece, and feel free to share it.

The Adfonic AdSnap for Tablets

We said it in our latest Global AdMetrics Report: tablets are hot, Android tablets are on Fire. So, in our latest AdSnap, we focussed on the tablet phenomenon in mobile advertising. It shows how tablets outperform smartphones across all types of campaign and most verticals. It explains how – and perhaps why – tablets are particularly attractive to older demographics. And it also demonstrates how tablet and smartphone usage varies throughout the day, with prescriptions for advertisers who want to run smartphone campaigns alongside their larger cousins. Read the AdSnap on our reports page for the full details.

CSI: MWC – Crimes against mobile advertising and how to avoid them

At MWC this year our CEO, Victor Malachard, took part in a Q&A session around ‘How not to do mobile advertising’. So we put our heads together and thought of innovative ways to present this, and came up with CSI:MWC – Crimes against mobile advertising.  In a substantially expanded format, this is what he discusses on Fourth Source as part of his regular monthly column. So, pop over to Fourth Source and see how Victor tackles these crimes…

We’ve been reading this…

VentureBeat: Three key areas for mobile advertising

Sometimes it’s best to get the outside-in view of how mobile monetisation is doing, and over at VentureBeat, David Yuan, general partner at private equity and venture funding firm Technology Crossover Ventures, talks about the three main issues facing mobile advertising.

Mobile Entertainment: if you’re British, you spend 23 days per year on your mobile

Soon, if Sergey Brin has his way, we’ll be more wired into our mobile devices than ever as we live semi-virtually through Google Glass. But Google Glass will probably take off first in the US. Right now, in the UK, according to mobileinsurance.co.uk via Mobile Entertainment, we’re a nation of users who spend 23 days per year on our mobile devices.

Mobile Marketer: according to comScore, mobile advertising grew 11% in Q4 2012

The latest data from comScore would appear to correlate with what other sources are seeing: that mobile is adding to the advertising ecosystem rather than cannibalising online. Mobile Marketer continues with an interesting commentary on the comScore results, with their unique video clip at the footer of the piece. Jump across and read the full post.

When we released our Tablets AdSnap research towards early March we expected some interest (that is, after all, why we do this), but did not anticipate the huge amount of copy it received. Take a look at our coverage page to see just the major posts about it. That’s not including the many hundreds of tweets, bookmarks, likes and so on which, we estimate have reached well in excess of one million people online.

So, for his regular monthly column on Fourth Source, our CEO and co-founder, Victor Malachard, gave his view on why tablets outperform smartphone CTRs for any campaign type, and outlined how usage profiles on smartphones can complement those of tablets for smarter mobile ad planning.

And the answer? Well, as he concludes, nothing is set in stone, but for why he says that, hop over to Fourth Source, read the piece, and feel free to share it.

He talks about proof of viability, which he sees as coming from direct response; ease of use, which will come about through Real-time Bidding (RTB) and retargeting; and campaign size given the manifold pressures of headcount, budget, time windows and so on, which we will see emerge through offering the buy-side scale.

And these are just the top three indicators. He caps it off by throwing around some fairly hefty brand names that are making significant mobile moves such as Google and Facebook. Go take a look, it’s a great read.

We first saw tablets gaining share of ad impressions in 2012, with our Q3 Global AdMetrics Report. Then, we looked back and noticed that in the previous quarter, nine percent of ad impressions had been viewed on tablets. By Q3 this had risen to 11%. By Q4 it was becoming clear that tablets were steadily penetrating Adfonic’s smarter buying platform, as they closed the year with 14% of ad impressions, over 50% more than at the beginning of the year.

Moreover, when we focused on the festive season, we saw that tablets had dramatically increased their share of ad requests, by 40% over two weeks. Looking closer still, it became evident that this was mostly driven by Android tablets, especially the Kindle Fire HD. You can still read the Global AdMetrics Report for Q4 2012 and see the infographic showing how tablets are hot.

So tablets are clearly becoming significant members of the mobile family, and this AdSnap is a deeper dive into the genepool.

It shows how tablets outperform smartphones across all types of campaign and most verticals. It explains how – and perhaps why – tablets are particularly attractive to older demographics. And it also demonstrates how tablet and smartphone usage varies throughout the day, with prescriptions for advertisers who want to run smartphone campaigns alongside their larger cousins.

Read the AdSnap on our reports page for the full details.

The premise: every day, here at Adfonic, we see crimes against mobile advertising. No blood is spilt and no one dies, but these crimes can be heinous, especially when they need not have been committed in the first place.

So Victor talked about four ‘mobile advertising crimes’: treating online like mobile; employing too few formats with too many messages; buying cheap; and fixating on premium when mobile is intensely personal.

In substantially expanded format, this is what he discusses on Fourth Source as part of his regular monthly column. So, pop over to Fourth Source and see how Victor tackles these crimes…