Welcome back to our ‘Getting to know’ feature. Every month, we profile one member of the Adfonic mobile advertising team based in one of our local offices around the globe.
This month, we’re in London catching up with our Business Development Director, Matthew Beck, to ask him a few questions about himself and what he does at Adfonic.
1. So Matthew, what does your role entail day-to-day?
I’m responsible for bringing new sources of ad inventory to the mobile ad network based on the current needs of advertisers, and new products we’re bringing to market. On a typical day I could talk to a range of people, from a solo developer who’s scored a surprise hit in the download charts to the CEO of an ad exchange or SSP. Once I’ve evaluated the opportunity and agreed the commercial relationship, it’s handed over to the integration and publishers services team to make sure the supplier can get started as quickly as possible and make the most of their inventory.
2. What opportunities and challenges have you faced as Business Development Director at Adfonic?
The first challenge was understanding the technology – as someone from an online background, the switch from tags and pixels to SDKs and APIs was a shock to the system. Like most nascent industries, global mobile advertising is a crowded and fragmented market in which we fight to achieve standout. But the opportunities in mobile are evident – the rapid growth in the market caused by advertising budgets starting to catch up with media consumption make it a great place to be.
3. What’s your favourite thing about working for Adfonic?
The commitment to success shown by employees across the business – from the perennially hard-working ops guys to the global marketing team who are on-call 24/7 during event season.
4. What’s been your biggest success/most rewarding moment of working for Adfonic so far?
Probably making the most Adfonic pitches at this year’s Mobile World Congress. More importantly, a number of these developed into valuable partners earning significant revenues for both us and them.
5. What do you think is going to be the big theme in the second half of this year?
I think we’ll make big progress in a numbers of areas: simplifying the language of mobile advertising so CMOs will commit budgets that better reflect media consumption; programmatic buying for mobile (Adfonic is one of a handful of mobile ad networks with RTB capability) to realise the improvements in efficiency the online market is seeing; and the use of data to target behaviour not just content.
6. What’s your favourite app?
Songkick - I love the way it lets me know what gigs I’m missing because I can no longer manage midweek nights out. I was a late comer to Angry Birds, but was addicted for a couple of months – my usage is now more healthy, although Temple Run has stopped me reading the paper on the way to work of late.
7. What’s your favourite band?
As a bit of a music fan, I’ll name a few. I would say Radiohead, Primal Scream, Pixies, The Beatles, and Pink Floyd, But a quick check of iTunes shows I play a lot of TV on the Radio, Daft Punk, Soulwax, The National and Elbow.
8. What’s your favourite place in the world?
The Lake District. England’s version of a mountain range – none above 1,000 metres so you can reach the summit and get back down in time for a pub lunch.
9. Finally… What word/phrase do people use to describe you?
“He makes a mean spreadsheet.”