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We want to thank everyone who came our to our party last night, you all helped make our first ever InMobi GDC Party – Mobile OS Dance Battle! a huge success. Who won the battle? Monique as iOS made a strong showing and Joey as Android was equally amazing. Ultimately, it was just too close to tell and we declared a tie. You can watch the the event video here. We hope to see you all next year.

Download Our Mobile Advertising Best Practices Whitepaper For Free

We had a great time last night. It was nice to blow off some steam, however GDC is not just all fun and games. We developed a whitepaper called Mobile Advertising Best Practices for Games and Apps, which can be downloaded here. It’s a practical guide for marketers who want to get the most from mobile advertising, but need some guidance.

If you want to take your game to the next level with mobile adveritisng, Here are six tips for success from our whitepaper.

Keep your app under 20 MB
The iTunes store imposes a 20 MB limit on app installs across a wireless network. In the Android Marketplace the limit is 50 MB. Keeping your app under the 20 MB limit dramatically increases the number of installs from advertising.

Advertise on multiple ad networks
Spread out your ad buy on multiple ad networks in order to get the most reach. Ad networks have different sites and apps on their systems and you will not reach the total market if you stick to just one ad network.

Rotate your creative often
You want to update your creative as often as twice a month, as your creative will lose appeal overtime. Also, matching the creative to seasonality and other external events should help increase the relevancy to your customers and improve performance.

Prioritize the English language
Most smartphone users are in English markets or understand English well enough to be able to use most apps. Culturally neutral apps, such as Angry Birds, are popular around the world since they require limited English skills.

Build a portfolio of apps
The most successful app developers have a portfolio strategy and develop lots of apps. Having more apps allows you to cross promote games and build upon what you have learned from one app to another. This tends to be a hit driven business.

Focus on acquiring users not clicks
This is a common trap many marketers fall into. They measure and optimize to clicks when they really need to measure acquiring users. Don’t evaluate campaign performance on your click through rate; evaluate it on how cheaply you can acquire new users.

Downloaded the whitepaper here.

The MWC InMobi team returned this week after their week-longstint in Barcelona for Mobile World Congress.

The MWC week started with a bang as the team introduced delegates to InMobi, sharing who we are, what we do and examples of how we can work with all areas of the mobile eco-system. Monday was topped off with InMobi’s sponsorship of the MEF Connects Party, which was held at the beautiful Picasso Museum. The party attracted over 500 guests from 50 different countries.

The rest of the week was spent catching up with partners, customers and meeting new and interesting people, all wanting to expand their business further within the Mobile world. The InMobi stand was a great meeting point for everyone and was constantly buzzing full of people, especially when it was time to announce the winner of our MWC InMobi passport competition! Congratulations again to our winners!

Whilst at Mobile World Congress, InMobi Founder and CEO, Naveen Tewari delivered the keynote at the Mobile Advertising conference track where he revealed our exclusive Global Media Consumption research findingshundreds of delegates. If you missed the session you can view the infographic and watch a sizzle reel that highlights the key findings. The results stimulated conversation at the stand and within the press, we interviewed witha number of key titles including NMA, CNN, Spanish publication Que! and the Japanese title, Nikkei.

Towards the end of the week, InMobi sponsored the WIP Party at the cool Rock Museum; the night was a lot of fun seeing guests take the mic at the Jameoke and posing in the InMobi photo booth.

You wouldn’t of thought Thursday was the final day, as the stand was still busy with delegates. It was a great way to end our participation at Mobile World Congress, keeping us on our toes until the very end. All in all an excellent week, and we are looking forward to continuing conversations with everyone over the coming days and weeks.

Don’t forget you can access our Media Consumption infographic here and you can also get in touch with your local InMobi representative be emailing marketing@inmobi.com.

Hi all,

We launched new JP site today, March 8th. New site design is the same to the global site. What do you think of the top page back ground photo? It is “Ginza” known as an upscale area of Tokyo with numerous department stores, boutiques, restaurants and coffeehouses. Ginza is recognized as one of the most luxurious shopping districts in the world. I hope to be No.1 mobile ad network service offering high quality service like Ginza area.
We have renewed all of contents such as company profile, services, sprout etc. And more contents will be added after this. We do believe that this new design should enhance the relationship with all of partners including developers, publishers, advertisers and agencies.

Thanks!
Kosuke Seto
Marketing Director for Japan

Netflix offers me the film Lethal Weapon because I like 48 Hours, and recommends the TV program Burn Notice because I like Mad Men and Arrested Development. The predictions are sometimes pretty close to the mark, sometimes seriously off-target, but usually entertaining.

Rush

In contrast, MOG thinks, “Since you love Rush, I bet you’d like to hear some Blue Oyster Cult.”

Nope. I wouldn’t. Sometimes apps miss. And that’s okay.

Netflix and MOG are among an emerging class of applications that are working to understand our unique tastes by uncovering the delicate influences that determine why we want what we want. These apps are supposed to get to know us; bluntly customizing to our tastes is how the app proves its value.

Ads have to play it cool, or risk being creepy.

The shock of seeing a personalized offer in an advertisement, without understanding how the magic trick was done, can make people nervous. Consumers are correctly wary of advertisers taking notes and collecting data behind their back. However, there are a number of things advertisers can do, to personalize ads without crossing the line.

The key to personalizing without being creepy is to be up-front about where the data is coming from. Don’t hide anything. Advertisers new to personalization are sometimes tempted to make it seem like a magic trick. This is a bad idea. The payoff just isn’t there. It’s possible to make personalization feel like service instead of a privacy breach. Be open about why the ad is personalized and where the data came from to power it. If it’s done correctly, consumers will appreciate what you have done for them.

Ads that appear in personalized apps can typically be personalized without making us feel violated. When ads are personalized in an environment that’s also personalized, it lends valuable context to the ad. This is why Facebook can offer up sponsored stories, and why Groupon can give you personalized deals. Consumers understand and are coming to expect this behavior. The data and the ad appear inside the “circle of trust”.

Be sure to consider letting people opt out of it. Hugo Liu, Chief Scientist of Hunch, says that personalizing without giving people a way to opt out is like constructing a building without fire escapes. I support giving some audiences the ability to opt out of the personalized experience. Obviously, this depends on the audience.

Reject accessing stale data; just use the data that’s right there in the open.  It can yield the best results and help avoid creepiness. Surprisingly, the most valuable data to use for personalization – the dataset that actually matters most – is usually the data that’s right there in the open. Accessing past purchase history and Experian data might seem like an exciting opportunity, but it’s usually not very relevant. Data becomes stale quickly. There’s usually little to gain from using this sort of data.

The most valuable data to make ads more relevant are:

1) Device type, OS and SDK. Optimizing an ad for the device experience is critical to making the ad as relevant and actionable as possible. Sometimes we call this targeting, but it’s just a form of customization. If a user is on Android 2.3.6, eliminate transition effects. If on iOS 5.1, offer a click-to-buy via iTunes.

2) Location. Where is the user right now? What’s happening around the user right now? Is she shopping, or at a concert? Is she in a hospital or a museum? What’s nearby? Location data can make ads extremely actionable. GPS data is available in HTML5 and advertisers should not be afraid to ask users to share it.

3) Intent. What is the user searching for? Car dealerships or car parts? Coffee or tea? Have they abandoned a shopping cart? Listening for subtle clues here is important, especially for re-targeting. Partnership with a data management platform can really help with this type of customization.

This interview with Hidetaka Tembata, President of InMobi Japan, was recently published in the March issue of Sendenkaigi magazine.

Global deployment accelerated with cross-device solutions

Hidetaka Tembata (“Terry”),  VP & Managing Director, Japan

As smartphones, which are open to the world, spread in Japan, people have been more actively utilizing them for global ad communications.  How will ads change with the growth of the cross-device market?

As smartphones, which are open to the world, spread in Japan, people have been more actively utilizing them for global ad communications.  How will ads change with the growth of the cross-device market?Has smartphone already become the main mobile device?

In Senden Kaigi issued on February 1, 2011, I forecasted that smartphones would become the main mobile device.  The forecast is becoming reality.  Even in countries which were said to be mainly the market for featured phones such as Southeast Asia, India, and China, as well as in Africa and South America, this trend remains strong.

Looking at the Internet ad market, the domestic market accounted for 99.9…% of the relations between advertisers and media companies.  But along with the advancement of open platforms for smartphones, the situation has been gradually changing.

Trend towards cross device and cross media

One of the factors that drive the global trend is the fact that the cross-device market is becoming normal.

For example, the NFL Super Bowl held on February 5 was a big event with TV viewership of 111.3 million across the U.S.  According to InMobi’s survey, almost half of the viewers (45%) are presumed to have accessed online using mobile devices (many of which were smartphones) for over 30 minutes while the game was on air.

Mobile devices are already essential as media that sides up to other media such as TV.  InMobi has partnered globally with Sony’s device network, and launched in February the experimental distribution of ads on PlayStation3 for the first time in Japan.  We have obtained interesting findings through the project.

Recently, people often ask me whether TVs and PCs will disappear when smartphones are fully spread.  That won’t happen because these devices provide users with different values and worlds.

However, the ad market hasn’t successfully created a business model connecting these devices.  I hope the day will come soon when ad companies for all devices share the same view of the world, including the evaluation standards for the effectiveness of ads, to allow the industry-wide discussions.

Making it happen with change of devices Internet ads advancing towards next stage

One of the specific trends to make this happen is the advancement of Internet ads driven by rich media ads.  Last August, InMobi acquired Sprout, a provider of rich media ad solutions, and started providing services across the globe.  We will be able to show the first actual example in Japan this spring.  Without specific knowledge about HTML5 and other technologies, users can create and operate an ad, and once it is created, it works with any device.  And it maximizes creators’ potential abilities.  It is also possible to set targeting for each ad element.  In the future, we want to achieve simple targeting for media and devices as well.

With Mobile World Congress just around the corner, the InMobi team are putting the final touches on their plans and getting their bags packed for the week long event.

Our booth is up.

This year InMobi is setting up its first MWC stand [Hall 2.1, Stand No. 2.1c64], it will be full of rich media content, hot-off the press research and interactive mobile ads. The team will also take part in many of the key events around Mobile World Congress, from keynotes to sponsoring must-attend parties.

So why not join us as we reveal new mobile insights, exciting new ad formats utilising RCS-e technology, and some after hours fun.

The inside track:

Find us at the InMobi stand, Hall 2.1, No. 2.1C64, where a team of talented InMobi individuals from around the world will showcase new ad formats and innovative marketing solutions that will help you to grow your business.

Hear CEO and Founder Naveen Tewari give the opening keynote at the Mobile in the Marketing Mix track at 2pm on Tuesday 28th February, Hall 5, Level 0, Auditorium 3. Naveen will highlight key findings from our brand new Media Consumption study.

Mingle with the InMobi team at our sponsored events that include the hot-ticket, invitation only MEF Connects party on Monday 27th February at the beautiful Picasso Museum, and at the WIP Party on Wednesday 29th February at the cool Rock Museum.

After rocking it out at the WIP Party, hang out at our Wip booth and with our very own Developer Community Manager, Terence Eden, as he leads the WIP discussion group, Discovery/Marketing: Tips and Tricks for Getting Your App Found and Downloaded on Thursday 1st March.

See you there or see you on the other side!