RSS FeedArchive for the ‘Mobile’ Category

SAP’s Big Mobile Monetization Plan

SAPAs the mobile landscape expands, so does the trove of consumer data mobile carriers are sitting on. Enter SAP AG, which is hammering out deals to crunch carriers’ mobile user data and sell it to marketers.

AdExchanger talked to Kevin Outcalt, CTO of mobile services at SAP and Guy Rolfe, global mobile practice leader at Kantar Mobile, about consumer privacy and the new service, SAP Consumer Insight 365.

AdExchanger: How did Consumer Insight 365 come about?

KEVIN OUTCALT: SAP mobile services is a division of SAP that’s a little different. We don’t sell software licenses like virtually all of SAP does. We sell services to the mobile network operators and enterprise customers and primarily those services are messaging services. So if you’re sending a text message from your home to London and it goes through a local operator and has to be transferred to say, Vodafone in the UK, it goes through us. That way the thousand or so other mobile network operators don’t have to have agreements with the other operators.

As we developed, we started to understand that the enterprise customers are in the dark about what mobile user behavior is and where to reach them and with what kind of message. On the other side, we’re aware that mobile network operators have a tremendous amount of data about mobile user behavior. And so the service we developed, which we call SAP Consumer Insights 365, puts those two pieces together.

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Flurry: Look For Mobile Innovation Higher In The Funnel

SIMON-KHALAFHow best to capture and leverage mobile data is a question of critical importance to advertisers. App analytics and advertising firm Flurry approached it from numerous angles at its SourceDigital13 conference last week. AdExchanger caught up with CEO Simon Khalaf to talk about the company’s new mobile RTB platform and what’s top of mind for mobile ad buyers.

AdExchanger: What’s going on with your new mobile RTB platform, Flurry Marketplace?

SIMON KHALAF: We’re on target to go live by the end of July. Our goal is to have 20 DSPs when we flip the switch. We’ll be passing a lot of data through the DSPs and we’re working with them to take advantage of that data. That’s the challenge: how do we create segments that DSPs are interested in and also signals that they can interpret?

What kind of data do you provide?

We provide location, age, gender, and about 40 segments that we have computed. For example, is this a first-time mom, soccer mom, car enthusiast, gambler etc. We have this type of data compiled for about 1.1 billion consumers worldwide. That will give the buyer, the DSP, insight into the context so they can decide what kind of ad unit they want.

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Apple Closes Another Mobile Tracking Loophole With iOS 7

AppleWhile it was not mentioned at Apple's WWDC keynote address earlier this week, the newest version of iOS includes a new privacy feature that pushes more advertisers into adopting its latest user tracking system.

After Apple announced nearly two years ago that it was shutting down access to the unique device identifier (UDID), which many app developers commonly used to track installs, usage rates and other metrics, many developers switched to using the devices’ media access control (MAC) address instead.

Even after Apple replaced the UDID with the Identifier For Advertising (IDFA) in May's iOS 6, some developers and advertisers had yet to move away from the MAC address. Now Apple is putting more pressure on stragglers to make the switch. According to the iOS 7 pre-release notes, Apple has eliminated access to the MAC address as well:

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Digital Advertising Alliance Reveals Roadmap

Lou-MastriaMobile advertising and the need to further educate consumers about its services were key issues at the Digital Advertising Alliance’s first summit, held this week in Washington, DC. The DAA has planned to introduce a set of mobile advertising guidelines for several months and will do so soon, according to Managing Director Lou Mastria.

“Mobile is going to be big for us,” Mastria said. “There was always a plan to provide guidelines on mobile [advertising], and we will roll it out as soon as everything is worked out.” The challenges in developing mobile advertising guidelines include addressing the diverse ways ads are delivered on mobile devices (Android operating systems, for example, allow for cookies that would let users opt out of targeted advertising, whereas iOS devices don’t allow cookies), as well as the various screen sizes of mobile devices.

“I think secretly, many of us had hoped we could just insert the word 'mobile' into our existing guidelines, but it’s much more complicated than that,” said Mike Signorelli, counsel to the DAA, during a panel discussion at the summit.

Among other areas, the DAA’s mobile guidelines will address cross-app data collection, the amount of time consumer data should be held and the use of location data. There will be  “heightened safeguards” governing the use of smartphone users’ geolocation data, Signorelli maintained.

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Why Apple Could Still Be An Advertising Giant

Tim-CookApple CEO Tim Cook answered the question “How important is the mobile advertising business for Apple?” at All Things D’s D11 conference earlier this week with the following statement: “We got into mobile advertising because we want developers to make money…It wasn't about Apple making money.” Cook also noted Apple's mobile advertising business isn't "large enough to be core" to the company.

AdExchanger asked two former Apple execs to reflect on Cook’s comments. “It is true that the primary motivator that drove Apple into the ad business was to create another revenue stream for developers,” claimed Adelphic Mobile co-founder Jennifer Lum, a former exec at Quattro Wireless, which Apple acquired and Lum helped relaunch as the iAd advertising network.

“A growing part of an engaging customer experience with Apple's mobile devices was with apps. Therefore, Apple needed to find ways to motivate developers to continue developing for – and building their businesses off of – the iOS platform. The launch of iAd allowed Apple to create a new revenue stream for developers.”

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VivaKi Bakes Adelphic Mobile Audience Tech Into Its Trading Desk

VivaKi-and-AdelphicDigital advertising agency VivaKi will use Adelphic Mobile’s targeting capabilities to enhance its Audience on Demand (AOD) Mobile platform, the companies said today. Ad targeting and consumer privacy issues continue to complicate mobile ad buying. Adelphic – a three-year-old company founded by executives from Apple, Quattro Wireless (acquired by Apple) and Millennial Media – addresses these challenges by using what it refers to as “privacy safe” user identification data that is matched with exchange, network and publisher inventory.

The company looks at patterns of data based on a device’s operating system, carrier, location, time of day and other demographic data. The company then compares the data to the type of audience that advertisers are looking for, delivering ads based on the audience’s predicted ROI.

“The big challenge in mobile has been coming up with consistent IDs across the mobile web and apps,” said Jason Pope, VP of AOD Mobile at VivaKi. “We’re excited about Adelphic because they’re staying away from things like PII [personally identifiable information] and are able to build profiles based on information that preserves a consumer’s privacy.”

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NAI Unveils Revised Mobile Privacy Code

mobile-rulesThe self-regulatory group Network Advertising Initiative, whose members include Google, Yahoo and Aol Advertising, has released a revised code of conduct regarding information collected from mobile apps. The updated code introduces new requirements regarding interest-based data collection and advertising.

The proposed draft rules address types of information unique to mobile, such as geolocation data and “personal directory data,” e.g. calendar, address book, phone calls, text messages, photos or videos that are stored on devices and logs. The NAI requires its members to obtain opt-in consent before collecting either geolocation data or personal directory data.

“I was pleased to see the NAI release an updated code of conduct that addresses the use of data for mobile apps for the first time. Hopefully this will raise the bar in privacy protection,” said Maureen Ohlhausen, commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission, at the NAI’s annual summit meeting in New York City earlier this week.

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How Limited Is Mobile Exchange Inventory?

mobile-devicesMobile advertising grows more enticing as consumers become attached to their smartphones and tablets. Assessing the value of mobile ad inventory against traditional display inventory can be confusing, however. AdExchanger went straight to the experts and asked several demand-side platforms (DSP), supply-side platforms (SSP), ad exchange companies and an ad agency this question:

“How limited are the targeted attributes of mobile exchange inventory in comparison to traditional display inventory?”

Click below or scroll down to read the responses:

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Adelphic Names WPP Mobile Exec Michael Collins To CEO Spot

michael-collins-adelphicAdelphic, one of a handful of companies helping brands and publishers identify audiences across devices, has scored a CEO from agency land.

Michael Collins was the chief executive at WPP-owned mobile agency Joule, which he built from scratch in 2007 into a global mobile-centric marketing agency with outposts in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia.

Collins will help two-year-old Adelphic bring its publisher- and advertiser-facing technology to market. On the supply side, the company works with its publisher partners to profile their traffic and, in the words of cofounder Jennifer Lum, "make each user and ad request much more specific and descriptive by appending data to them to open up many more targeting possibilities."

Among its rivals are Drawbridge, Tapad and AdTruth.

From the marketer perspective, Collins says he tested many "data-enhanced" mobile ad products at Joule and believes Adelphic is one of the few to drive significant performance improvements.

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Mobilewalla Q&A: Tackling Mobile App Churn With Big Data

mobilewallaIt’s no secret that the mobile app market has exploded. Roughly 224 million people use mobile apps on a monthly basis, compared to 221 million desktop users, according to mobile analytics firm Flurry. Advertisers are eagerly reaching out to this growing audience. Enter Mobilewalla. The three-year-old startup is betting that the demand for targeting ads across mobile apps is only getting started.

AdExchanger spoke with Mobilewalla founder and CEO Anindya Datta.

AdExchanger: When Mobilewalla started out you were in the app discovery business, but you’ve moved away from that. What led you to pivot, and what does Mobilewalla do now?

ANINDYA DATTA: At its inception, Mobilewalla quickly became one of the most used independent app search and discovery engines in the marketplace. But when we looked at our business strategy for MW, we felt that the massive amount of data collected from the native app stores (which were being analyzed to support semantic discovery) could yield analytics that had greater business value than the discovery service itself. Hence the pivot.

What we have now is an analytics platform. We collect vast amounts of data regarding apps. When I say data, we don’t have an API or handle that developers put inside their apps to collect data. We actually collect from the market. So for instance, we get every piece of information that you could get about apps from the app stores like iTunes and Google Play, as well as from Twitter, YouTube and Facebook.

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