Like their US counterparts, mobile startups in China and India are urging app developers to embrace mobile real-time bidding (RTB). Two such companies, AppFlood and Vserv.mobi, both launched RTB platforms on Tuesday.
China-based mobile ad network AppFlood launched a mobile RTB ad exchange and demand-side platform (DSP) designed to serve publishers and advertisers across the globe.
“We want to be the leading global RTB solution for bridging the West and the East,” said Si Shen, CEO of AppFlood’s parent company, Papaya Mobile, a gaming monetization platform. “We have offices in Beijing, San Francisco and London and we see a lot of publishers that want traffic from outside of China as well as advertisers who want to reach China but don’t know how.”
AppFlood’s mobile ad network is used by approximately 9,000 Android and iOS developers and drives about 100,000 daily installs. The ad exchange integrates into several US and China-based supply-side platforms (SSPs) including OpenX, AdMob, InMobi, AdView, MobiSage and AdsMogo and the DSP PocketMath.
AppFlood tapped Amazon Web Services (AWS), which started offering database services in China in December, to help it overcome China’s censorship infrastructure. With AWS, AppFlood can carry out the auction process through its mobile RTB platform within the global standard of 100 milliseconds.
AppFlood’s clients include brands and publishers like EA, Expedia, Gameloft and Kingsoft. Yet, Shen noted the concept of mobile RTB in China is still developing and SSPs and DSPs are greatly fragmented. AppFlood’s next goal is to attract more DSPs and SSPs and further refine its targeting capabilities, she said.
“We’ve only started to see mobile RTB SSPs and DSPs in China within the last year, but we see a lot of opportunities here and the mobile RTB market in China is growing very quickly,” Shen said.
Papaya’s AppFlood network faces competition from other mobile startups, such as Vserv.mobi, which also launched an RTB platform today. Headquartered in Mumbai, India, Vserv.mobi is also targeting advertisers and publishers in emerging markets including India, Latin America, China and Southeast Asia.
Vserv.mobi’s RTB platform offers rich media and video inventory like AppFlood’s and includes a network of more than 150,000 apps and mobile sites. It also integrates into the company’s monetization platform AppWrapper and its audience targeting platform, Audience Pro.
“With the introduction of audience-data-powered real-time bidding on our ad exchange, we are further strengthening our product offering for high growth emerging markets,” said Vserv.mobi CEO Dippak Khurana in a statement. “As advertisers look to target the next billion consumers, our RTB-enabled exchange will help them leverage the power of programmatic buying, while eliminating the learning curve and risk that comes with it.”
