“My current partner gets me deals on CPM at $2″
“Other ad network has offered me 80% revenue share”
“I don’t want to serve any ad for less than 10 cents CPC”

These are some of the arguments we hear while having discussions with prospective publishers on monetization of their mobile sites. My two pence is that none of these statements have any meaning in isolation. Total money one can make is function of multiple parameters – Mix of CPM & CPC based ads, Avg CPC, Avg CPM, Fill Rate, CTR and Revenue Share.

For e.g., CPM of $2 with 90% fill rate is much better than CPM for $5 with 10% fill rate; 60% revenue share of $3 CPM is better than 80% revenue share of $2 CPM at same fill rates.  For CPC based campaign eCPM (Effective CPM) matters the most, which is defined CTR *CPC * 1000. Once again a campaign with CPC of $0.05 with 3% CTR will make publishers more money than the same with $0.10 CPC and 1% CTR.

This being said, one of the best practices is to fill the inventory with the maximum possible CPM ads and let the CPC based ads fill the remaining inventory.  At the end of the day, inventory is perishable. So there is no point in leaving out even a single opportunity to make revenue. The key is to attain very high fill rates which will automatically drive the overall revenue high. With this model you will always make maximum amount of money for yourself.

The overall revenue opportunity can be computed as
Publisher Earning = Revenue Share * [(Inventory on CPM Pricing *CPM * Fill Rate * 1000) + (Inventory on CPC Pricing * CPC * CTR * 1000)]

The incentives for ad network which work on revenue share model are fully aligned with publishers. Technology plays an important role to maximize the earnings for publishers while keeping the RoI for advertisers intact. The critical message here is that while selecting your monetization partner, look for the entire set of variables and don’t get mislead by one single parameter.

Recently I had an opportunity to speak at Mobile Marking Forum Asia 2009 conducted by MMA. The event was one of the first attempts of MMA to bring the industry together on a single dais and present a coherent picture to media, analysts, brand managers and agencies.
The event was well represented by various stakeholders from the mobile marketing industry spread across multiple countries. In the two days timeframe, delegates were exposed to more than 100 advertising campaigns which either were primarily on mobile or used mobile to enhance the power of other media. There were a few points that emerged consistently during the event:

a)    Asia-Pacific (APAC) remains the most interesting market in terms of sheer number of mobile phone users. The current and the potential growth are just mind-boggling. mKhoj has the following insights from its regional experience in the APAC region.

b)    Few countries within APAC are far ahead of others in terms of evolution of the whole mobile ecosystem. For ex: Japan has an evolved operator – VAS relationship in terms of revenue share. It has helped grow the market tremendously, so much so, that data contributes a significant portion of overall operator revenue. Kei Shimada of Infinita had an interesting perspective on the same.

c)    There is no one secret sauce to all mobile advertising campaigns. Different media within mobile, SMS, MMS, WAP, CRBT, Idle screen etc have their own advantages and need to be used keeping in mind campaign objectives. This was evident from the wide spread of campaigns which were presented.

d)    Mass push SMS is the most condemned way to use mobile advertising across the industry. It is surprising that it remains most used mode to reach potential consumes. Probably it has got something to do with its simplicity.

e)    Variety in campaigns resulting because of diversity in usage of mobile media causes extreme confusion in the mind of advertisers and agencies. There is a need for educating media agencies and advertisers. My presentation emphasized that it doesn’t fit into the current DNA of agencies to push mobile advertising and hence handholding and front to back support is critical for the growth. Read the presentation here.

f)    Lack of credible data was touted as the biggest hurdle in the growth of mobile advertising across APAC. MMA is working along with organizations to overcome this issue.

g)    Mobile advertising fraternity has to do more to be able to attract more brands and agencies into such event. While Marco of P&G, Brian and Emanuel of GroupM, Howard of Hyperfactory and few other friends attended the event, the representation from the advertising fraternity (media agencies and brand manager) was small. This has become a consistent theme across all events. Are we missing something?

We are looking to contribute to the Industry at large and MMA in particular by sharing our experiences and learning by being a part of the industry.

Abhay Singhal, Co-Founder,
Head, Global Ad Sales

Outsourcing is not a new phenomenon and has been the buzz word for quite a while now. Corporates have been practicing it from the 60’s but it is only recently that the concept was recognized and leveraged. In fact, in my five years at Yahoo, which has a highly global business, my “beyond the US” experience (oh, well I guess I did have a few slowly-spoken media presentation to global clients) was mainly to figure out what part of my team’s efforts could be outsourced…to India

Though following the word outsourcing with “to India” seems redundant, I think it’s time to rethink.  The entire notion of outsourcing has been fully turned on its head.  My current job is a result of India outsourcing to the United States.  Shall we call this insourcing? Most of mKhojs 65+ employees work out of India with a few in the Asia Pacific and Africa regions. I am the exception. Though I work for mKhoj, an Indian company, I work out of the Silicon Valley office as Head of North America. I am the company’s sole US employee.

My expertise isn’t engineering or back office management, but rather digital media.  With GDP and media growing in India and the APAC region, more insourcing of marketing, media, and pr talent from the US (or other media mature countries) is needed in order to capture the growth opportunity that the region presents.

While we might not manufacture as many cars or toys in the US as we once did, we are a country rich in marketing talent.  I truly believe that our marketing & media talent should think more globally and – for some who can handle late night calls - be open to insourcing.  While most Americans have had concern about jobs moving over to countries like India, it’s the very product of India’s growth which is now creating jobs in the U.S., like mine.

As for what I do as an “insourced” hire at mKhoj and the fact that I am beginning to think that I am on the same wavelength as Sir Martin Sorrell – chief executive of WPP, well that will have to wait for my next posting.  Suffice to say that growth is the name of the game, or better said it is always good to go up (or should I say to the right) and for the moment that would be towards India and Asia Pacific.

Anne Frisbie
VP and Head, North America

If we need to recall the names and faces of all the people we have met in our life, it would be difficult if not impossible for most of us. At times, we leave a meeting or a party and cannot remember the name of a person we met or spoke to. But being able to remember the name of a person can prove to be a valuable asset in both the business and social arena. One of the best ways to connect with people right off the bat is to remember their name.

To explain what an impact a small thing such as remembering a name can have, I should share an inspiring incident. This was back in the days when I had newly joined a big multinational company and was briefly introduced to the Country President of my organization. The meeting didn’t last more than 10 seconds and he must have been introduced to loads of people that evening. A couple of months later I met him again in a lift and smiled. I doubted if he would remember me, but to my surprise he not just smiled but recognized me by my name and asked me how I was doing. I was taken aback by his ability to recall names and realized that how good I felt that remembered me. This incident helped me realize that the key to successful interpersonal skills starts off with remembering names as this forms a take home impression.

As most of us have come to realize, this is easier said than done. It takes a little more than casual introductions to remember and identify people. A certain set of people are born with the talent to map a face to a name and keep in touch with most of the people they meet. We can call this set of people as connectors. But not all of us are blessed with the inherent talent and it might be necessary for some of us to consciously put an effort build an instant rapport with new contacts.  Over the years, I’ve gotten quite good at remembering people’s names and matching them with their faces. So how do I do it?

Repeat – I repeat the name of the person I just got introduced to as often as I can. I use it with them while addressing them, I introduce them to other people, and I say their names over and over in my head until I have the name down cold.

Assess – Is there something unique about this person? Do they look like anyone I know? Do I know others with the same name? Though I’m focusing on first names here, a unique last name can be really helpful too. Or a last name that rhymes with their first name. Or the same first letter. Try to picture the name. I actually think about typing the name on my computer keyboard and it helps me remember it. I evaluate where on the keyboard each letter is.

Ask questions – I like to get to know the person a little more to help me make some connection and have something to remember the name and face by. So I ask questions about the person. Where are they from, what do they do, what are they looking forward to about the conference? Find out something interesting about them. This is also a great opportunity to repeat their name a few more times.

Deliver them to someone else – If you can introduce someone to somebody else and use their correct name (pronounce the last name too if you think you have it) and a few cool things about them (this is where your questions come in), you can remember someone forever…and you will make a positive influence on them. Deliver the other person with a smile, a nod, a handshake, a hug, whatever makes you (and them) comfortable.

Smile and walk away – Now that you’ve learned someone’s name, and a little bit about them, and introduced them to someone else, it is the perfect time to meet the next person. Just smile and walk away, knowing that you have made another connection and have connected your new acquaintance to another new person too.

Aparna Chetan,
Manager, HR

We have beefed up our targeting solution to include more features to help you reach your target group more effectively. Apart from making the whole solution scalable, we have added new features.
• You can now promote your Windows Mobile based apps to the users who use this operating system
• Reach on-the-go business executives who most of the times use their phones for emails by using the “Push e-mail” feature
• If your campaign needs engagement driven through “Photos” or “Videos”, you can reach out to only those phones by selecting these 2 capabilities while targeting your ad.

These features are available on the Targeting page during Ad creation:

Targeting Solution

All these features have been made available basis content creation & consumption trends in our focus markets. We believe that Targeting is one of the key advantages of the mobile as a medium & aim to help advertisers leverage this in the most efficient manner. This is just one of the many steps in meeting this objective. Expect a slew of product features on this front in the coming weeks.

Mukesh Kalra
Product Manager

The sluggish economy means that ad budgets continue to be re-evaluated (read slashed). It also means that brand managers have to drive a better ROI across all channels.  The more agile marketing teams are moving away from generic branding campaigns towards performance trackable, direct-response channels one of which is mobile. Mobile advertising campaigns have demonstrated a much higher success rate when leveraged as lead-generation and customer acquisition tools using calls to action like click to call and click to SMS. Tough economy or not, mobile marketing is no longer a niche or a trend.

While mobile is still considered an emerging channel by some, smart marketers are integrating trackable, quantifiable mobile components within campaigns to extend their reach and increase efficacy. Will you be one of them?

Every economic downturn is an opportunity for organizational introspection and rationalization. Our expectation is that an increasing number of advertisers will shift to cost- effective digital strategies in the next several months. The advantages are quite clear
• Quantifiable results
• Shorter turnaround
• Significantly lower costs than traditional mass-media counterparts
• Ability to recalibrate targeting or messaging to respond to audience feedback

Here are some tips to design a successful mobile advertising initiative
• Focus on user experience. Treat your audience with respect and deliver an experience that is high on engagement
• Integrate your mobile advertising campaign with other channels. Benefit from the halo effect of the other mediums
• Leverage the call to action. Few mediums offer instant actions like the mobile. Use them.
• Measure, track, analyze: Leverage the measurability of the channel to assess the success of your initiative and use the feedback to improve your campaign

Rise to the challenge of a soft economy and stay relevant to your customer. Let us show you how here!

Manasi
Corporate Communications

At mKhoj, we think it is very important to provide you, our user, with a great experience. To put this thought into action, we have been working on our new and redesigned website, trying to answer the basic question “What do our visitors look for in our site?”. We started out with 4 clear objectives for this redesign:

1. Improved usability
2. Simplicity
3. Live conversations
4. Industry knowledge

Keeping the above in mind, we started out by first collecting data from site analytics and heat maps, after hours of data crunching, we realized that some links are clicked more by repeat users and some clicked more by new users, so we had to strike a balance on our homepage to bring ease into the navigation of both types of users, and this was just one use case, then we derived numerous such use cases, phew! With this we covered phenomenal ground on the usability aspect of the user, which helped us build a website that would make your flow and navigation across the site extremely simple and also make sure that you find all your key actions easily, bottom line making your experience a delight.

Parallely the marketing and communication team took up the task of “I want to talk to my customer”

So we came out with a laundry list of things we want to talk to you about and froze on some key conversation we wanted to have with you:

- what we have been doing on the product front
- what are the highs of the mobile advertising industry today
- Our Case studies
- what the media is saying about us
- what our customers are saying about us

So here it is!

we will be awaiting your feedback

Arjun Som
Marketing

Mobile advertising, the new tool in the advertising world is fast emerging as one of the preferred media by many companies and marketers. It is being used extensively by advertisers as it helps them structure not only creative campaigns but also package them innovatively.

A comparative study: The traditional methods of advertising have limited shelf lives in terms of a restricted time span. Each advertiser, however, looks forward to increasing the engagements level by miles. When compared to traditional media, where the most non related interesting advertisements holds eyes for about 10 seconds, it is 40 to sometimes even 90 seconds when it comes to mobile advertising. No other medium has this kind of an attention retaining advantage. This has definitely contributed in making the mobile a highly interactive mass medium. Also, one must think of the kind of control and at the same time flexibility mobile as a digital medium offers. The ads can be created and tweaked at ease unlike the traditional media. This reduces the amount of effort and cost that one spends for the campaign in entirety.

Engagement levels: Mobile as a device is engaging as it’s the first screen, a personal and a customized screen. Ads here automatically become captive because it has a captive audience of one. Also the engagement levels are high because unlike an ad on a TV, radio, the level of engagement and time spent is completely under the control of the owner. For example, mKhoj assisted Yamaha to popularize its new RZ16 through mobile advertising. The objective was to popularize the bike through information about the bike and position the bike as a bike for adventurous people. mKhoj designed engaging content such as download of Yamaha wall papers, videos of the bike, call to actions, testimonials from members who already have the bike which added to the credibility of the campaign. On an average mKhoj found that consumer did spend about 75 to 90 seconds viewing five to six pages. This ensured good brand recall.

Engagement propagates brand equity: Since the engagement levels are so high, it helps enhance brand equity thereby providing companies the much-needed edge.  Mobile advertising provides companies with numerous flexible options to showcase their brands.  From simple static text to moving banners to highly interactive audio and video, mobile advertising has it all.  The elements of content, referrals and viral marketing all of which allow users to become part of the advertising experience are the essence of mobile advertising. One can leverage the mentioned strengths of mobile advertising by carefully planning the campaigns keeping in mind the target audience and level of engagement.  Apart from planning, it is important to execute according to plan and also finally measure the effectiveness of the campaign.  This helps companies constantly improve and devise new ways to capture customer attention. All this will definitely go a long way in providing value and enhancing return on equity.

Mobile advertising facilitates not only exposure through engagement but also helps close the loop of transaction through call to action: The mobile today is not just a plain medium where only messages are transferred but also a complete communication device which facilitates a two way communication between the brand and a consumer.  It is being used to create highly successful campaigns (the Obama campaign is a great reference story), which, have a high level of audience involvement thereby engaging the potential customer to a great extent.  It is being used not to just display ads but also to generate leads.  Campaigns that have CRM (expand) activities can actually close the marketing loop itself. Thus mobile campaigns facilitate not only Exposure and Engagement but also Closure.
In conclusion one can say that international and local brands are opening up to mobile advertising due to its cost effective solutions that has a captive audience of one, with high engaging levels building brand equity by not only exposing the consumer to the brands but also closing the loop of transaction.

Abhay Singhal
VP Ad Sales

All the efforts in mKhoj are driven towards improving the quality of users that are diverted to the advertiser. It’s simple - Better the quality of users diverted, better is the marketing ROI. Targeting plays a critical role here. Our enhanced targeting engine has been developed to clearly meet this simple but challenging objective.

To a Content Advertiser, we send users who have the highest probability to download/consume his mobile content. This reduces the drop-rates across his conversion funnel.
For Brands, better targeting reduces reach wastage & gives an exciting opportunity to engage with the right audience (that’s targeted engagement!).

In our current solution you can target a user
- consuming a particular type of mobile content
- who is a subscriber of a specific telco in a specific country
- who has a handset with very specific features
By using a combination of the above we have delivered phenomenal success to the download advertisers. All this coupled with the upcoming enhancements in targeting engine should give you an opportunity to exactly pin-point your target audience & hence improve your returns.

Mukesh Kalra
Product Management

At mKhoj, we believe that user experience & targeting are key to success in mobile advertising. From past few weeks we have been working towards solving key problems in these areas. Expect a slew of innovative solutions to these problems in the coming months. As a first step, we have rehashed the experience for our advertisers & publishers on the website. The website has undergone a sea change in terms of its usability & overall look & feel. There are a lot of things that have become simpler, faster & better, but some of the key goals that we achieved with this release are:

1. Signing up & Creating an ad takes less than 2 minutes which means anyone can now reach millions of mobile users on our network within 2 minutes!
2. Signing up + Integrating with mKhoj as a publisher takes less than 2 minutes. So if you own a mobile site, you can be earning within 2 minutes on our network!

Now that’s what we call simpler & faster mobile advertising.
We are moving fast towards our next milestone of making mobile advertising more simpler & far more effective with richer data & clinical targeting…watch this (s)pace !

Mukesh Kalra
Product Management