Robin Wei Duan
Founder & CEO
Mobvista

For those of us that aren’t familiar with Mobvista (which I think may only be a few people), please tell us a little more about your offering and technology.

Starting operations in March 2013, Mobvista provides comprehensive solutions of global user acquisition and traffic monetization for advertisers and app developers. We run a global mobile digital marketing platform covering over 240 countries with more than 10 billion daily impressions, and an overseas mobile game publishing platform. Thanks to such a large traffic system, our daily amount of clicks and activation reached 300 million and 5 million respectively. Our major customers include some of the world’s leading enterprises such as Baidu, Alibaba, 360, Uber, King and Flipkart.

What Mobvista focuses on is to guarantee the effectiveness of traffic and high conversion rates in every level through technology. Using the advanced anti-fraud technology to recognize cheating traffic, our professional technicians managed to reach 90% accuracy rate and 85% recalled rate on average. About 10 million cheating clicks discovered daily are equal to $4,500. In this case, we helped advertisers to save nearly $16.5 million. In the short span of six months of this year, we enhanced the traffic monetization efficiency through technological innovation with overall CTR,  CVR and eCPM improving 15%, 40% and 60% respectively.

Compared with a single advertising platform, we have higher monetization efficiency with the overall optimization of our M System. For instance, our overall eCPM increase is 60% higher than that of Facebook. The second is low cost: it takes only five days on average from connection to monetization with M System.

You recently went public on the Chinese National Equities Exchange, on November 25th. How does it feel to be a publicly listed company – does that add any additional pressure to expand more quickly to other markets?

Getting listed on NEEQ can bring a great deal of advantages for the company. Firstly, it’s the opportunity to improve our brand’s perception, and be an indicator that we are a trustworthy partner. Secondly, despite the market liquidity of NEEQ is not that tremendous, the turnover of Mobvista on the 1st day exceeded 5 million RMB, which testifies the great financing capability of Mobvista.

Finally, Mobvista will initiate a new round of fundraising to accelerate business growth and traffic monetization. At business level, it will accelerate our coverage in North America, Europe, South Asia and Southeast Asia. At technology level, it will further improve the mobile advertising efficiency with SDK and big data.

The global user acquisition market is extremely competitive, with hundreds of mobile networks claiming they can drive 1000s of installs at the lowest possible CPIs. What criteria should a user acquisition manager use to evaluate which of these vendors to test with?

To find the right partner for any campaign, user acquisition manager has to consider the multi-dimensional analysis. Initially, check the exact statistics of daily impressions and traffic sources quality the network provides. Partnership with top media platforms is a plus, for example, we established strategic cooperative relations with Google AdWords, Twitter and Facebook, what gives us the option of providing the high quality traffic.

Secondly, pay attention to the successful cases the network brought out with and its client base. i.e. Mobvista has helped a great deal of apps (360 Security, Clash of Kings, Ali Express, Leo Master, Omni Swipe, etc) to step overseas and acquire high-quality users globally.

The scale of the company and the financing capability are also important, demonstrating that the network has adequate cash flow to support its upstream and downstream business and guarantee the whole process of user acquisition. Also, the client would be more confident in its business if the company has a bunch of professionals stand by.

The last but not least, if you find it hard to evaluate the network by yourself, search for the third-party accreditations such as AppsFlyer, AppIndex, Mobyaffiliates, Thalamus that publish their own rankings. For instance, Mobvista ranked No.2 worldwide, No.1 in Asia on Global Android Power Ranking by AppsFlyer（E-Commerce, Travel, Utility Apps), following Facebook. For Android Gaming Performance Index, we were the third after Facebook and Chartboost.

Mobile advertising is growing at a spectacular rate, accounting for more than 50% of digital ad spending in 2015. However, much of these dollars are spent on acquiring users for apps. What do you think needs to happen before many big brand advertisers make the full transition into mobile?

Big brand advertisers will make a transition into mobile sooner or later. What app developer could do is to market apps globally without hesitation, to acquire users and drive users’ engagement to develop people’s loyalty to the certain apps. It depends on apps quality and also the users number.

What are some key differences for mobile advertising in the Chinese market, as compared to the rest of the world?

According to eMarketer, the U.S. and China are the leading global markets, driving mobile ad spending growth. In both countries, mobile is set to become the majority of digital ad spending next year. U.S. advertisers are predicted to spend about $40.24 billion reaching consumers across mobile devices, comparing to $22.14 billion in China.

One difference is that Chinese Internet companies have grown by leaps and bounds since 2012, along with the rapid development of mobile Internet. It’s a fast developing market comparing to the rest of the countries and quite new market comparing to US market.

Also, the mobile advertising power map in China is somewhat different. As the domestic market became saturated with local giant internet companies, more companies with technological and capital resources chose to branch out into the global markets. For the rest of the world, mobile advertising power is much more dynamic and decentralized in some way.

What are some average CPI rates you’ve seen by genre for some countries in APAC?

Well, from Mobvista’s experience in APAC, for tools, the average CPI ranges between $0.2~$0.6, for games this indicator is higher, oscillating   from $2 to 3$ on average, for e-commerce CPI fluctuates between $0.5~$0.6

Rebrokering of traffic is one of the biggest issues in the mobile user acquisition market currently. How do you think that we as an industry can solve for this?

From my personal perspective, in this case, it’s a market issue about supply-demand relation. Traffic demand from advertisers comes sometimes on a large scale, and cannot be easily fulfilled by ad network’s self-owned media channels. And that’s why rebrokering happens occasionally. With further development of industry technology and policy setting, rebrokering will be naturally replaced with other more transparent and direct ways. The question is when will that happen – in a year or a few years?

What are some suggestions you would have for an app developer looking to expand to the Chinese market? (localization/culturalization, partnering with an agency, getting listed in which app stores, etc)

As Mobvista focuses on global mobile marketing, we might say that it’s hard for non-local app developers to expand to the Chinese market, as it’s already been saturated between local giant internet companies. But still, successful marketing would be likely to happen if you partner with a local agency, localize your product and do multi-channel marketing including getting listed in Chinese apps stores.

What are your thoughts on some recent trends like programmatic buying, mobile video, and native ad units?

Programmatic buying is now and future of mobile advertising. Big data is needed in programmatic buying to help traffic demand side to better target the right users. Also, it will highly improve monetization efficiency. For Mobvista, it has its own DSP and owns a user database covering over 2 billion devices and 2,000+ user targeting labels.

Video will consistently impress the industry, and we already see that more and more branding or gaming apps use video to entertain the audience, getting emotional feedback. It’ll become much more popular in E-Commerce products, etc. In addition, it provides more opportunities to showcase the product, optimizing the ads performance.

Of course, native ads have the higher potential and will outperform other kinds of traditional ads in mobile games. What the advertisers must focus on is the design of the ads, targeting and overall users’ emotional status. As they are designed to be very well adapted to the product itself, they can drive customer engagement for games and other apps and contribute to high conversion rate.

Lastly, what do you see as the future of the global mobile advertising market?

It’s huge and promising. According to E-marketer, in 2018, mobile ads spending will reach USD 100 billion, which definitely stands for a great market future. The mobile emerging markets (e.g. India or Latin America) will stay in focus of digital marketing companies. Mobvista is not an exception: we have set a new office in New Delhi already, and announced a $100 million investment for its India business within 2018, to drive breadth and depth of collaboration with Indian businesses.

Based on the history, the future of the global mobile advertising market will be tech-oriented and data-driven. Technology innovations will continue improving advertising efficiency with low cost. Programmatic buying is also a very important joint. Big data processing will help accurately targeting the right group of users.

And, of course, we expect new advertising ways to come, for example, video ads would become more popular for its great performance on ads delivery.

As a leading global mobile content distribution platform, Mobvista specializes in mobile advertising and game publishing.

Today, Mobvista operates a worldwide mobile ad network, integrates ad spots and websites from more than 240 countries and receives more than 10 billion daily impressions. Founded in 2013, Mobvista has successfully developed billions of overseas users for thousands of clients. Besides, many mobile games have achieved significant success in Southeast Asia.

For Advertisers: We provide professional apps and brands distributing portfolios for our clients. It’s the cutting-edge algorithms that help our clients make informed promotional decisions. We add value to your user acquisition with qualified traffic on the large scale

For Publishers: Mobvista serves as one-stop-shop for publishers, monthly paying over $5,000,000 to publishers. With innovative ad formats, more direct cooperation with advertisers and smart targeting based on big data, we make every impression count.

For Affiliates: Mobvista provides Affiliates with exclusive ad offers, industry-lead eCPM and unique self-development guidance. Our professional Affiliate Manager will 24/7 to help you grow your business.

Hero Image Source

The post Mobile Network Mobvista on the Panorama of being Public appeared first on Thalamus.