Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Interview with Gil Dudkiewicz, CEO of StartApp (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Does that mean you are operating largely within the same target audience – the same value of, How many ads I can show at what CPM? Is that all reasonably similar?

Gil Dudkiewicz: It is segmented, and there are different use cases among different countries. But the scale of what we have is split by location in terms of what we pay to them. We try to make it simple for them.

SM: So it is basically a mobile ad network?

GD: It is more than a typical ad network that is bound by advertisement. We have a real platform that enables search applications and other different types of advertisement. I will go a bit further into detail. The user downloading applications or the app developers who work with us download search applications at the same time as well. We are the second largest search distributor in the ad market – more than Android [and] Microsoft combined.

SM: I’d like to step back for a minute. Can you give me an industry view of what the mobile ad network space look like today? Who are the players, and how are they differentiating?

GD: There are different types of ad networks. We have Millennia, InMobi, etc. The market is totally new. You have companies like Millennia that specialize in premium advertisements. InMobi is more international and less in the U.S. So, there is a different focus in terms of companies. There are companies that work more on direct response and companies that are doing more centibyte downloads.

The typical advertisement is less efficient today. What we find more efficient are solutions like our solution. Solutions like Centibyte downloads work as well, or different types of advertisement that is unique. I think the simple banner is too small and people actually click on it by mistake in most cases. If you look at mobile advertisement, it is still undervalued. But a lot of it is not because of the advertisement per se, a lot of it is because of the actual websites people reach when they click on an ad. If you look at most companies, they don’t yet have a dedicated mobile site. That means if you click on the ad, it usually takes you to some kind of landing page. A landing page can be a website, a call for action, a call to download, etc. Advertising is still [separate from the] website, which is dedicated to mobile. The result of it is if you click on the ad it doesn’t really work for you. It is not the mobile, it is about companies not having a mobile site yet.

SM: Essentially the ad is being wasted.

GD: In many cases, yes. But if I am looking at the trajectory of the industry and what is ahead, I think it will be turn the other way around. If you look on searches, more than 25% of traffic is on mobile. Therefore, many companies, the next time they create a new website, will definitely include a version of a mobile site in it. This way, all the local capabilities will be enabled as well, and that will enable them to create revenue out of it. Then you also have the pay-per-call option, which is also very interesting. The options are very different today.

This segment is part 2 in the series : Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Interview with Gil Dudkiewicz, CEO of StartApp
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