The mobile advertising space got white hot last year when Google agreed to purchase AdMob and Apple bought Quattro Wireless. Suddenly all eyes were on 4INFO, which has been described as the AdMob of SMS. They dominate that space, and the service is doubling in size every quarter now.
I interviewed CEO Zaw Thet in February to better understand the 4INFO business. 4INFO offers customers a publishing platform, which is tools to manage SMS subscribers and send them content. They also run an ad network for SMS ads, and a SMS gateway to handle the carrier relationships and charges. 4INFO’s larger publishers pay as much as $15,000 per month to use the platform. Those publishers can run their own ads, or use 4INFO’s ads with a revenue split (self service customers have no choice but to accept 4INFO’s ads).
At the time of the interview, just three months ago, 4INFO was sending about 200 million text messages per month. That will be 500 million/month by June, Thet tells me, based on growth from new publisher products and international expansion. And that doesn’t include traffic from mobile display ads, a new product 4INFO launched in December 2009.
The company has hired two new senior executive to help handle the growth, says Thet. Julie Shumaker has joined as Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing, and Rob DeMillo, who is also currently the CTO of Revision3 (he will become a technical advisor to Revision3).
Thet says that DeMillo and Shumaker signal 4INFO’s intention to be more than the “King of SMS” (as I labelled them). “DeMillo is clearly all things mobile advertising (Third Screen Media, mQube, Transpera run the gambit from mobile display to messaging to video) not just SMS, and Shumaker is a digital advertising pioneer, as the first to launch games as an advertising vehicle at EA,” says Thet.
Founded in 2004, with a consistent track record of innovation and reliability, 4INFO is a diversified mobile advertising, media, and technology company that reaches millions of mobile consumers daily and touches them billions of times a month. AdHaven by 4INFO, recently spun out as its own division, is the industry’s first mobile audience platform and network. The AdHaven Mobile Audience Platform includes a next-generation mobile ad server with the most advanced targeting capabilities in the mobile advertising industry, and...
Rob DeMillo is the CTO of Revision3, where he runs engineering and R&D, represents the company to internet video partners, ad agencies, and generally setting the pace/direction of Revision3 technology. DeMillo came to Revision3 after being a technical advisor to the company while he was CTO at 4INFO. At 4INFO, DeMillo oversaw the strategic direction of company technology, research and development, and product development. Before 4INFO, DeMillo was the Chief Technology Officer / co-Founder of Transpera, Inc. in San...
Named by Digital Media Wire as a top “25 Executive to Watch in Digital Entertainment,” Shumaker has spent her career building businesses in lifestyle media with best of breed interactive technology, community and commerce. As senior vice president at 4INFO, she is responsible for advertising sales, corporate marketing and public relations, market research, as well as advertising program development and expansion. Before joining 4INFO, Shumaker provided digital revenue consulting for a variety of emerging media businesses. She also served...
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