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Singtel’s Amobee Buys AdJitsu To Take Mobile Ads Into The Third Dimension

Ingrid Lunden — Tue, 08 May 2012 10:02:29 +0000

Another bit of consolidation in the mobile advertising space — this time with an ad-tech twist: Amobee, the mobile ad company that itself was the subject of a takeover by Singtel only two months ago, has now bought an ad startup of its own: AdJitsu, a specialist in “3D” advertising technologies that let users “touch” objects in ads and explore them.

Trevor Healy, the CEO of Amobee, says that financial terms of the deal are not being disclosed. Prior to the acquisition, AdJitsu was a wholly-owned division of another mobile advertising company, Cooliris.

AdJitsu had already built up a client base of big brands since being founded in August 2011: they include Nokia, BMW and (TechCrunch’s owner) AOL, which uses its technology in its AOL Editions app.

The acquisition announced today signifies how companies working in the area of mobile display advertising are looking for technologies that give them a differentiating edge over their competitors with services that make advertisements more engaging. This is all the more important as the medium matures and the novelty of mobile ads continues to wear off.

“Mobile advertising can be quite static and pedestrian,” admits Healy. “With something like AdJitsu, you can navigate around the product and consumers like it.” He claims that ads using 3D technology produce twice the levels of engagement and click-throughs as regular display ads.

Another reason why Amobee may have focused on AdJitsu is because of the Singtel connection.

Singtel, which bought Amobee in March for $321 million, uses the Amobee ad network across its pan-Asian footprint of 430 million users, and as Healy points out, “The Asian market loves 3D technology. It plays very well there.” But he also adds that the company has “many advertisers in North America and Europe that also want to explore using more 3D services in their ads.”

One company that doesn’t use AdJitsu’s technology, however, is Apple — although, given the company’s focus on rich media ads for iAd, this seems like it would be a good opportunity. Healy says that he has yet to talk to the iPhone/iPad giant but that he would “love to”: “I think this would be a great extension for iAd,” he noted.

We will probably see more deals like this one continuing to be announced. Specifically, there may be a lot more mobile consolidation to come in markets like Asia. Russell Buckley, formerly of AdMob (part of Google) and now an angel investor and advisor, notes that in China alone there are around 200 ad networks, with most of them set up in the past two years.

AdJitsu’s team is based in Palo Alto and will continue to remain there for the time being. Amobee has offices in Redwood City, Calif., as well as throughout the U.S., Europe, Asia, Australia and Latin America.

More Mobile Ad Consolidation: Carrier SingTel Buys Amobee For $321 Million

Ingrid Lunden — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 08:09:08 +0000

The mobile ad market is projected to bring in revenues of $2.6 billion in the U.S. alone this year, and while that is only a small fraction of the wider opportunity in digital advertising, the space — fueled by the smartphone boom — is only going to get bigger, and that is attracting those looking for an early foothold. Today saw another example of that coming into shape: pan-Asian carrier SingTel today announced it would buy California-based Amobee to expand its own mobile advertising business, in a deal worth $321 million.

SingTel — which has 434 million mobile customers in 25 countries, including Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, the Philippines and Thailand — is banking on brands wanting to target customers with mobile ads in the Asia-Pacific region, particularly in emerging markets.

The $321 million price tag may represent a good return on investment for those companies that have backed Amobee — which had raised about $54 million (that’s the amount publicly disclosed; there could have been more) from backers that included Accel, Sequoia, Globespan, Vodafone, Cisco, Motorola, Telefonica and Amdocs. It also seems a big multiple on the company’s net assets, which are worth about $600,000, according to SingTel (via AFP).

This is not SingTel’s first move into mobile ads but an extension of an existing operation: it says it already offers “geo-localization” services, and the capability of sending local deals and marketing promotions based on a customer’s profile.

Amobee will give SingTel the ability to integrate those existing capabilities with its own an ad-serving platform that covers banner and rich-media ads. As all of Amobee’s existing employees, including CEO Trevor Healy, will be joining SingTel, it also gives the carrier a bolted-on team experienced in mobile ads.

And as Amobee is in Redwood City, it also gives SingTel another route to tap into the Silicon Valley scene. The carrier has a venture fund, Innov8, which has made some investments in the Asia region (such as leading a $6.5 million round for group buying site Dealised) but this could open the door to looking at more companies in the U.S. as well.

What’s not clear is how this deal will affect Amobee’s existing customer relationships when SingTel takes the company in-house. Amobee is not the world’s biggest mobile ad company (Google rules that roost, led largely by its search business) but it has an impressive list of customers, in addition to its ability to deliver a full suite of mobile ad services. Current customers include Google, Skype, eBay, Barnes & Noble, Nokia and France Telecom.

Amobee will be rolled into SingTel’s Digital Life operations. This is a new business line that SingTel (like European counterpart Telefonica) has created to try to get the most out of all of its digital assets. The other two divisions at SingTel are consumer and enterprise/wholesale services.

E-marketer estimates that mobile advertising will be worth $2.6 billion in the U.S. in 2012. Projections for worldwide mobile ad revenue are around $7 billion this year and $20 billion by 2015, according to SingTel.

While that number represents significant growth over the year before (it’s more than double the $1 billion of 2011) it’s still just a fraction of the billions that will be made in digital advertising as a whole — and the number is positively dwarfed by overall ad market covering more traditional outlets like TV, newspapers, outdoor, etc.

Still for those looking to pick the horse that might win future races, $321 million sounds like a good bet.

The deal is expected to complete before June 2012.

InMobi signs "multi-million dollar" mobile ad partnership with Amobee

Steve O'Hear — Wed, 11 May 2011 12:57:52 +0000

Independent mobile ad network InMobi has signed a “multi-million dollar” partnership with Amobee, which provides “end-to-end mobile advertising solutions and services”.

The partnership will span three years, in which several million will pass hands as Amobee runs campaigns via InMobi’s ad network, giving a potential reach of 300 million consumers across 200 countries. The scale of the partnership is evidence, says the two companies, of the “massive growth occurring in the mobile advertising industry”, which is hard to argue with as a whole bunch of startups and major players such as Google, Apple and Microsoft are battling it out for a slice of the mobile advertising pie.

Under the deal, California, U.S.-based Amobee’s portfolio of Fortune 500 brands will now have access to InMobi’s mobile ad network. Thus, “in combining forces, InMobi will now be able to offer Amobee’s clients greater ROI and reach”, says Naveen Tewari, co-founder and CEO of InMobi, in a canned statement.

InMobi claims to be the “world’s largest independent mobile advertising network” and delivers more than 31.5 billion mobile ad impressions per-month. It has offices in London, San Francisco, Bangalore, Tokyo, Mumbai and Singapore, and is backed by Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers and Sherpalo Ventures.

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Despite Bleak Outlook, Mobile Ad Startups Keep Getting Funded; Amobee Spurns $150 Million Buyout Offer From Yahoo

Erick Schonfeld — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 19:09:43 +0000

In the previous post on the future of mobile technology, Michael notes the “bleak prospects for mobile advertising revenue” expressed by some mobile carrier CEOs and Fortune 500 executives at a panel at Davos. This dour assessment stands in stark contrast to all the early-stage money going into mobile-ad startups. This week alone, I’ve received several announcements of new VC money going into mobile ad networks, including the $12 million SoftBank Capital put into Ad Infuse earlier this week. There is another $6 million deal about to be announced next week.

And then there is Amobee, a mobile ad network headquartered in San Francisco with R&D in Israel. According to an Israeli press report (in Hebrew), Yahoo tried to purchase the company outright a few months ago for $150 to $200 million. The company turned down the offer, hoping to fetch a higher price later.

Amobee has developed an ad-serving platform allowing mobile operators to inject ads into different types of mobile content, such as video, music, and games. The company claims it provides “precise contextual and behavioral targeting across all users on all handsets for all non-voice related applications and services.” Investors include Accel Partners, Sequoia Capital and Globespan, who have put in $20 million-$25 million , plus Vodafone who put in another undisclosed sum in November.

The Fortune 500 crowd on that Davos panel seem to agree with Forrester projections that mobile advertising will have trouble hitting $1 billion in the U.S. by 2012, whereas Amobee cites delirious projections of $11 billion for worldwide mobile advertising by 2011 in its press releases.

So who is right? The pessimists at Davos, or the optimists at these startups and those throwing money at them?

Mobile advertising startups are . . .

Chasing fool’s gold. Consumers will backlash.

37056% of all votes
The next great ad-networks in the making.

29344% of all votes

Total Votes: 663
Started: January 25, 2008

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