This has been the year of M&A in the mobile ad market. A lot of money has been paid out for mobile ad networks and exchanges over the past twelve months. Quattro, Admob, RingRing Media, Admarvel and now Moblix - everyone's favourite app exchange marketplace - have been gobbled up by digital media and telco companies eager to own a piece of the burgeoning mobile display space. Why has there been so much activity? Is mobile display advertising finally coming of age - or is it just simply more frothy ad tech M&A activity?
Mobile display is still a little bit like the Wild West. There's no standard buy-side ad server to track and serve ads. Agencies still have to depend on reports from ad nets for most mobile campaigns. Granted there are some ad nets that offer self-service dashboards with campaign analytics and tracking. But big agencies want this functionality in their present ad server stack - before they commit bigger amounts of budget. Google released mobile DFA recently, but has been ridiculously slow at rolling it out here in Europe. There are number of European ad nets and publishers eager to integrate. Unfortunately Google is still not putting enough resource behind it. I would say there is a big opportunity for other ad servers - Mediamind, Atlas et al - to grab market share in this evolving space.
The mobile DFA release, though, is a clear sign that the market is maturing. Big agencies will probably put more budget into this channel once ad nets and pubs are integrated. Then you will see the ad network market explode, and mass aggregation occur. This will attract DSPs and SSPs into the space. Is it too early for this type of development? I don't think so. Sure you will need to have an ad sever for big rich media and video campaigns. But much of unsold mobile display could probably be automated. Some DSPs are already trading mobile inventory. Dataxu, for instance, is providing the DSP tech for B3's automated mobile display buys. But where is it buying the inventory from? As far as I know, there are few exchanges and aggregators - AdECN is allegedly one of them - offering this type of automated integration. Most deals are still done manually over the phone.
Nevertheless the opportunity is still there. Publishers will try to sell most of their inventory directly to agencies, with the ad exchanges and SSPs aggregating the remaining unsold inventory. These guys will build APIs for DSPs and trading desks to automate mobile display buys. Mobile impressions will soon be available through RTB. I have no doubt in my mind that Google will put a lot of the Admob inventory into Adx, making it available in real-time to buy-side traders.
Mobile will follow the evolution that is currently occurring in online display. I wonder if a pure DSP platform will appear for the mobile ad market. It's probably not needed especially if the heavily-funded online display DSPs decide to enter the market. Surely the likes of MediaMath, Turn, Dataxu and AppNexus must be looking at mobile as a real opportunity. Once Adx and the likes of Admeld, Adfonic, Smaato and Pubmatic aggregate mobile supply, there will be a lot more interest from the buy-side. I don't think we are far off, as convergence between mobile and online display is already happening. I could be wrong, but automation is likely to happen very quickly in mobile display - especially if publishers see the fiscal and resource benefits of trading inventory on exchanges and SSPs.
This could be one of the big reasons why big multiples are being paid for mobile ad companies. I would say this was the case for Admob. The rest of the buys were arguably reactionary. Building an ad network is not easy, but you could have a damn good go with a 10-50 million dollar investment. Apple paid $275 million dollars for Quattro. Google bought Admob for $750 million dollars. These are crazy sums of money to pay out given that both ad nets only made a fraction of their respective price tags in terms of revenue. It does look like froth, but I think Google's buy was probably the more strategic.
Google is fundamentally an ad company. It knows where the market is going. More money is going into the automated channel. And mobile will soon be a part of that. Soon mobile impressions will be open to RTB on Adx. Those DSPs and trading desks will buy large volumes from them. While Google dominates the eco-system, Apple will still be dicking around with its high-end iAd format, trying to preach to agencies why it can do creative campaigns better than them. This is an ill-advised move given that Apple is depending on the agency’s media budget to grow its business. My gut tells me that the mobile ad market is on the cusp of some big developments. The acronyms of RTB, DSP and SSP will soon be part of the mobile ad industry vernacular too.