How to Maintain Leadership in the Ever Changing Mobile Marketing Industry?
The young mobile marketing industry is growing in an accelerated way with players coming and going. AppsFlyer, the authoritative third party mobile attribution and marketing analytics company, released AppsFlyer Performance Index for the first half of 2016. By retention rate and influence, Facebook, Google and Twitter ranked top3. Many new players joined the ranking, such as AdAction, AppNana, Admitad, Mcent and Liftoff etc.
26 new mobile marketing platforms joined the four top30 rankings for gaming, non-gaming, Android and iOS
The booming mobile marketing industry keeps reshuffling with new energy from new players, breaking the existing landscape. The industry has initiated a new game of acquisition. It is reported that IronSource, an Israel-based unicorn company, is in talk with a Chinese tech firm about selling its business.
Mobile Marketing Industry Accelerates to Reshuffle
IronSource, founded in 2010, is one of the largest Internet companies in Israel. In last September, InronSource merged with Supersonic, a mobile market platform, and revealed its intention to explore Chinese market. If IronSource were acquired, the global mobile marketing ecosystem will refresh again. Meanwhile, companies like Applovin, Applift, Glispa and Vungle are also rumored about M&A.
GameAnalytics, a Denmark-based game analytics company, was acquired by Mobvista in July. Smaato, a mobile ad company in Los Angeles, was acquired by Spearhead Integrated Marketing Communication Group for $148 million in June. In February, Mobvista also acquired NativeX, a native ad company in U.S. Acquisitions over the past two years also include: Fyber acquired by Korean RNTS for $190 million; 5Rocks, a Korean analytics and marketing automation company, acquired by Tapjoy; AdColony acquired by Norway-based Opera for $350 million.
What is behind the frequent industry ranking reshuffling and frequent M&As is the accelerated integration of mobile marketing industry: big platforms are acting strategically and cross-region companies are complementing each other. Big companies acquire smaller ones to expand their scale, enhance their strengths and rapidly gain maker share.
How to Build Strengths in Heated Competition
While revealing problems, AppsFlyer Performance Index also conceals answers. In the non-gaming ranking, Mobvista, a frequent member of the ranking, made great progress in terms of retention rate and scale and showed the momentum of global expansion: No.6 in iOS ranking and No.4 in Android ranking. Mobvista is the only company, besides Facebook, Google and Twitter, that ranked among top6 in both iOS and Android rankings. Mobvista increased 13 and 5 places respectively in iOS and Android rankings by retention rate.
Mobvista has two tactics to take a stronghold in various rankings and become a leader in the competitive mobile marketing industry:
1) Increase penetration rate in regional markets by globalizing its business and building local offices and teams
Traffic is the key for mobile marketing industry. Mobvista’s traffic covers over 240 countries and regions. By building local offices and teams, the company conducts refined local traffic operation in regional markets. Up to now, Mobvista has 11 global offices, with over 50 staff in US and over 10 staff in India, Southeast Asia and Europe. With the globalized teams, Mobvista has won customers including UBER, PayTM, SGN and Electronic Arts. Today, overseas markets represent over 40% of Mobvista’s total revenue.
Localized teams can take over local markets rapidly. For example, Vstargame, a mobile game distribution platform under Mobvista, has operated locally in Southeast Asia for many years and has built business advantages and brand awareness. In addition, NativeX and GameAnalytics that Mobvista acquired this year accelerated the company’s development in US and Europe.
The benefits of acquisition are beyond that. “The ultimate goal of acquisition is talent. Acquisition is the best way to build a complete and competent team with achievements in a certain area,” said Clement Cao, co-founder and CFO of Mobvista.
2) Create a full range of product lines, build one-stop solutions and provide SaaS services
Mobile marketing is a technology-driven industry. As technologies converge, it is critical for mobile marketing companies to create a full range of product lines and one-stop services.
For example, as Android and iOS keep abreast in mobile OS market, mobile marketing companies have to cover both of them. App Store has about 3 million apps, while Google Play also broke 2.2 million in June. Therefore, mobile marketing companies are competing on providing user acquisition and traffic monetization for different platforms. Since its establishment in 2013, Mobvista covers both platforms and outpaces those who only focus on single platform due to strategic limitations or technological shortage. Mobvista always follows Facebook, Google and Twitter in any mobile advertising rankings.
The two acquisitions this year also complement Mobvista’s existing mobile marketing businesses. NativeX offers industry leading native video ad resources, while GameAnalytics provides big data on players’ in-game behaviors. After integrating them, Mobvista has extended its businesses along the industry chain and provides more competitive developer services.
Based on such technological integration, Mobvista will officially launch its already successful native ad mediation platform in China in September, maximizing benefits for mobile developers connecting to this platform. The platform provides customized services with diversified billing approaches. Developers can manage their ad spots, developers can manage their ad spots autonomously, and optimize their monetization across global ad sources with just a single SDK. It is a major step forward of Mobvista’s developer services in form of SaaS.
To sum up, Mobvista is accelerating in two directions – global markets and business lines. Capital serves as catalyzer in Mobvista’s business expansion. Mobvista raised 520 million yuan in its first private placement in July after IPO at National Equities Exchange and Quotations of China. With two acquisitions in half a year, Mobvista is proactively seizing opportunities to rapidly increase its capabilities. Undoubtedly, the company aims to become the largest independent mobile market platform after Facebook and Google.
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