StratosHear Launches MobiAdz, India’s Seventh Mobile Ad Network

By Nikhil Pahwa on Sep 1st, 2010 |

StratosHear, which was earlier focusing on providing audio advertising on mobile caller ringback tones, has now become the seventh company to launch a mobile advertising network in India, after InMobi, Admob, ZestAds, Mobisolv, Navteq Media Solutions and most recently, NetworkPlay. (Also see: advertising networks in India). A competitor in the Ringback Tone advertising, OnMobile Global, said on its earnings conference call a couple of quarters ago that the segment is slow to take off because there’s reticence from telecom operators to launch ads on ringback tones.

MobiAdz is pitching self-learning proprietary algorithms that do behavioral assessment of users, capturing user profiles, overriding the issues and limitations so far faced because of (dynamic) IP Address in case of Mobile browsing. The pitch that has to be made, though, is to advertisers.

StratosHear CEO Vinay Kumar told MediaNama that they believe that the mobile advertising market in India is currently over Rs. 100 crores in size, and in the next 3-4 years, will be over Rs. 500 crores. “It’s relatively small (compared with Online advertising) but growing significantly,” he said, adding that CPC rates in India are Rs. 2-7 on the mobile. Kumar claimed that Click-Through Rates (CTR’s) are higher on the mobile than the Internet (ED: we thought it was the opposite). StratosHear expects to command a premium because of its targeting, and also plans to tie up with premium publishers.

The company, in a statement, claimed to be serving “tens of millions of ad impressions per month across 200 countries”, and that over 100 publishers have signed up. Kumar declined to share names of advertisers, except Indiagames, but said that they’re closing a deal with Sony soon. Kumar also declined to share the size of StratosHear’s sales team, but said that they have a decent sized team in Delhi and Mumbai, and will grow the team as the business grows. MobiAdz also has a self-serve platform for international advertisers.

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Category : Advertising, Editors Picks, Mobile | Tags : MobiAdz, Mobile Advertising Network, StratoShear

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PakkaAnonymous

100 CR ??? :P
http://www.medianama.com Nikhil Pahwa

Yep. that's what he said. What do you think?
http://twitter.com/joeonnet @joeonnet

Nikhil, I guess he included the sms-push numbers too.

My guttfeel is that its less than 15 Cr at the moment, if its pure WAP advt revenue [ That guttfeel guestimate includes telecom operator site's WAP revenue]

Basically , if all these numbers that are claimed by I**AI and others are true, all of us need not go for meditation classes between February and May :D
Aneeti

The market is tremendously huge! Even I also read this figure somewhere..Its correct will share the link soon
Suresh

Here is a link that talks about mobile ad size in India and other BRIC countries. This one says India at around 160 Cr already…
http://www.stockwatch.in/emarketer-predicts-india…
http://www.medianama.com Nikhil Pahwa

Suresh: So…search for reports from 2005-06. Check their prediction for 2010. :) These things are good for putting in presentations when you're looking to raise funding, or pitching a business opportunity. Just validation of hype. Remember how huge Mobile Gaming was supposed to be?
Suresh

Nikhil: I believe these numbers include all up mobile ad market in India including SMS Push, Mobile Internet, Branded Apps, OBDs, SMS 2.0 etc. Please don't confuse that mobile advertising = mobile Internet. Let's ignore all the reports. What is your view of the size of the market in India all up?
Rajesh

Nikhil,

The total spends on mobile advertising 'might' be something around Rs 100 Crore ATM. But I guess that less than 20% of this might be spent on WAP/Banners. Guess Joe's estimate might be somewhere near the actual figure.

Also, CTRs on mobile tend to be much higher than the larger screens – how much of this is accidental and how much of this is due to 'higher engagement' is anyones guess. But CTRs on mobile tend to be around 1-2% (and even higher) while the larger screen CTRs tend to be around 0.20% to 0.30%. This is how mobile ad networks have been getting eCPMs of around Rs 50 – Rs 100 (even with rock bottom CPC rates).
watcher

any revenue nos. for InMobi, Admob, ZestAds, Mobisolv, Navteq Media Solutions and NetworkPlay? if not factual. any guesses?
Nikhil?
anurag

while the discussion is veering towards mobile gaming.. any figures / graphs for where the industry stands expected to move to – latest IMRB report states the figure at 541 crore..
Dude

Good luck with the "premium" positioning strategy. Indian market has a glut of inventory with

Yahoo!
Mocospace
Zedge
Buzzcity

leading the charge together with a lot of symbian apps..

Targeting – every one has it so what makes stratosphere any different?. The total combined pageviews of most premium sites

rediff.com
indiatimes.com
moneycontrol.com etc etc will probably be <50m a month in traffic.

@ 1% CTR you get 0.5m clicks x Rs 2 a click (a very unrealistic estimate) = Rs 10 lakhs in revenues a month at best.

Good luck stratoshear..
Toing Subbu

It be so easy to start a mobile network and claim 100 publishers…one just needs to sign up with an international network (they have Indian inventory aplenty and are begging to offload it at below rock bottom rates) and voila…from 0 to 100 publishers with just one IO…
it's the best of times…it's the worst of times…
npadv

Dude…can you explain "This implies that an average user consumes 50,000 WAP pages/banners a year , if 1% CTR is "true". I didn't understand how you arrived at this.

StratosHear Launches MobiAdz, India’s Seventh Mobile Ad Network

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