Interview with James Lamberti, VP of Global Research and Marketing at InMobi
Thursday, July 1st, 2010
Olivia: Can you please tell us a bit about your background and which are your biggest markets right now?
James: InMobi is the world’s largest independent mobile ad network. In May 2010, we served 16.7 Billion impressions to 179 million consumers globally in 108 countries. Our market breakdown for May 2010 by available impressions is as follows:
- Asia Pacific 10 Billion
- Africa 2.3 Billion
- North America 2.0 BIllion
- Europe 1.8 Billion
- Middle East 500 Million
- Biggest markets are Indonesia, South Africa, India, US, UK, Malaysia, and Thailand
The company launched in the Asia Pacific region in 2007. While many companies fixated on the highly competitive US market where media is also highly fragmented among consumers, InMobi focused on emerging markets in Asia Pacific and Africa. In these regions, mobile is essentially the ONLY screen for consumers. By building up a huge global business and overcoming the technical challenges associated with global scale in emerging markets, we built a highly scalable mobile ad serving technology.
Case and point, the network has more than doubled in 5 months from 7.5 billion impressions to 16.7 billion impressions. In the US during our soft launch, we were able to scale to 2 billion impressions. Bottom line - the big winners in this market will be companies that have true mobile technical expertise. It’s obvious that many players lack the ability to scale and grow with the market like we can.
Olivia: You recently launched in the US market, what are your expectations for 2010 in terms of market share and revenue, for US specifically and also globally?
James: Globally, our goal is to be the largest network in the world. We are already at 16.7 billion impressions globally vs. AdMob’s most recent public figures of 18 billion. With our recent launch in the US, our pending launch in Japan, and major application developer initiatives such as the World Developer Fund, we anticipate surpassing AdMob to become the largest network in the world in the next 3 to 6 months.
In the US, we are already at 2 billion impressions monthly and expect to double or triple that figure by the end of the year. In this market specifically, we are already the 5th largest network and should move into the top 3 by the end of the year.
We recently stated a $35 million run rate currently, we plan to double this by the end of 2010.
Olivia: Can you do a breakdown of how is your inventory split between mobile website publishers and application developers, and more on which mobile platform is performing best?
James: We have about a 60/40 split mobile web vs. application developers in the US. Globally that split is much lower due to the differences in handset share around the world. That said, we are seeing massive growth in app inventory in all markets and already have 40% of mobile web impressions on “smart” devices globally. Devices made by RIM/Blackberry and Nokia still dominate the global landscape, although we are seeing the advance now of iPhone and Android.
Performance varies widely and is not so much about the platform, but the advertiser offer and targeting associated with the campaign. iPhone and Android inventory performs most consistently, but we see pockets of high performance inventory outside those two platforms.
Olivia: Few days ago you announced a $2 million fund to spice up the developer community, how are things going with that, maybe you can mention us a few players that already signed up to use InMobi.
James: Things are going well. We have had hundreds of developers get involved and are launching new applications everyday. While we are not ready to release specifics, we do plan to release facts and figures about the program including case studies and a profile on the use of the funds in mid/late July. Keep an eye out for those updates which will be on-going for the duration of the fund’s life. This is an on-going campaign and one which will not end until August or September given the current pace.
Olivia: Thanks a lot for taking the time to do this interview. For those interested to learn more about InMobi, visit them at http://inmobi.com
The interview is featured on
InMobi belongs to a category of mobile advertisers you might term “the Outsiders”. It’s a big company, with big reach - but it doesn’t have a huge presence in the US or Europe…. yet. GoMo News has reported on InMobi a lot in the past, and I leapt on the chance to talk to them at MWC. I spoke to InMobi Founder & CEO Naveen Tewari and VP of Global Marketing, James Lamberti. We had a great interview about the InMobi business model and expansion strategy - I had not realised how strongly technology driven InMobi is. We also discussed the fascinating concept of “engineers as marketers” and talked about some idiosyncracies in the Japanese market.