#MobExAwards 2021 spills: InMobi lays out industry shifts and priorities for the new year

InMobi was founded in 2007 as an SMS-based search and monetisation business in Mumbai and has since grown to become a global company with offices in Asia Pacific, Europe, and North America. The team also reaped the rewards of its hard work at MARKETING-INTERACTIVE's Mob-Ex Awards 2021, taking home the coveted awards for Mob-Ex Best of Show - Agency and Mob-Ex Best of Show - Brand. 

It also clinched several awards for categories including Best Direct to Consumer Campaign, Best Insights-Driven Mobile Campaign, Best Location-Based Marketing, Best Results-Driven Mobile Campaign, Best Use of Mobile Integration, and Best Use of Video, among others. 

In an interview with MARKETING-INTERACTIVE, Rishi Bedi (pictured), VP and GM of SEA, Japan and Korea at InMobi, explains the shifts he is witnessing in mobile marketing, how clients' expectations have changed, and his plans for the coming year. 

This interview is done as part of MARKETING-INTERACTIVE’s winners' and finalists’ interview series for the Mob-Ex Awards 2021. To find out more about the awards, click here. 

When it comes to mobile marketing, what are some of the shifts you are seeing?

Bedi: With the average Southeast Asian spending up to five hours daily on their mobile devices, mobile marketing is now a core marketing strategy for brands to understand, identify, engage, and acquire audiences. As a result, brands are increasingly aiming to achieve mobile marketing maturity. This involves creating valuable mobile experiences for consumers by focusing on three things: Mobile-first consumer intelligence, mobile video, and programmatic.

• Mobile-first consumer intelligence: Mobile users are always connected, which means they generate a huge amount of data that brands can use to understand consumer sentiment and create more targeted, personalised experiences, especially with technologies such as polygon-based location targeting and first-party data-based deterministic audiences.
• Mobile video: We found that video ad spends in Southeast Asia grew by 65% in 2020, accounting for over a third of all in-app programmatic spends in the region. This suggests that marketers are taking video more seriously as an ad format and investing more heavily in it, including through blending video and messaging in rich media ads.
• Programmatic: The APAC region has demonstrated more confidence in programmatic buying, with 58% of regional agencies agreeing that it would lead to a greater return on investment (ROI) due to its greater efficiency.

As the mobile marketing space continues to mature, we are seeing brands looking for new ways to differentiate themselves from the rest. For instance, some brands are leveraging the exponentially growing mobile gaming trend by exploring ad-related game progression. Ad gamification, where the ad is designed as a playable game, is also gaining popularity as it can drive user engagement and better ad recall in comparison to passively consumed ads.

Most importantly, mobile marketing has reached a stage where it can become a full-funnel marketing channels as consumers can explore, discover, research, and make purchases entirely through their mobile. We foresee that this is the natural next step for mobile marketing, which goes together with the boom in eCommerce and social commerce, so brands need to act swiftly to capitalise on the first-mover advantage.

How have clients’ expectations changed this year? What did you do to pivot?

Bedi: Brands are investing more into transparent and efficient media buying to enhance the impact of their first-party data due to the widespread availability of real-time intelligence and measurability on mobile. Stemming from that, the overall interest and understanding of mobile programmatic has grown manifold over the last year and a half. This has helped brands enhance efficiency, efficacy, and transparency – whether it be branding or performance.

We have invested in several platform-, partner-, and people-led initiatives that help brands adapt to the ever-evolving tech capabilities of mobile. The most important being our partnership with Gojek to bring highly rich, unique, and deterministic audiences to brands in the region.

Other initiatives include the launch of blended in-game advertising to help brands drive unintrusive native ads within mobile games; the introduction of our UnifID solution to streamline and simplify identity resolution for publishers; facilitating direct integration with HUMAN’s MediaGuard solution for real-time visibility and active protection against malicious bot activity; and the availability of InMobi Pulse’s Brand Lift Solution on The Trade Desk platform.

Ultimately, we have invested in the right set of people to ensure that brands and marketers can make the most of our technology.

Mobile is one of the key priorities for brands these days. What is one advice you have for brands to cut through the clutter?

Bedi: The spray-and-pray, one-size-fits-all approach to marketing is no longer effective – and, in fact, can be highly counterproductive. Studies showed that 77% of consumers found it frustrating to receive notifications about ads or promotions that were irrelevant to them. People are increasingly expecting products, services, and experiences to be tailored to their interests, which is why personalisation needs to be a key focus for brands to stand out from the crowd and build brand loyalty.

Speed and insight are both keys to achieving the personalisation goal, which requires data, analysis, and automation. By investing in measurement, customer data management and consumer intelligence platforms, brands can build a holistic view of their consumers and develop effective ad targeting through personalisation. For instance, we have helped F&B brands target audiences with real-time offers and discount ads around their places of interest using our Polygon Mapping Technology.

We believe in the marketing power of personalisation, and we aim to support brands around the world in kickstarting their foray into personalisation. In Southeast Asia, we announced a partnership earlier this year with Gojek where brands can use our technology to acquire and analyse insights from Gojek’s massive user base, which will help them drive tailored advertising for their users.

What are your plans for the coming year?

Bedi: We are constantly innovating new products to keep up with technological advances in the world of mobile marketing. Programmatic was a core focus for us in 2021 with new solution launches and our partnership with Gojek to ensure that brands can leverage rich, deterministic audiences for maximising ROI. This is only the first step in our larger programmatic audience strategy for brands and we will continue to build on it. Apart from this, our participation in the HUMAN Collective is aimed at minimising fraud and spurious traffic on the InMobi Exchange.

The mobile gaming sector is another area of interest for us, especially given the newfound popularity of mobile gaming. We launched blended in-game advertising earlier this year and are continuing to explore new advertising formats in this space, focusing on catering to gamer behaviour and providing the least intrusive experience possible. The more seamless you can make the experience, the more successful it is.

This past year has also revealed the growing relevance of consumer intelligence platforms in helping brands maximise mobile advertising, especially in Southeast Asia and the APAC region. Apart from our solutions, we have launched several insights reports and handbooks that can guide businesses in optimising their mobile ad strategies based on prevalent and deep market trends. These include the 2021 Southeast Asia Mobile Marketing Handbook, 2021 Mobile Programmatic Advertising Report, State of Programmatic Mobile Video Southeast Asia 2021, and more.

As InMobi grows across the region, we’re expanding the team as well – a notable addition being Valerie Jaquet as our director of agency and programmatic business for Southeast Asia. We’ll continue to invest in talent to serve our key markets such as Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, and more. Overall, we’re excited to see what 2022 brings for InMobi!