MobGold Limited

New Movers of the Mobile Advertising Industry (2/2)

eric — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 02:00:13 +0000

Mobile Advertising has many forms and elements and it has been continuously evolving due to the rise of new technologies. In Part 2 of another two series – MobGold explores other forms of mobile advertising forms as well as mobile advertising business in certain countries.

Mobile advertising is not just changing in terms of aesthetics and virtual experiences, but has also taken other forms to approach the target market so as to not be invasive and not make them feel annoyed with the frequent bombardment of advertising.

Redeemable mobile advertising coupons are also gaining popularity with introductions from companies such as GroupOn. With mobile advertising coupons, the target audience will be enticed to make purchases at a discounted rate. However, one must be aware that this does not apply to all markets, only those that will give immediate satisfaction like Food & Beverage, Gifts, or items like Cosmetics. It gives value to products, reaffirms brand loyalty to existing customers, and satisfies new and potential customers’ curiousity towards the product at a discounted price.

Mobile advertising of this innovation is fairly standard practice in Japan and Korea, as they have integrated mobile wallets into their phones, therefore their phones are capable of receiving many services by mobile, from emails to going online to even downloading cellphone novels to be read. This many information and features all stuffed into one small device.

Mobile advertising industries should also study the behaviours of developing countries like Southeast Asia where smartphone penetration is low, but stably rising as the economy is booming in that area, which led to more people living in luxury, thereby having that they could afford smartphones and tablets for business or leisure. That was when they will shift into information-hungry digital natives who would received all kinds of media via their mobile devices.

Smartphone price competitions will also become more vigorous as more low-cost smartphones are to be pushed to the market, allowing those with lower wages but with needs to be constantly on social media, such as Facebook and Twitter and keep in touch with times, the mobile advertising business will set to flourish.

Mobile advertising networks such as MobGold have also begun to adapt to new mobile advertising technologies, and set up offices in Asia, so that clients are assured to gain the best mobile traffic that fits to their target audience, which ensures the spread of brand awareness and brand exposures. They are also capable of regulating mobile information so that they can deliver quality mobile advertising.

The mobile advertising business is thriving and continuously expanding into various forms. Major retailers, corporations and advertising networks should take heed and begin exploring, experimenting as well as embracing the newer technologies that emerged. After all, the way people consumes digital media is an ever-changing progress.

About MobGold

MobGold develops and operates MobGold Network, the mobile advertising network and mobile transaction solutions for advertisers, brand owners, publishers, network operators, web portals and mobile phone retailers to monetize their user traffic around the world. With expertise in architecture design of high traffic high speed transaction platform, web development and mobile content provisioning, MobGold is uniquely positioned to offer complete end-to-end solutions for both advertisers and publishers from advertisement format conversion, campaign management, statistic, to final delivery and billing. MobGold believes that mobile is the future of digital marketing and as the new media to outshine the conventional web media. For further information, please visit www.mobgold.com

New Movers of the Mobile Advertising Industry (1/2)

eric — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 09:21:26 +0000

There is no doubt that mobile advertising has been growing stronger and stronger than ever with the rising mobile market in Asia, Australia and Europe. In UK and USA the mobile market has become so matured that they would be case studies as to whether the mobile business can be sustained. But with the ever growing technology, mobile advertising has to keep up with the times and find new ways to engage with mobile users to get the value out of client’s money.

Though conventional methods like SMS marketing can still get the message across and with its cost remaining the same and therefore it is considered one of the cheapest and oldest methods to conduct marketing. Yet, there now exists some new innovations on the mobile advertising sector which may not be cost-productive, but serves as an alternative to boost interactivity with the mobile users, while encouraging creativity amongst advertisers to boost their engagement with their target audience. After all, it is a means to an end.

The rising number of tablets from the Apple iPad to the Samsung Galaxy Tab has given more prominence to tablets to be used as a replacement to laptops for casual to consumer users. A slightly bigger screen with a different approach to mobile internet surfing, with more people now capable of reading the news and articles with ease compared to the smaller screens in smartphones. This will create a newer advertising and business model as the new ways are being experimented and hopefully adopted in the near future.

One of the newest innovations that will soon be mainstream is 3D mobile advertisements, whereby products are constructed to look like its physical form so that users can get first-hand experience tinkering with the product even before they get to see or touch the physical product. Users can rotate and move the display try and test the features of this new product that is embedded within the advertisement. Primarily targeted at tablet users, these 3D mobile advertisements serve to not just inform the user about the product, but enhanced it more with interactivity and creativity to give the user a “first-hand” experience so to speak.

Advertising is always about inputting creative ways to get the message across, but sometimes intrusive ads will turn users away from reading its message. Some advertisers have found new ways to instill a ways that will force users to recognize the brands they used, in the real physical world and the virtual world. In certain game, companies have taken the leverage to pay gaming companies to transform their virtual products to bear real names. It is not as intrusive and it does get the brand message across. How’s that for innovation?

Another considerable change of the mobile advertising industry is to refine location based advertising with demography-based advertising. Instead of targeting the advertising based on location, perhaps there is need to establish other personal or psychological attributes like gender, hobbies, or frequently visited places. Too often mobile advertisers forgot about the personal attributes of a person which are also as important rather than the location they’re in. Audience may not reject advertisements that targets and caters to their interest.

About MobGold

MobGold Announces the Awaiting Approval Feature

eric — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 01:43:32 +0000

MobGold, one of the largest mobile ad networks, today announced the new policy for publishers who want to submit their mobile website to the mobile ad network. The new policy is featured in the awaiting approval section.

With this feature, any mobile website that is submitted to MobGold has to be reviewed first to maintain the quality and safety of the mobile website. Previously a mobile website can be submitted and accepted at the very same time. But after this policy has worked, it will need some time for the mobile website to be available.

The MobGold head of product, Erwin Susanto said that, “This additional feature has been added recently to make sure that the mobile websites submitted are in accordance with the standards and the rules. This policy is to avoid the problems that can disturb the relationship between us and the publishers in the future.”

This new feature hopefully will make the MobGold customers feel secure when they use the MobGold platform for their business.

Mobile Privacy (2/2)

eric — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 02:10:23 +0000

In our last article, we discussed how by having a huge volume of users using mobile technology this year has contributed also to a large number to devious and malware being spreaded on the mobile platform. News has reported that open source software, Android, will be most accessible to hackers compared to other closed platforms. This has led to many users being worried about putting too much of their information into their devices for fear that their banking details or even identities will be stolen.

While mobile phone privacy is an issue that is to be tackled, could this be all a very big hype created and not properly addressed? Mobile users perhaps also fail to remember that even mobile carriers do collect their data, and in some countries, sell these data to telemarketing companies or even spread spam through sms. This form of privacy violation has been going for the past decade, it’s a wonder why matters like phone hacking and phone tracking are the only main issues that users, manufacturers and legislators have to tackle only now? Don’t they see fit to solve the problem a few years ago?

Besides that, certain users were too quick to rely on their mobile devices to store every information about themselves, even though it hasn’t been a very secure platform, especially now with the rise of smartphones. Mobile users should be educated enough to guard their most personal information and should not share it on any social domain that allows your personal information which you don’t want people to see are shared on the net. Too often mobile users like these are children who do not know how to limit themselves, so parents need to guide their children to ensure they do not misuse the convenience of owning a mobile device that will jeopardize their own safety. It is also hard to some people to not reveal their information especially if their sole purpose to use social domain for marketing purposes.

Malware and spyware like Zitmo and GoldDream are disguised as mobile ads or spam short URLs can also be detected and blocked easily by subscribing to mobile anti-virus software offered by many companies. Much like its desktop counterparts, mobile anti-virus softwares offer protection and security to your mobile devices at a price, which will put those who constantly worry about their data being mined or phished at ease. Mobile anti-virus software also allows users to back up contacts and mobile phone contents into their secured portal to be retrieved at a later point in time when their mobile devices were hacked or wiped out or stolen, so that users who relied heavily on mobile devices knows there’s a safe haven for them to retrieve data safely.

Mobile phone privacy is a treasured value that must be upheld, but not without the hypocrisies that users have lived through. Even before the dawn of the Internet, users have had to surrender their personal information under the pretense that companies they subscribed it to will keep or protect the information. As for malware and spyware attacks, a lot of times these informations were procured because a computer user are not familiar with the device and had made wrong moves.

Perhaps while cyber parameters were set up to bring stronger cyber security to the virtual networks, device users can also undergo lessons on how to protect their own personal information before they give those information away. After all, mobile privacy is a two-way protection as users cannot assume their privacy will always be secure as long as they rely on the right company to give their information to.

About MobGold

Mobile Privacy (1/2)

eric — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 03:12:26 +0000

Mobile phone and its usage have now accelerated to incredible heights from what was initially a luxury that only a few can afford. According to the British Retail Consortium, consumers in the UK are increasingly turning to use mobile search as a way to find their information on retailers and products. The mobile web, unlike its desktop counterpart is often featured as a small and stripped down version that fits only the mobile screen.

Mobile search engines and mobile social networks have openly acknowledged that they have procured the mobile user’s data and personal information that they stored in their mobile devices as a way to collect information and broadcast targeted ads that suited these people’s personal interests. This practice is now a growing concern whether can mobile privacy be put on top of priorities of mobile users.

While there have been waves of cybercrimes as of late due to the lax of cyber security, this does not mean that your mobile privacy is violated. Just as it is, the federal lawmakers in the United States of America were debating to draft new cyberprivacy laws to protect consumers’ information from being abused.

Many users have failed to realize that the convenience of using apps nowadays relied heavily collected user data to have the information grabbed from their mobile phones. For example, geo-tagging apps like Foursquare is essentially a way to inform people on where you are, yet it exposes you to unexplainable dangers for constantly revealing where they are, which is a risk in security. Privacy become violated because in order to keep up with playing this app, users have to always expose where they are before collecting virtual achievements. GPS softwares that are available in almost all high-end smartphones come with the technology that uses the satellite to give you real-time navigation, even capable of measuring a person’s heartbeat. These apps have infiltrate and invade our personal privacy multiple times and yet we have nothing against it.

As more and more people jumped on the bandwagon to using smartphone, phone manufacturers feel the pressure to meet certain expectations in the market or push their phones early, so they may have a ton of sweet features but it doesn’t prioritise beefing up security measures, leaving the phone to become highly vulnerable to attacks such as phone hacking. Open source phone OS like the Android has also been reported recently by Computerworld that to be more susceptible to malware and hacking more than other phones and OS. A study by McAfee has confirmed that the amount of malware targeted at Android based devices has surpassed even Nokia’s Symbian as the most popular target for mobile malware developers. It said malware like Zitmo is capable of affect anything in the mobile from the calendar apps, to text messages and even fake apps updates.

These malware and viruses also often disguised themselves as mobile ads or short URLs that once clicked, can be used to phish or steal data out of our mobile devices. This leaves authentic and genuine ads to be considered as fraud ads and will most likely be ignored and users will not be receptive to these ads, as shown in a survey by YouGov that consumers pay high trust to mobile advertisements as long as they offer some value in return. This also hampers efforts to grow the mobile market with these irresponsible actions, and currently in the USA, several governmental sectors are in serious talks to have new additions into cybersecurity laws to beef up the measures in order to protect its citizens from being violated on privacy.

However, a news report found on the Business Insider said mobile apps are too early in development and the mobile economy has yet to be established, thus even if they tighten cybersecurity laws, it will only serve as part of the solution and it will not eliminate the core problem.

With these issues in mind, and with the mobile technology growing much faster when everything else is on a setback, it is no wonder why mobile device privacy sparked so much discussions, to the point that it is deemed a controversy as this gets rapid discussions again and again. But is it really a big issue? If so, what are the remedies to this invasion of privacy through these little devices?

Don’t miss out on next week’s article where we discuss the seriousness of mobile phone privacy and some solutions to curb the problem.

About MobGold

MobGold to be the Largest Mobile Advertising Marketplace in Asia Pacific

eric — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 10:24:27 +0000

MobGold, one of the world’s largest mobile advertising marketplaces, today officially announced that it is aiming to become the largest mobile ad network in the Asia-Pacific region by the end of the year.

MobGold CEO Alan Chang said that the company has secured a place as one of the top contenders to be the market leader in Asia Pacific following the company’s robust expansions in the region. Earlier this year, Alan himself spearheaded the project to escalate and intensify MobGold’s operations in the Asia Pacific region.

According to Alan Chang, the decision to focus on this particular region was backed by research data on the Asian mobile ad market that forecasted explosive growth for the region.

“According to a Nielsen survey on mobile advertising trends in Asia between July 2010 and October 2010, Mobile internet advertising grew by 9% in only 90 days,” he said. Similarly, another research published by Marketing-interactive showed that this rapid growth of media consumption via mobile devices signifies an important shift in the Asian mobile advertising community. Smartphone ownership has doubled to 24% in 2010 from 10% in 2009, showing an increasing trend of smartphones becoming a part of people’s daily lives.

Besides that, a Nielsen survey polling 5,900 individuals aged 12 – 64 showed that smartphone users are more engaged in using their mobile for online activities including web browsing (44%), social networking on Facebook, Twitter (41%) and online news reading (26%)

“With so many consumers using mobile devices as a primary means to digital media consumption, the penetration rate for smartphones will increase at a huge scale over the next year,” said Alan. “This is where the opportunity lies as substantial growth can be expected throughout the Asia-Pacific region, particularly in markets with large populations but relatively low penetration rates,” He added that countries like India, China, Philippines, Pakistan and Indonesia are expected to continue growing at a healthy pace as they inch closer to adapt a more digital lifestyle.

“By capitalizing on the region’s forecasted stellar growth trends for mobile internet advertising, MobGold is confident that it can emerge as the largest mobile advertising network in Asia Pacific, ahead of mobile ad giants InMobi, Admob and Buzzcity,” he said.

“We are aggressive and bold when it comes to setting our targets. With the right mindset coupled with motivation and the drive to succeed, I do not see why we can’t achieve this feat,” said Alan.

About MobGold

MobGold is the network developer that moderates MobGold Network, a mobile advertising network and mobile transaction solutions provider for advertisers, brand owners, publishers, network operators, web portals and mobile phone retailers who wish to monetize their users’ traffic around the world. Equipped with the expertise and know-how regarding high-traffic high-speed transaction platform architecture, web development and mobile content provisioning, MobGold is uniquely positioned to offer complete end-to-end solutions for both advertisers and publishers, from advertisement format conversions, campaign management services and provision of statistical data, to final delivery and even billing. MobGold believes that the mobile platform is the future of digital marketing and also the new media that will outshine conventional web media. For further information, please visit www.mobgold.com

MobGold Ad Requests Hit 1 Billion Milestone in Brazil

alan — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 08:34:01 +0000

Mobile advertising network MobGold today announced that it traffic in Brazil has grown more than three times in second quarter 2011. The massive number of monthly ads served by MobGold is ascribable to the company’s rapid growth and expansion with the addition of new mobile websites, new advertisers as well as the organic growth in the usage of mobile Internet.

Earlier this year, MobGold added Fonwar IM to its list of premium publishers, thus increasing MobGold’s advertising reach and scale via app-integrated advertising, especially in Brazil. This was demonstrated as MobGold have been serving over one billion traffics that are viewed by Brazilian, and there are no signs of this trend slowing down.

MobGold is one of the leading mobile ad networks that offers effective monetization models for global publishers. It does so by serving targeted banners and text advertisements for cross-platforms using mobile specific parameters, as well as contextual and demographic information. MobGold features more than 10,000 mobile sites and thousands of brand and direct response advertisers.

“MobGold’s success is an attestation to the growth of mobile Internet advertising” said MobGold VP Sales & Marketing, Fanny Lie. “Mobile is a unique environment with various new and rapid challenges and we are proud to work with our publishers and advertisers to unlock the enormous opportunity in mobile marketing”. “Other mobile ad networks are competing fiercely in this business that holds vast potential; nevertheless, I believe that MobGold will be able to thrive even better under this competitive environment as it would encourage us to improve and work even harder to provide our customers and users with the best business and personal benefits”, he added.

About MobGold

MobGold’s Triple-Pronged Mobile Advertising Strategy

alan — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 07:04:22 +0000

The USD2 billion mobile advertising industry, which is currently just a fraction of the size of the online advertising market – USD55 billion, will witness dramatic changes, largely due to the emergence of Asia as a key market. According to Research and Markets, while the online advertising industry is growing at a compound annual growth rate of 11.4% between 2007-12, and will continue to be popular in the developed world, mobile advertising will gain maximum traction in the emerging markets of Asia, especially India and China.

The key driver of this growth will be the high rates of mobile penetration in the region. In most of the developing countries, PCs and landlines are still highly priced and far from the masses’ reach. However this is not the case with mobile phones. The market of 4-billion-plus mobile phone users easily eclipses the approximately 1 billion computers worldwide. That’s a quadrupling of reach for mobile advertising. Ergo, it is apparent that mobiles have a mass reach and mobile advertising is indeed a very lucrative industry. Being a key player in the mobile advertising arena, MobGold has adopted three key strategies to effectively make the most of the booming mobile advertising trend, namely location-based advertising, app-integrated advertising, and semantic advertising.

MobGold’s first strategy was its launch of location-based advertising for its clients. According to the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) one in four mobile phone users use the GPS built into their phone for map, navigation and location-based services. Of the people who engaged in GPS-based services and saw an ad, over half of them took action on it, and this percentage will only grow larger as smartphones further penetrate the market. This translates to hyper-local mobile advertising, as advertisers on MobGold are able to engage with users geographically through the GPS unit placed in most smartphones and tablets.

The second strategy adopted by MobGold is the app-integrated advertising. Application based advertising works by embedding advertisements into popular apps and this monetization will see the profitability of app development soar, and it will also deliver a very unique form of advertising. Embedding mobile ads into iPhone, iPad, Android, Blackberry and other mobile platform-based apps is not only the future – it has already begun. Earlier this year, MobGold added Fonwar IM and Mobeep to its list of premium publishers, thus increasing MobGold’s advertising reach via app-integrated advertising.

Semantic advertising is the third strategy appropriated by MobGold. Semantic advertising provides a targeting solution, which assures the right ad placement and to assure secure placements regarding brand integrity. Semantic analysis of content provides MobGold with the opportunity to more finely tune ads through a robust understanding of the environment in which the ad is placed. This in turn would ideally generate higher click-through rates as consumers respond to increasingly more relevant ads.

About MobGold

MobGold Prides on its Real-time Reporting Efficiency

alan — Thu, 19 May 2011 08:27:52 +0000

Mobile advertising network MobGold today announced that the expansion of their platform to provide real-time reporting was a huge success. Through this platform, MobGold enables advertisers to track their respective campaign conversions and lead quality.

The benefits of the expansion have gone primarily to advertisers, publishers and affiliates as the expansion has assisted them in tracking campaigns on MobGold’s network. With MobGold’s efficient real-time reporting mechanics, advertisers and publishers alike have been able to do accurate real-time measurement of campaign performance and to optimize for future responses.
It is now a well-accepted fact that mobile advertising is growing at an accelerated pace. Many advertisers are earning better returns after their mobile ad campaigns. Consequentially, mobile advertising has generated overwhelming response from the industry stakeholders.

“This is an excellent opportunity for our advertisers to accurately determine which campaigns are most effective,” said Alan Chang, CEO of MobGold. “Via our real time reports, advertisers can have better insight and control of their campaigns, and publishers can determine the best way to monetize their apps and Mobile Web sites”, he added. “Real-time tracking and reporting is extremely crucial to the success of direct-response marketing. With this feature, our clients are able to have total clarity in assessing the response of a specific ad during a specific time from a targeted audience and make the necessary tweaks and changes to further optimize their campaigns”.

MobGold works closely with its partners and advertisers to monitor back-end performance and lifetime value of leads. Through the real-time reporting, advertisers can determine the effectiveness of their campaigns. MobGold’s platform is also designed to enable marketers to create mobile campaigns that track the entire consumer interaction, from banner impression, to click, landing page view and even form submission from a single dashboard.

About MobGold

MobGold Introduces Location Based Service (LBS)

alan — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 09:40:28 +0000

MobGold, one of the world’s largest mobile advertising marketplaces, today officially announced the introduction of a new feature for its advertisers – Location Based Service (LBS). This new feature is now available for MobGold advertisers who wish to have a more selective and specific targeting option in reaching out to its intended audiences in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and South Africa.

Alan Chang, the CEO of MobGold, commented that the decision to offer LBS in these four countries is due to the sheer potential that the company sees in these emerging and rapidly growing markets. “Location is a strategic asset for wireless carriers and leveraging this information enables users to experience value-added services and mobile network operators to offer differentiation and incremental profitability”, said Alan Chang, CEO of MobGold. “With LBS, MobGold is able to optimize the advertising expenditure of its clients and ensure that their ad campaigns are both efficacious and cost-effective”.

By offering LBS, MobGold is not only providing a useful tool for advertisers and a better user experience for mobile users; it also helps advertisers save cost (through lower cost-per-acquisition, CPA) with higher effectiveness of their advertisements. Therefore, whenever an advertiser has a content that can be segmented into geographical groups, they have the option to target specific locations and deliver ads along with specific local content.

About MobGold

According to Alan Chang, MobGold have always been continuously seeking new and innovative ways to create differentiation by delivering highly personalized mobile services, and one of the most powerful ways to personalize mobile services is based on location. “The decisions we make are always aimed at advancing the mobile ecosystem,” he said. “Location Based Service is just one of the many different areas we are looking at.”