With the first leg of Mobile Media Summit 2013 on the horizon, the show’s founder and CEO Paran Johar is a busy man. The summit is gathering more than 40 speakers from mobile app makers, marketing agencies and major brands ranging from entertainment and tech to consumer products. The area of focus is “Apps and Ads,” as the organizers call it, with speaking sessions and panels looking at the growing branded app and in-app advertising categories.
Paran Johar
Mobile Media Summit takes place January 22 in San Francisco. [a]list daily partnered with organizers to help them get the word out, and get interested readers discounted access. We also managed to get a little insight from Johar as to what attendees can expect.
What inspired you to launch Mobile Media Summit?
In order to move an industry forward it was important to put the advertisers at the center of the equation. Though mobile and technology innovation is critical for start-ups, actual monetization and adoption of it relies on advertiser adoption. In the beginning it was just about getting my friends together from the mobile ecosystem with my friends from advertising and it just grew organically.
Tell us more about what the “Apps and Ads” theme means.
The theme is about how app developers are using advertising to gain distribution and how brand marketers are using app advertising to meet their marketing goals.
What makes mobile apps effective for branded messages
App advertising allows for a richer advertising experience as compared to mobile web which advertisers prefer as a creative palette.
The show has a fairly eclectic lineup. Is that indicative of how branded mobile apps can work for any brand?
Yes. Apps are just one subset of the mobile ecosystem that almost all types of advertisers, big and small in almost any vertical.
Tapjoy is on a panel, and they recently commissioned a Forrester study that showed mobile ad engagement and targeting needs improvement. Where do you see room for improvement in what branded apps are currently doing?
Data and targeting are critical in engaging the mobile consumer. Mobile is not about the number of impressions you buy in the medium, but rather the impression you make with your audience.
What do you expect each set of attendees — brand reps and app developers — will take away from the summit?
Hopefully they will learn best practices for small app developers to large Fortune 1000 companies on what’s new in mobile and how to integrate app advertising into the marketing mix.
