Mobile advertising is growing rapidly, and so has the investment in this sector. Ad-tech companies have proliferated over the past few years, and now we are entering the period of consolidation. Companies with complementary technology and markets often realize that the best way forward lies in mergers and acquisitions. This was demonstrated today when Mobvista, Asia’s largest mobile advertising company, announced that it has acquired NativeX, which specializes in successful monetization and advertising through their innovative native ad technology for mobile games and apps.
The NativeX technology includes Lightning Play video, offer walls, interstitials and other rich media formats. NativeX, which has been around for 12 years, has an audience reach of over 1 billion mobile users and works with more than 1,000 publishers including Yodo1, Square Enix, Fingersoft, Outfit 7, and others, as well as hundreds of top advertisers including Disney, King, Zynga, Rovio, IGG, and Machine Zone.
Mobvista specializes in global mobile advertising and overseas game publishing, with over 300 employees spread across offices in Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Beijing, San Francisco, New Delhi, and Singapore. As one of the leading mobile advertising platforms, Mobvista covers users from more than 240 countries and regions, reaching over 10 billion daily impressions. Mobvista ranked #3, following Facebook and Google AdWords, in the Global Android Power Ranking released in 2016 by AppsFlyer, a leading mobile analytics platform. In AppsFlyer’s gaming and non-gaming performance index released in April and October in 2015, Mobvista also ranked top 3 for both.
The $25 million all-cash deal will see NativeX become a subsidiary of Mobvista, Rob Weber will continue as CEO of NativeX and serve as Vice President of the Mobvista Group. “NativeX is a solid, sustainable business and our technology focus and values are perfectly aligned to deliver rich growth opportunities to the mobile market and to further secure Mobvista’s international goals and success, especially to speed up our ability to supply substantial audiences in Western markets,” said Wei Duan, founder & CEO of Mobvista. “Acquiring NativeX is another key step in realizing our global ad-tech vision to develop a multi-dimensional global ecosystem of mobile traffic.”
Mobvista’s worldwide mobile ad network receives more than 10 billion daily impressions from integrated ad spots and websites across more than 196 countries. “We look forward to a successful future as part of the Mobvista family and are exceptionally pleased with the many benefits this acquisition will bring to both our publisher and advertising partners as well as to our employees,” said Robert Weber, CEO and co-founder of NativeX. “The Mobvista acquisition of NativeX allows us to expand the distribution of our native ad technology throughout the world for an even greater international presence. We are excited to bring Mobvista’s leading global demand to NativeX’s monetization partners and its strong global supply, especially in APAC, to our advertising partners. As part of our merger with Mobvista, we will also be expanding our team to take advantage of the large opportunity in front of us.”
One of the important lessons of this acquisition is not just that consolidation is occurring in the ad-tech space, it’s that the marketplace has become truly global. A large part of the value here was in the geographic expansion for Mobvista, not just the technology. Mobile advertising is more global than ever, and leading companies need a presence and a strategy for success in more than just one part of the globe.
[a]listdaily spoke with NativeX CEO Robert Weber about the state of mobile advertising and where it’s headed.
How has the market for mobile video ads been changing over the past year?
2015 was the year of viewability for web video ads, and 2016 is looking like the year of viewability for mobile video. Buyers are becoming more sophisticated in how they evaluate their digital ad campaigns’ performance. Ad companies like NativeX that rely on SDKs that control ad inventory are in a better position than server-based methods of distribution which tend to have a greater risk of quality issues. NativeX also focuses on dynamically optimizing the video creative such as with end cards to improve the performance of an advertiser’s campaign. This video interview with the CEO of MachineZone provides some great context for where the ad market is at right now.
Do you think ads are becoming a more important part of the monetization strategy for mobile games? Why?
There seems to be two types of successful business models for games in mobile – those games with strong in-game economies that are very good at monetizing their user base and those games that are able to acquire users virtually for free because they have a high degree of organic appeal but often with a poor virtual economy. For the vast majority of games, it will be very clear which business model they are focused on. Zynga recently said that they expect a large part of their growth to come from ad revenue growth inside of games like Words With Friends. As viewability and performance become better understood by ad buyers, the prices for ad placement inside games should increase.
What are some of the key things an advertiser should do in their mobile video ads for games to make them effective?
Ask your ad providers for examples of their highest converting video ads. Study their creative and try to infuse some of what’s working into your own ad design. The secret to getting a high performing video campaign for your game isn’t usually by just outbidding everyone else on Cost Per Install rates, but ensuring you have high-converting creative.
What do you see ahead in the next year for mobile advertising?
The number-one most overlooked trend in mobile advertising is mobile search. The display ad market in mobile is becoming more mature, but using search to drive app installs is still very new. With 67 percent of all app installs coming from search according to recent research released by TUNE, you can’t ignore mobile search. Google has been releasing enhancements to AdWords to help app publishers acquire installs more effectively via Google Play. Also, the iOS9 update includes stronger deep-linking search integration which should start to help Apple make their search function more like Google’s. These improvements by Google and Apple aren’t enough, though. This is why we recently launched our Search Spike offering, which helps app publishers acquire top search rankings for their iOS apps. For a free report on how to improve your app’s search ranking, check out the free App Store Optimization white paper we recently released.
What’s the biggest challenge facing mobile game marketers when considering mobile video ads?
Creating high-converting creative for their game.
Image of co-founders Robert and Ryan Weber courtesy of NativeX
