Industry Views: Will Yahoo’s Flurry acquisition help it face down competition from Google and Facebook?

Last week's news that Yahoo has acquired mobile advertising and analytics firm, Flurry (rumoured to be somewhere between $200 and $300 million) sharpened the focus on the mobile advertising space, which, according to figures from eMarketer is set to reach $32.71bn in 2014, up 85% from 2013’s total.  No doubt Yahoo is keen to achieve a bigger slice of the advertising pie.  Indeed, with Yahoo's CEO, Marissa Mayer, continually referring to the company as *mobile first*, its intentions are quite clear yet to date its mobile revenues have done little to support that description. We asked the …

10 things you need to know about mobile marketing

eMarketer estimates that mobile ad-spend will increase to almost $37 billion in 2016 on smartphones and tablets, up from $8.4 billion in 2012, (display and search). Here, Phalgun Raju, VP & GM for India, Southeast Asia, Hong Kong & Taiwan at InMobi provides 10 things that you need to know about mobile marketing. 1. Smartphone shipments will pass 1 billion by 2014 According to IDC smartphone shipments are expected to pass 1 billion for the first time in 2014. The smartphone and tablet brigade will out-ship PCs in 2013 by 3:1 and the ratio will grow to 5:1 by 2017. This rapid adoption …

71 per cent of developers feel that ad networks exaggerate eCPM figures

That's according to a new report from social games network PapayaMobile, the company behind the mobile ad and cross-promotional platform AppFlood. The survey, which canvassed 1,000 independent studios to find out how they feel about the various app advertising and marketing channels, reveals some uncomfortable statistics: 71 per cent of respondents felt that ad networks exaggerate eCPM rates (effective cost per thousand impressions) 48 per cent of developers felt the acquisition cost was too expensive when asked if the investment in mobile marketing was good value for money To give …

App Discovery & Download behavior: Why developers can no longer ignore China

This blog entry has been reproduced with kind permission from InMobi and first appeared on the InMobi blog on May 21, 2013.  The author is Arun Pattabhiraman,  Global Marketing Lead- Performance Advertising & App Developers at InMobi. It is evident that the competition for the world’s most lucrative mobile app market is getting fiercer by the day.  While the US had long established itself as the de-facto market developers look to for superior monetization opportunities, it is becoming clear now that its burgeoning alter ego from the Far East – China, can no longer be ignored. Last …

Privacy, the NSA and the Pyjama Brigade

Last week, MEF hosted its Second Annual Privacy Summit in Washington DC, where leading global privacy experts and policy makers gathered to discuss this business critical issue.  MEF’s Senior Advisor for Policy & Initiatives, Simon Bates, was there. Through a masterstroke of planning, we arranged our second annual Privacy Summit on the same day news broke of US intelligence services secretly mining consumers’ data. Privacy was in the news yet again... Washington DC provided the backdrop for the annual MEF Privacy Summit. This was no coincidence - the US and its policy-makers are …

iOS 7 – what’s it all about?

Apple has just launched the latest version of  its iOS software - iOS 7 - for its phones and tablets. Apple chief executive Tim Cook described it as: “the biggest change to iOS since the iPhone”. New features include a radically different look and feel to icons and the user interface.  So far opinion seems to be polarised around two central issues - how consumers will accept and re-learn their phone navigation against the need for the technology giant to refresh and update what has essentially been the same since iPhone launched back in 2007. With that in mind we've asked the mobile …

The Honorable Mark Pryor joins MEF members and FTC at 2nd Mobile Privacy Summit in DC

MEF has announced the agenda for its second annual Mobile Privacy Summit, co-hosted with law firm Dentons next month  in Washington DC.  An impressive lineup of speakers has been announced  including Senate Commerce Communications, Technology, and Internet Subcommittee Chairman Mark Pryor. Others include policy-makers from the Federal Trade Commission and National Telecommunications and Information Administration, and also mobile privacy experts from Mozilla, AVG Technologies, Evidon and InMobi. The annual event is part of MEF’s Privacy in Mobile Apps Initiative and will explore different …

MEF Consumer Trust in Mobile Applications Breakfast Briefing with Kaspersky Lab

MEF is again hosting an essential MWC briefing session for 2013, this year with Kaspersky Lab and focusing on the latest threats affecting mobile app consumers, with a special emphasis on the latest developments in mobile malware. The morning session (Wednesday, 27 February 2013 from 08:30 to 10:30) will also include a  roundtable discussion featuring industry experts from MEF’s Privacy in Mobile Apps Working Group including Brendan Eich, CTO Mozilla, Chris Davies, General Counsel EMEA and Head of Privacy at InMobi and Nick Graham, Partner, SNR Denton. Moderated by Tim Green from Mobile Money …