Smaato Network: 5000+ publisher and 7 billion ad requests per month –Underlines exponential growth of mobile advertising globally

Branded advertising via mobile channel is getting more traction; better quality of engagement is seen by European mobile thought leaders in Smaato’s latest roundtable.

Redwood Shores, CA / Hamburg, Germany - June 7, 2010 – Smaato Inc., the leading global optimizer for mobile advertising, today announced that it now serves over 7 billion ad requests. During May a major milestone of 5,000 registered publishers was topped – and more than 40 ad networks are now connected to SOMA, Smaato’s open mobile advertising platform.

While the mobile marketing industry meets in New York this week to discuss the state of advertising during MMA Forum - the USA is also the leader in the global inventory of the Smaato network that spans over 220 countries. The top region is Asia followed by Europe / EMEA.

Smaato Inc. invited international mobile experts to a roundtable discussion in Berlin recently to discuss some of the hottest trends in the industry, following previous successful roundtables in San Francisco and London. Highlights of the roundtable during NEXT10 conference can be seen here (http://bit.ly/bP5vID).

Key topics debated included mobile advertising, the rising quality of branded apps and how Apple’s iPad, other tablet devices or so called “super-phones” will affect the hyper growth of the industry. Other themes discussed were the increase of location check-in services such as FourSquare, Gowalla and FriendTicker and the convergence of hardware and software. The emergence of new business models, especially around trying to solve privacy problems and how large global brands are now developing coherent mobile campaigns as part of an overall marketing strategy, also formed some of the highlights of the roundtable.

Smaato CEO & Co-Founder, Ragnar Kruse said: “Since our first roundtable in San Francisco in October 2009, we’ve spoken with some of the top thought leaders in the industry and covered many of the trends. As a company we can only grow by listening to the market place and understanding the current issues and trends. Collaboration in this industry is key and at Smaato, we are working hard to collaborate on a global scale to help others succeed”.

Michael von Roeder, COO at iconmobile (WPP, Berlin) stated: “Probably the most visible game changers for mobile advertising are devices like the iPhone which make mobile Internet a mass market and which enable completely new business models. I feel that non-mobile brands - or brands that are not in the core industry - are now moving into this space.”

Michael added: “Brands ask: ‘okay - what can we do in mobile?’ But not only in terms of advertising, but also in terms of how do they deliver their services and how they can augment their existing products or services with the mobile component”.

“I see a battle for quality and a battle for real estate,” said Michael Schade, CEO of Fishlabs!, a leading games developer of five years. “I'm very excited about the quality that we've seen on mobile devices so far like iPad and iPhone but also the latest Nokia handsets.

List of Smaato mobile roundtable participants in Berlin:

Harald Neidhardt - Co-Founder and CMO of Smaato (chairing the discussion)
Michael Schade – Co-founder and CEO of Fishlabs (Games / Apps developer)
Axel Höhnke – CEO, Sembassy & Co-Founder Mobile Monday Hamburg
Matthaus Krzykowski – Co-founder and Managing Partner of Agora9 (research)
Michael von Roeder – COO, iconmobile (global mobile agency, part of WPP)
Fee Beyer – Product innovation at Deutsche Telekom
Gerd Leonhard – Media Futurist and speaker at Next10 Conference
Martin Pischke – Co-founder of FriendTicker (location based coupons and incentives)
Anita Ondin – CEO of Seize the Media (Digital Content & Games Developer)
Maciej Kuszpa – CEO of Peperonity (Mobile Social web service)

ENDS

Smaato is a pioneering mobile advertising company that operates the mobile ad optimization platform called SOMA (Smaato Open Mobile Advertising) and partners with mobile publishers, developers, ad networks and operators. More than 5,000 publishers have signed up with Smaato as a partner to monetize their content in 220+ countries and Smaato is managing 7 billion ad requests per month.

SOMA’s unique feature is the aggregation of 40 leading ad networks globally to maximize mobile advertising ARPU. SOMA can be easily integrated with ad networks, ad inventory owners (publishers, developers and operators) and 3rd party ad technology providers.

Smaato is an active member of the Mobile Marketing Association, the dot.mobi Advisory Group and the German Digital Media Association BVDW. Smaato received a Top 100 Private Company Award by AlwaysOn Media (2009 & 2007) and was recently named a “company to watch” by Financial Analyst company GP Bullhound, among other awards.

Smaato Inc. is based in Redwood Shores, California. The privately held company was founded in 2005 by an experienced International management team. The European headquarters are in Hamburg, Germany and the Asia-Pacific presence of Smaato has been established in Singapore.

Harald Neidhardt
CMO & Co-Founder
press@smaato.com
twitter: @hneidhardt

Neil Robertson
IF Communications
+44 7739322503
neil@if-communications.com
twitter: @neil_robertson

Smaato Inc.
3 Lagoon Drive, Suite 170
Redwood Shores, CA 94065
Phone (USA): +1 (650) 286 11 98
Phone (Europe): +49 (40) 3480 9490

www.smaato.com
twitter:@smaato

This release was published on openPR.