Mobvista’s Mintegral helps app developers make their content more interesting and relevant for end users

This story is sponsored by Mobvista

The apps industry may have exploded in the last few years, bringing in yet another challenge – monetisation.

No interference on user experiences, highly interactive contents, deep data analytics and added value for developers, Dailyhunt, India’s largest content platform, believes these factors are critical in monetization. 

 During Ad:tech 2017 in New Delhi, the global digital marketing conference, Dailyhunt and Mobvista co-hosted a workshop named “How to Earn Big in India”. Dailyhunt shared its monetization experiences and introduced its monetization partner to Indian market: Mintegral, a native and video ad mediation platform developed by Mobvista.

This is where Mobvista’s offering Mintegral stands apart. While traditional platform-based mediation solutions have limited reach as far as monetisation is concerned, Mintegral leverages advanced platform-based mediation that solves a developer’s problem of wasted high-quality traffic, when allocated to lower-quality campaigns.

This powerful mobile Supply-Side Platform (SSP) developed by Mobvista provides developers a global monetisation solution for maximised revenue. Smart algorithms and mediated top-quality international ad sources combine with customisable native ad formats for optimal performance.

Explaining the strategy for Mintegral in India, the company’s CEO, Robin Duan, says Mintegral can help Indian developers grow at a faster rate. “With the proliferation of smartphones in the country, and a steady increase in the consumption of apps, Mintegral has immense opportunity in India,” says Robin.

Robin reveals that India contributes the highest traffic for Mobvista. “We witness about 28.5 percent of our overall daily active users (DAU) distribution originating from India,” he adds.

Currently, even with all the analytical tools and technology available, end users still hate ad space on the screen. However, Mobvista has been tackling this concern for developers by pushing relevant content (apps) to end users. “Understanding your target audience is very important. By analysing usage pattern and behaviour, we tend to show content that is likely to be engaging for users,” says Erick Fang, CPO of Mobvista.

Pointing out the advantages of their platform over competitors like Facebook, Robin explains, “Facebook’s reach is only 30-40 percent of the audience as it pushes content only to registered users; we work with multiple partners. Besides reach, there is very little support for developers on Facebook, and it’s not that easy to work cooperatively with Facebook. On the other hand, we have hundreds of consultants to offer support to developers round the clock.”A rich user experience is integral to driving installs and engagement for app developers. A smooth and uncluttered user experience results in more installs, which creates a funnel for strong engagement. “Content plays a vital role in engagement, and we keep emphasising this to developers. What’s important is that we offer templates to let developers own the user experience portion. Rather than controlling user experience for developers on behalf of their users, we completely equip them to do it their own way,” says Erick.

A rich user experience is integral to driving installs and engagement for app developers. A smooth and uncluttered user experience results in more installs, which creates a funnel for strong engagement. “Content plays a vital role in engagement, and we keep emphasising this to developers. What’s important is that we offer templates to let developers own the user experience portion. Rather than controlling user experience for developers on behalf of their users, we completely equip them to do it their own way,” says Erick.

Mintegral generally caters to utility and game developers. While utility apps in content and entertainment categories are taking off in India, gaming still has a long way to go. Unlike China, the US, and other emerging economies such as Brazil, gaming apps are not as popular in India. “Indians don’t tend to pay for downloading games or accessing crucial features of the game. This needs to change in the future, and we do hope that it happens soon,” says Robin.

Meanwhile, Robin admits that the appetite for e-commerce has gone up in the last three years. “We are planning to tap this genre too. In fact, we’re launching a new suite of features soon,” adds Robin.

When quizzed about which ad formats work well in the Indian market, Robin says, “Of course, native ad formats work in India.” Take the example of DailyHunt, India’s largest content platform, when cooperating with Mintegral in monetisation. They mostly use native ad formats like newsfeed ads and an app wall.

However, video advertising is the preferred format in mature markets like China and the US. “Indian game developers still use banners, which isn’t the case in mature markets,” he adds. Speaking about the prospect of video advertising by developers, Robin says, “Video will catch up, but it will take some time. India is almost five-seven years behind China. Video advertising wasn’t popular in China till 2012-13. But over the last two-three years, developers have started choosing it over native formats. Similarly, Indian developers will also gradually shift towards video.”

Data plays an important role in driving app installs and engagement, and Erick reiterates this. “We’re serious about big data and artificial intelligence. These help us craft better retargeting campaigns for developers,” he adds.

Comparing the startup ecosystem of India with China, Robin concludes, “Unlike China, India is a volatile startup ecosystem. During 2013-15, poster boys like Flipkart, Snapdeal, and Quikr, amongst others, had raised big rounds and consequently spent heavily on branding and marketing. However, things changed as investments became tepid in the last 18 months. Like China, the GMV of Indian e-commerce biggies didn’t follow the hockey stick growth curve, and investors are getting concerned. Hopefully, they will be able to regain investor confidence.”