InMobi, a Banglore-based start up, is Indian advertising technology firm. It has launched its new advertising delivery platform, Miip in Silicon Valley, US in July, 2015. The platform, delivers content-rich ads to mobile app users, thus guaranteeing higher returns to the advertisers. InMobi is thus competing with Facebook and Google. It has tied up with 10 partners. Some 5000 different applications are using it. It has been piloted around the world with 100 partners. These partners are e-commerce companies, home services, entertainment and booking services. The revenue split is in the ratio of 40:60, 40 percent of advertiser’s money is retained by them and 60 percent given to the publisher.

Advertising is a $700-$800 bilion industry worldwide. There is a growing angst against the ads, with more and more users showing dislike towards ads. The response should not be that we show them more ads. Instead, the response should be to make the ads more likeable. The user must discover the content. This could be done through a story. This could be done by engaging the users. Facebook and Pinterest are full of ads. However, users do not look only at ads, to say that they dislike them. Yes, they could say, ‘ I hate Facebook’. This is a different way of looking at advertising. It is being presented as Miip.

Advertising has to be one-on-one. And mobile phones are one-on-one device, unlike TV or print medium. Therefore, a message on mobile phone must be dumbed down to the lowest common denominator. We do not know who is reading it.

Miip has been launched in India in August, 2015. It is user-first discovery platform. It has tied up with Amazon and Paytm. It is an animated monkey. It tracks mobile activities based on which it shows rated and personalized products to users. It facilitates seamless payment and check outs within these discovery sessions.

The discovery of relevant products is a huge problem for consumers. Advertisements become intrusive for consumers, and they start hating them. InMobi worked on ways to solve this. With Miip, the company shows relevant advertisements to the users, ads that interest them. This is a new medium which enables discovery-led platform called d-commerce.

It brings window shopping network to the mobile platform. Marketers have a tough time getting users to discover and explore their products. Miip creates personalised shopping experiences to enable discovery of products from more marketers.

Miip creates discovery zones within the app. They can buy the product on the go by just tapping the ‘Buy’ button. Paytm helps the users seamless payment transactions.

Facebook and Twitter provide walked-garden experiences, and users commit 25-30 per cent of their time to this. Ola and Uber provide wild-garden experiences and users commit 70 per cent of their time to this. InMobi fits in here where users spend 70 per cent of time.

Miip is disruptive for mobile app developers. It helps monetization by creating contextualised product and app discovery experiences. This complements the app they are developing.

Miip is the newly introduced product. It targets user of shopping apps by sending them personalized information about products or experiences they might like. It seeks to target advertising better, allowing a smart phone user to discover, say where the stylish casual shirt stores in the city are.

Native advertising is a new way of engaging with consumers on the web. Here the brand decides to produce exclusive content for the digital medium, e.g. energy drink Red Bull making a video of a sky diver falling from a high altitude, at a mind-boggling velocity. It is called native advertising because the content does not ham the product the way the traditional advertising does. The content is interesting and engaging. Content could be in the form of a video, blog posts or articles which resemble editorial content. There are rebel non-traditional news companies which generate Buzzfeed. The spends on native advertising are increasing globally and in India. The content should be interesting and relevant, and the brand must be prepared to take a backseat. Native advertising believes in transparency. A food blog created as native advertising is in sync with the product. Here if there is no disclosure that it is paid content, and later if the truth comes out the influencer loses credibility. A cosmetic company can educate you about how to be a likeable girl. It need not concentrate on marketing its products. The quality of native advertising content should be consistent with the editorial matter. A cricketer may go to a school to interact with the students, and share tips with them. A sports company can use such content Native ads work best when they are accompanied by immersive content. In India, native has yet to catch up, because TV is still a robust medium here. A cosmetic company can run a series of tutorials on make up. Such content is helpful to the social media. Native advertising is used by real estate developers, banking, finance and insurance companies and equipment manufacturers. Bharati AXA ran a series of fresh perspectives videos. A banker quits a job to become a tiffin supplier — a dabbawalla. He realises a genuine need of wholesome lunch. E-commerce companies selling apparel can show latest fashion trends and rope in celebrities. Brands tend to write copious content about them.Native is more focused on telling a story, a story that engages consumers, content that interests them, or is relevant to their life.

As we know, digital inventory is traded by programmatic, but we do require a personal selling approach to sell native advertising. The story is conceived by the brand team. The agency and brand work in collaboration to create specialised content. These contents must be designed for various formats and different placements. The agency has to bring specialised resources to give concrete shape to the content. Brands have to track the native content, and collect data to know the results.