E-Commerce and startup veteran Mark Lehmann, who recently signed on as CEO of mobile ad network Todacell, called the potential for mobile marketing “tremendous” in the face of new mobile technology and better-targeted advert campaigns.
“If you think about it, everything computing is migrating to mobile, which means all online advertising will soon be mobile,” Lehmann said. “Even something like Search, in a query for any product or service, when search results are adjusted according to location, that’s mobile marketing.”
Todacell gained some attention this month when it announced a $2 million funding round on top of news that it had doubled it annual revenue since last May. Lehmann believes the industry will soon emerge as a new advertising goldrush, and he’d like to see Todacell play a leading role.
Growing smartphone ownership and usage has boosted available mobile ad inventory, and Lehmann says the key to filling that gap is cleverly-targeted campaigns.
“If you think of the exponential growth mobile is experiencing from smartphone and tablet growth in both users and time spent – greater than the growth in mobile marketing – there is a greater challenge for agencies and marketers to make sure that they’re serving the right ad to the right prospect at the right time,” he said.
Lehmann has previously served executive and managerial roles for Universal Music Group/Island Def Jam, Flycell and Adobe, and has consulted for Harbinger Pro. Todacell, he says, was a natural choice given the direction he sees the market heading.
“What sets Todacell apart is our optimization technology which takes all the targeting attributes of an advertiser campaign – thousands of publishers, creative, device, location, geo-targeting and demographics – and determines where the campaign is working based on the goals, whether it’s clicks, click through rate and/or conversions,” he said. “Our technology automatically makes adjustments to the campaigns so that more traffic is directed towards targeting that is working, and where targeting isn’t working, traffic is decreased.”
Due to hotly-contested on-screen real estate, portions of the online business space have struggled to commoditize the mobile versions of their sites. Facebook, for example, only recently began to incorporate adverts on users’ phones – though initial reports suggest the change has been surprisingly well-received.
Image: Todacell
