Introducing InMobi Native Ads and Why it is so Cool

It’s hard to miss the recent media buzz about NYT debuting native ads. While the public outcry has started to die down slowly, mobile advertising and native ads are clearly here to stay.

After the hysteria in the media about irritating mobile ads and publishers like NYT selling their soul, my view in fact is, quite the opposite! I love native ads and am extremely proud of the InMobi Native Ads platform my team has created. Let me tell you why….

We have looked at native ads holistically. The InMobi Native Ads platform can customize ads to suit the look and feel of your app down to the last pixel. Not just that, we go beyond just focusing on “how the ad looks”. In doing so, we believe, we are redefining how mobile advertising should be – non intrusive, engaging and non-distracting from an app’s primary experience.

In a distinct hand-me-down legacy from the digital world, mobile advertising started out as banner ads. Thereafter, advertisers and publishers moved to interstitials. While they were better than banners in terms of user experience, developers have begun demanding a better ad experience as the app economy has evolved much more since then. One of them recently told me, "If I spend so much time and effort in building, what I believe, is the coolest app ever then why am I forced to carry ads that suck all the fun out of my app?"

But, for app developers to put out native ads on multiple apps and mobile properties requires customizations to be made at mass scale. This isn’t easy either.

And, this is where InMobi can help!

1. Our native ads platform offers massive customizations with minimal development effort from app developers
2. Advertisers with diverse goals whether app promotions, brand awareness, or even retail can participate in this fluid ecosystem without worrying about how their brand is presented in front of consumers.

Our vision for this platform is to progressively grow the number of publishers and advertisers participating and contributing to this new ad ecosystem architecture. This means, we are looking for developers to work on the platform and then chime in with how we can customize ads even better for them. Similarly, we are hoping advertisers will increasingly ask for native interactions. With all this, I believe, we have placed the user at the center of the mobile ad universe. We are, then, not far away from a world where the mobile space will be comprised of only mass-customized, native ad units that promote a better ad experience and therefore retention and lifetime value for app developers.

Onward and forward then!