Online media giant Detikcom, has hired InMobi to serve advertising on its mobile platform. According to The Jakarta Post, InMobi will be Detikcom’s exclusive partner for two years. The ad display will involve rich media which means it will be in the form of audio, video, moving images as well as games. The partnership will also aim for smartphone and tablet distribution.
For me, it’s an exciting collaboration. Detikcom as Indonesia’s largest media portal that shouldn’t have trouble finding their own advertising clients, is working with a global service provider to fill the ad spots on their mobile service. Gerry Leo Nugroho from Detikcom said that ad impressions for 200 million per day in all of Detikcom properties are mostly still focusing on the desktop version. With this partnership Gerry hopes to attract more advertisers in their mobile version and hoped the success of this partnership will help the development of digital advertising industry as a whole.
Based on statistics recorded by Alexa, Detik.com recorded 25 million pageviews per day and 2.2 million of them are from smart devices. In my opinion this achievement is huge but in the reality the number isn’t enough to attract advertisers to come. If we look at current conditions such as Detikcom application for iOS, there doesn’t seem to be any advertisement, while the mobile site does have an advertising banner displayed.
Aiming for smartphones and tablets is certainly not without reason. Although the numbers are much fewer than feature phones, users more easily mapped and most of them are part of the middle class. Detikcom and InMobi realize that despite this niche segment, they are clearly targeting high-purchasing-power people/class.
InMobi isn’t a new player in the game. It already has several major advertisers such as Disney, AirAsia and Citibank in its portfolio. InMobi was founded in 2007 and has gained a large Series C funding from Softbank Japan. Its nearest competitor, AdMob is already acquired by Google.
