InMobi nabs mobile advertising deal for Jumbuck social network

Mobile advertising agency InMobi is rolling out the global good news recently - back in December it claimed to be the largest advertising agency in South Africa. Today it has rolled the globe around for news in Australia, where it has grabbed a chunk of on-deck advertising with Australia’s largest telecoms operator, Telstra.

Who are InMobi?

InMobi used to be MKhoj, but a recent global launch saw them rebrand. The company focuses on connecting advertising to mobile publishers, with a lot of measurability and metrics built in. Along with its big South African influence, it serves a lot of other countries in Africa, as well as the Middle East, Europe and Asia. And now it’s Australian presence has gotten a lot bigger.

What’s the deal?

InMobi hasn’t gotten the Telstra space through a direct deal. Instead, it has been selected as the mobile advertising partner of an Australian mobile social network called Jumbuck. Now, Jumbuck is an interesting company. It has partners in every market, all over the world, with over 100 operators. It’s HQ is in Australia and it has a very strong presence there. Jumbuck has deals with pretty much every operator in the company (including Telstra), and during 2008 it bought out the popular Australian answer to eBay.

So InMobi and Jumbuck have entered a partnership, with InMobi as Jumbuck’s advertising partner for its Australian community.

Why InMobi?

Mostly because InMobi does local advertising very well. Like I said, it connects advertisers with publishers - but that doesn’t just mean national brands. Smaller advertisers on a local or regional level advertise through InMobi as well. And local advertising syncs in very nicely with social networking, which is a very personal, community based service.

What we think?

I’ve heard a lot of people say that “mobile advertises best on mobile” - by which they mean that the mobile advertising community is often very insular. Mobile companies advertise their mobile services to mobile consumers through mobile agencies. But those chains built from mobile companies can then extend out to the real world.

In this case you’ve got a mobile advertiser (InMobi) place inventory on a mobile operator (Telstra) through a mobile social network (Jumbuck). But the actual content is going to be the exciting part here. The channel is formed, and now anyone can get into it.

As an aside, I used the word “mobile” 11 times in those last two paragraphs - approx. once every 9 words. Disgraceful.