Interview with Dave Gwozdz CEO Mojiva on mOcean and promoting iPhone apps

It was a great pleasure to speak with Dave Gwozdz the CEO of Mojiva about the new application mobile advertising  service mOcean. I had written about it before and was confused about  what it meant for Mojiva and why a start-up was diversifying its brand.

So, that was my first question:

Bena:  David, you have Mojiva and a white label platform why a new brand mOcean. Won’t that just confuse the market?

David:  Hi Bena. We don’t have Mojiva and a white label platform we have Mojiva and now we have mOcean. Mojiva is our excellent marketplace where we can offer a wealth of strong services to brands and agencies. But what we found as we are growing so fast is that what is needed in the application promotion phase is different to what we offer on Mojiva. Mojiva will be a customer of mOcean and the new business will target core developers.

Bena:  OK. So is mOcean like a Tapjoy?

David:  It’s a new market and there is a lot of innovation. We feel with mOcean that we are not just like other competitors but we are developing for the needs of our clients. What I mean is that there is no THE solution. We are announcing fresh services regularly to keep again of the game and find the absolute best for our clients.

Bena: So you are not just scaling to exit or some thing like that boom boom buy strategy?

David:  Those days are over! We are a growing business and we are here to stay. With my DoubleClick background I know what I am doing and know what has to be done to achieve it.

Bena: OK, I am sorry to ask but that was what my initial confusion was about.

David:  Bena, its OK. Can I tell you since I have been at Mojiva we have created a staged plan for development and growth.

Bena:  So mOcean is part of that growth plan.

David:  Yes. Mojiva and a self-service platform was part one. Then many publishers wanted a white label platform and we reacted. Now the iphone market and application potential cannot be ignored and we have a team of fresh young developers know what is needed to serve developer needs.

Bena:  So can you tell me in 3 steps how mOcean will help me (suddenly the phones dies and I call David back). We laugh that its voice and not data that still infuriates with mobile and how can you drop a call in New York City!

Bena:  Welcome back! How can mOcean help me in 3 steps.

David:

1. If you are developer you need or want to drive downloads of your precious application. On top of that you want to make money but you don’t know how. So you test different options such as paid applications.
2. Then you realise how hard it is to crack the top 5, 10 or 25% of the market. So we have delivered a solution for this by allowing in application advertising.
3. The winner is that we give developers cash back on their ad revenue so development costs are fruitless. So if you have an app and you make a dollar in advertising – we make that one dollar USD 1.20. So the money can be reinvested into the promotion.

Bena: How much do I have to pay for it?

David:  So we have taken a very aggressive step here. It is free for an application serving up to 10 million impressions. The big guys that get more understand this but we are offering again aggressive CPM’s after the free version of 20 cents and 7 cents – which is getting us some very early adopters, fast.

Bena: OK that sounds very good.

David: We are giving the app community a realistic chance to make money. At the moment you launch your app it spikes for two days and then it dies and can never be found again. This is frustrating and our service will ensure that money can always be generated and developers have the tools to go and sell.

Bena: OK – and to set it up is it like an ad tag or something?

David:  Yes it is very simple. But it needs to be put in the application from the start it can’t be put into applications that are already in the app store. The mediation layer is vital here and we are driving inventory now with mOcean and our competitive push.

Bena: OK, David. That is great. I understand now and (as the phone coverage started to get shaky again) I better quit and say goodbye while I still can.

David:  Bena, it has been a pleasure, contact me…… (the phone dies)

 

What we think?

I had a great conversation with David and he was an expert on promoting iPhone apps. He said that so much research was behind mOcean that it wasn’t a drop in the Ocean.

On the service itself, I will ask one of our developers to test it for me. I want to know if these tools also generate traffic to each site and to what extent or how great that traffic is and if it can be measured.