MWC: Patrick Parodi Amobee on in-network vs the rest of the world

by: Bena Roberts Friday, February 15th, 2008

Now the one thing that I love about Patrick Parodi is that he is a real charmer. So the moment we sat down he said, “Bena I would like to introduce you to Gerado Lara our new Director of Marketing at Amobee”. We said our hellos and just before I was going to jump on Patrick with some awful questions – he says, “Gerado make sure you connect with Bena to see how we work together”.

I am very grateful and any sponsorship on GoMo News is appreciated but even though I was tough he knew how to put me in a better mood before a meeting!

So, I woke up a bit in this meeting as Patrick said that Bena please remember we are a server and not an AdMob, Screen Tonic (Microsoft), Enpocket (Nokia) etc. We serve in network only that is our proposition.
I said that I thought that Amobee also had its own ad network. At the moment this is not the case. Amobee partners with the ad networks and companies to better serve the consumers.
I asked him what he thought of profiling services and offers and he said, he loved anything that made Amobee serve better adverts.
He also said that unlike smaller competitors focusing on in-game adverts and similar vertical services Amobee did it all. When you are in the network you can serve ads in – network, cross network or off portal. You have the ability to push any media which I think probably does increase the real estate of a n ad server.
Saying this I think that Amobee is building its own ad-network as well.

On top of that I heard a comment by someone undercutting the market in attempt to play catch up in the space which was potentially damaging the future of mobile advertising margins in this early market. I am going to do some digging on this and report back.

But all in all, for a very small team and in a difficult market Amobee seems to know what its doing and what it wants. I was very critical of the stake that Vodafone and Telefoinica took in Amobee but after this week – several mobile operators have asked me “who would you invest in”.
The eco-system is changing and some operators have their own acquisition strategy. I think this is a new business idea and/ or operators want to add a social media arm to their business. The only way to do this is the partner or buy. Talking to the European VC community this week many companies had switched from wanting to assist companies to making strategic investments in companies that would enhance their existing portfolio.
But that is another essay.

Rating: tired, honest but fighting fit