Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Interview with Gil Dudkiewicz, CEO of StartApp (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: There is a very large inventory of free games out there. You are moving from one part of the game to another, and there is an ad showing up in between. That is also very common, isn’t it?

Gil Dudkiewicz: Absolutely. That is something we are doing as well. Because then the user is putting his entire attention into it, it is in full screen, and it is very clear what the message is.

SM: When you look at mobile advertising, where are the big open problems? What should happen that is not happening yet and deserves the attention of an entrepreneur?

GD: Finding a unique offering and a unique piece of advertisement that are different and not just the same as it was before. Re-targeting and re-branding can be the best thing – let users get whatever they want. The big advantage of mobile devices is most cases is that they belong to people. It is not like a PC that is standing at home. Your ability to do targeting better is really important. I think doing mobile targeting is crucial. We see different advertisers who talk with us and do targeting better in order to be more successful than others.

SM: There are all sorts of startups that are focused on ad targeting. Ever since Internet advertising started, ad targeting has been a very active field for startups to work on. What is the evolution of that field? Who are the players who are doing new and interesting work that is worth paying attention to?

GD: There is attention, but it is different. If you look at advertising on the PC, almost all of it is web advertisements. A lot of that comes from cookies. In this regard, there are two things that make a big difference in mobile. One of them is already there: half of the usage comes from applications, and half of the advertisement comes from the mobile world. So cookies are not efficient enough to create ads the way that you want. The second part is that today there are also a lot of issues with cookies. With new regulations in Europe, California, and other places, using cookies started to become more and more complicated.

SM: And who are the players in mobile targeting that you particularly respect?

GD: There isn’t anyone who is doing exactly the same on the mobile targeting side and who is doing significantly better.

SM: So, in your opinion, it is a field that has no leader?

GD: Yes. I would love to work together with any company that is doing great at targeting on the mobile side.

SM: Is there any other area where there needs to be a lot more innovation?

GD: Absolutely. There is the tracking issue. One of the things that should be simpler, but I find it very hard today is tracking the usage on the mobile side – knowing exactly what the conversion from downloads is, who the user is, etc. There are lots of inefficiencies in that. We work with different tracking systems, but I can’t say there is one that provides numbers we are comfortable with. For me, the tracking issue is even more significant than the targeting issue.

This segment is part 5 in the series : Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Interview with Gil Dudkiewicz, CEO of StartApp
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