Smaato Blog » Mobile

Smaato Launches iSOMA SDK for Apple iPad

SMAATO — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 14:04:31 +0000

iPad drives innovation and a merging of Mobile and Online Advertising

New iPhone OS 4.0 features allow for enhanced mobile advertising functions

Smaato Inc. the leading mobile ad optimization company announced today the new version of iSOMA SDK for iPad applications and mobile websites.

“There is a lot of excitement in the mobile publishing market about the iPad and new features in the upcoming iPhone OS 4.0 release. We are happy to continue our support for the iPhone platform and the iPad as the new addition to mobile device choices,” stated Ragnar Kruse, CEO & Co-Founder of Smaato Inc.

The iSOMA for iPad SDK will support multiple new ad formats including the universal ad package (UAP) of the iab – the online association that set the standards for the launch of the online advertising economy. In addition mobile ad formats of the MMA (Mobile Marketing Association) are supported as well, including new rich media banner formats that are emerging from Smaato’s 36 ad network partners.

Apple’s iPad is a hybrid mobile device that is expected to be heavily used to surf the web, consumer media apps as well as play with mobile entertainment offerings. First applications and media offerings from publishers of TIME, Wall Street Journal and the New York Times are using a blend of new innovative advertising formats that add multimedia functions, like video and sound.

Smaato Advanced Mobile Analytics will be included in the iPad SDK 1.0 and provides a comprehensive set of tools that enable mobile publishers to optimize their inventory for the iPad to maximize user experience and insights.

Smaato will make the new iSOMA for iPad version available for free download with registration on the sign-up portal at www.smaato.com/signup

Read and download the entire PR here.

Smaato is Hiring! Join Our Family!

SMAATO — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 14:56:01 +0000

SMAATO IS HIRING! JOIN OUR FAMILY!

Smaato Inc. is an ad-enabler for mobile phones, pioneering with its mobile advertising platform SOMA (Smaato Open Mobile Advertising) for the delivery of targeted mobile advertising. Smaato works with international ad networks, media companies, carriers, publishers and software developers for its cutting edge mobile advertising platform.

Smaato Inc. is based in Redwood Shores, California. The privately held company was founded in 2005 by an experienced International management team. The European headquarters are in Hamburg, Germany and the Asia-Pacific presence of Smaato has been established in Singapore.

Visit smaato.com/jobs and find your career today!

REDWOOD SHORES, CA

Sales
- Partner Development Manager
- Sales Engineer
- Client Services Coordinator

Ad Operations
- Ad Traffick Coordinator

Strategic Alliances
- Strategic Alliances Intern

HAMBURG, GERMANY

Development, IT
- iPhone Application/SDK Developer
- Server Developer Mobile Ad Server (J2EE/SQL)
- Senior System Administrator
- Junior J2EE Developer
- Developer J2EE/SQL
- Senior J2EE Developer
- Web-Developer PHP/SQL/HTML
- Junior J2EE/SQL Application-Developer
- Junior Product Manager
- Junior Quality Assurance Manager

Sales
- Manager Ad Networks Relations
- Pre Sales Manager
- Junior Manager Client Services

Operations
- Mobile Ad Trafficker
- Ad/Campaign Manager
- Internship Ad Operations (German)

SINGAPORE, SINGAPORE

Sales
- Pre Sales Manager

Meet Smaato @CTIA Wireless 2010 Las Vegas

SMAATO — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 15:34:03 +0000

CTIA Wireless 2010 – Las Vegas Convention Center, March 23-25

CTIA Wireless in the U.S. is the largest and most comprehensive trade show in the wireless industry.

The International CTIA Wireless show is the premier wireless event representing a $1 trillion global marketplace that brings together the wireless and converged communications, wireless broadband, mobile web computing and data industries. International CTIA Wireless is where the wireless world meets each year for three days of intense business, learning and networking.

CTIA held the first wireless industry convention on May 28, 1985. Over the next 25 years, CTIA Wireless developed into and has remained the single exposition where the industry and world leaders convene to learn, explore, listen and lead our dynamic, constantly mobile life.

Meet Smaato at CTIA Wireless and learn more about the latest features of our SOMA Ad Optimization Platform. Request a meeting at CTIA Wireless here.

Smaato @SXSW 2010 – Refreshing Spring Break for Mobile Marketers

SMAATO — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 11:55:31 +0000

Reported by Harald Neidhardt, CMO & Co-Founder of Smaato Inc.

Coming down to Austin Texas in the middle of March is a great break from the usual trade shows – and especially the weather lately in New York, Europe or the Valley.
Greeted by a refreshing 77° F (25° C) the City of Austin is kind to its regular and newbie visitors and reveals an upbeat, young and vivid scene of creativity. The SXSW (South-by-South-West, or “South-by” for the regulars) festival for interactivity was started 13 years ago – added to the foremost music and film festival founded 24 years ago.

This year, 14.000 people flocked to Austin for a long weekend with a conference program running from Friday to Tuesday in the Convention Center plus adjacent hotels and music venues. Social Media is the overarching umbrella and is examined in lots of parallel tracks of panels and keynotes. Lots of online and mobile’s leading CEO’s and founders are present and share their visions and new product releases on stage with their peers.

Is Twitter Old School?

Twitter CEO Evan Williams officially announced the highly anticipated Twitter ad platform in a chat on stage by with Omair Haigue, who is the head of the Havas Media Lab. That did not go well with the real-time twitter community in the Ballroom and the additionally set up simulcast room – many left early.

The @anywhere named ad platform was presented with a short video and with underwhelming features. It does serve a purpose of make life easier for publishers and authors to set up “follow me” buttons on websites that we know already from Facebook. In addition a keyword feature has been introduced, where websites can set up links to twitter accounts of editors, brands or trending topics. There was no involvement of any big brand marketers presented – only some known publishers that will set these links up on their side. Those include the New York Times, CNN, Yahoo and the Huffington Post – there was no mobile screen and no mobile marketing initiative present, other than the availability of location published with every tweet. Within the hour 2.500 people signed up to follow @anywhere.

A much more energetic keynote was presented by New York Times bestseller Gary Vaynerchuk, Author of “Crush it”) as he emphasized heavily that brands need to open up and engage via twitter and social media with their target group and have authentic conversations. “Every meaningful conversation will lead to sales and a loyal brand community,” he proclaimed. When he said “Big brands don’t get it, a marketing person from P&G protested heavily – but Gary V. made clear that hiring agencies to do the dialog might not be the ideal way, but sometime necessary.

Training in-house teams to get involved on all levels will make big companies fitter for a much more educated and knowledgeable customer base that have a clear “bull shit detector” to filter out plain marketing messages from meaningful invitations to engage and provide feedback.

Geo Apps – the cool kids on the block

As anticipated the new rock stars of mobile location based apps made a big splash and were working the panels and presentations: foursquare (of New York) and Austin based Gowalla. They where even going head to head in party mode on Monday night – out doing their rivals with bigger, better events. The 13th annual SXSW Web Awards, sponsored by Adobe, rewarded Gowalla over Fourquare.

Foursquare founder NN spoke on a panel and emphasized, that mobile advertising in geo-apps is happening and evolving into local offers and targeted values to people checking into a new location, e.g. restaurants, businesses or event venues. Businesses can profit from the micro feeds of the foursquare crowd through viral marketing as word of mouth is getting blended with conversational, branded messages.

A new start-up entered the fray with an official launch at SXSW: stickybits based in New York and founded by Seth Goldstein is a pioneer in social media in the online space – and the founder and Chairman of Social Media Inc. – one of the fastest growing ad platforms for the Facebook platform. Now, he is at it in the mobile space: stickybits is a crossover of foursquare and Flickr – all around mobile barcodes. The interesting concept got of to a great start as SXSW visitors added coments, pictures and videos to provided barcode stickers attached to name tags and products such as coke cans and energy bars.

Big brands come out and play with social media

In a big local presence, some big brands came out to Austin and engaged in branded conversations with their audience and the local community of the festival.
Pepsi organized a clever initiative that invited the people to vote for one of three charities with twittering about the selected initiative by a specific hashtag. Refresh Pepsi provided then the “Refresh Zeitgeist” on lots of flat screens locally and online to show what is going on locally. In included maps of happening locations, quotes and tweets that related to SXSW and the campaign. The Pepsi Refresh Project is a groundbreaking effort to foster innovation in social good, and will award more than $20 million this year to fund great ideas that “refresh the world”.

Other brands onsite included Miller Light, AOL, GM and Microsoft among others. The expo floor has a focus mainly on tools for creativity and was a showcase of new startups and creative agencies to showcase their product or service.

Big telecom giant Alcatel-Lucent featured a developer and publisher lounge to present a solution of total access open API bundles. The set of technologies enables developers much faster to monetize services provided by operators (like advertising, virtual goods, anonymous demographic data, text messaging) within their app. Smaato was selected to be the mobile ad platform for the launch, other partners included Motally(analytics) and Billing Revolution (payments).

What can Marketers learn from this leading Interactive Festival?

Spending a few days in the atmosphere of this busting college town with all the start-up and social media energy one can only wonder how fast the mobile marketing train is coming out of the gates. This hotbed of alpha geeks, leading bloggers and influencers of old school media id the breeding ground for a new generation of creative ideas, discerning audiences that no longer want to be target groups.

If mobile marketers what to stand out from the crowd, find the engaging consumers that can spread the word about new products and services, then brands need to start digging deeper into new formats of mobile engagement and messaging.

Pure banner ads are challenged to add value to geo-location apps, social media and user generated news sites. Especially the hyper local advertising to targeted audiences of one on this personal device needs new ways to evolve – fast.

Interview: Making Money on Mobiles with Smaato’s Co-Founder

SMAATO — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 11:11:16 +0000

Smaato are the power behind mobile advertising and the transformation of mobile apps from cool gadgets to revenue-generators. CMO Harald Neidhardt takes us through how the mobile market is gaining maturity and how business is being transformed as a result of innovations in mobile technology.

bnetTV: Interview with Smaato’s CMO

SMAATO — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 18:53:05 +0000

Interview with Harald Neidhardt, Smaato’s Co-Founder and Chief Marketing Officer, about mobile trends and mobile advertising.

Visit bnetTV.com to see the interview.

Mobile Marketer Daily MWC News – Reported by Smaato CMO

SMAATO — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 17:46:00 +0000

DAY 1
“Nearly 50.000 visitors are expected to visit the GSM Association’s Mobile World Congress and Expo with 1,300 exhibitors spread across 130,000 square meters. It was raining yesterday, but I am sure everyone is relieved to be out of the snow in for a couple of days.

The much anticipated App Planet, having evoked a fantasy of a real huge scene event, is hosting real cool exhibitors. But the physical architecture of the “planet” is not more than standard fair boxes – beg your pardon, booths. Hall 7 is where mobile advertising networks such as AdMob, Mojiva and Smaato are situated, as well as Skype, serving the best coffee at MWC by far.

The Mobile Premier Awards (twitter tag: #mpa10) were presented yesterday by Rudy deWaele and hosted by dotopen in the wonderful venue, Palau de la Musica.

It was the fifth time the awards were hosted at MWC in Barcelona.

In total, eleven awards were presented in a five-hour ceremony in seven categories: entertainment, innovation – early stage startup, female entrepreneurship, marketing, innovation – emerging startup, user experience and social change. (…)”

Read the entire article at MobileMarketer

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DAY 2
Many exciting things happened yesterday at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

“Queen Rania of Jordan explained in her amazing keynote how the mobile industry can contribute to make this world better, providing education for everyone.

Her Majesty introduced 1GOAL, a global campaign she is chairing with support of singer Bono, President Clinton and the FIFA for the Soccer World Cup 2010 in South Africa.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt: Mobile First!
The afternoon keynote of Google CEO Eric Schmidt was titled “Mobile First” and transmitted live on http://www.mobileworldlive.com.

Google is now shipping 60,000 Android phones per day, Mr. Schmidt said. He said cloud computing was going to be key Google’s future.

Mr. Schmidt also announced that Google is working on new technology to improve security and enhance authentication to better protect data. He concluded his session by saying, “Mobile is pretty much the answer on everything,” announcing a major shift in strategy.

Puma launches solar-powered smartphone
Global sports marketer Puma yesterday issued a branded phone. The Puma Phone is the first phone designed to reflect the values of a global brand from the inside out.(…)”

Read the entire article at MobileMarketer

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DAY 3
“The Android developer community seemed to have tripled within hours yesterday at Mobile World Congress. When rumors spread that Google was giving away Nexus One phones for free, hundreds of businessmen pulled their pride aside for a moment and stood in line for an entire hour and a half. Why? Well, just to attend an Android developer session.

And why would non-developers want to attend such a session? The answer was easy. Because at the end of the session, each attendee got a brand-new Nexus One phone – or Motorola Droid, if you asked for it- for free. Google gave away 1,000 Nexus One phones in ten sessions. A clever and focused way to create buzz with the right people.

The Android-phone giveaway made waves across the hall, where Sony Ericsson also showed off new devices and hosted its developer day with creative workshops.

Meanwhile, GSM Association CEO Rob Conway said in his opening speech that the demand grows constantly while innovation continues to surprise.

Actor Stephen Fry, a known technophile, echoed Feb. 16’s words of Queen Rania of Jordan, calling this the “best time in history to care about how we share and communicate.”

Mr. Fry introduced the GSMA awards with a summary of the happenings in the mobile world.

“What does an Italian say when using a Samsung phone running Microsoft OS?” he asked. “Bada bing!”(…)”

Read the entire article at MobileMarketer

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DAY 4
“The Mobile World Congress 2010 closed its doors with a big fanfare about mobile applications and a total of 49,000 visitors from 200-plus countries. An upbeat industry gathering, sunshine in the end – and from where I sit, we are right in the middle of the high-tech tornado of a hyper growth mobile market.

The last day of the show found strong competition in a sunny and warm spring day, and some show visitors might have preferred the sun’s glare over the brightest AMOLED display in Samsung’s Wave, exposed in Hall 8. Not only competing with the spring light, the Samsung Wave and the new Windows phone, Motorola Blur and others should not be underestimated as major game-changers in mobile advertising.

You need no app for that – oops, where can I place my banner?
One major challenge comes from the industry’s stronger focus on user experience, which leads to a decline in the usage of applications for everything.

Personal status updates, pictures and messaging from various platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Google Buzz and MSN are converging into so-called social hubs where all of these updates are being placed around the user’s contacts, instead of being scattered across several applications. (…)”

Read the entire article at MobileMarketer

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SEE ALSO GOMONEWS BLENDER PHOTOS AT SMAATO FACEBOOK PAGE HERE.

Smaato @ Mobile World Congress 2010 Barcelona

SMAATO — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 16:32:35 +0000

Please join us at Mobile World Congress 2010 Barcelona, February 15-18 to learn about Smaato’s Mobile Ad Optimization Platform and all it’s benefits for mobile publishers/developers and mobile ad networks.

Meet us at Booth 7C38, Hall 7

Smaato Team @MWC 2010:

Ragnar Kruse
CEO & Co-Founder

Harald Neidhardt
CMO & Co-Founder

Petra Vorsteher
EVP Strategic Alliances & Co-Founder

Joerg Anhalt
Senior Vice President
Mobile Publishers Development & Monetization

Meet also:
Robert Guenther (Manager Partner Development), Yoko Nakagawa (Director of Strategic Alliances), Kedric Van de Carr (Director Publisher Development & Monetization), Miriam Hoppe (Marketing Manager) and Johannes Heinze (Product Manager).

PS: If you want to join our excellent team click here.

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About Smaato
Smaato is a pioneering mobile advertising company that operates the mobile ad optimization platform called SOMA (Smaato Open Mobile Advertising) and partners with mobile publishers, developers, ad networks and operators.

Smaato’s SOMA mobile advertising platform aggregates more than 35 mobile ad networks worldwide and optimizes mobile advertising revenues according to automated rules overseen by an experienced ad operations team. More than 2500 publishers have signed up with Smaato as a partner to monetize their content in 215+ countries and Smaato is managing 4 billion ad requests per month.

SOMA’s unique feature is the aggregation of multiple leading ad networks globally to maximize mobile advertising ARPU. SOMA can be easily integrated with ad networks, ad inventory owners (publishers, developers and operators) and 3rd party ad technology providers.

Smaato is an active member of the Mobile Marketing Association, the dot.mobi Advisory Group and the German Digital Media Association BVDW. Smaato received a Top 100 Private Company Award by AlwaysOn Media (2009 & 2007) and was an Andrew Seybold Choice Awards finalist at CTIA 2008 for best Newcomer, among other awards.

www.smaato.com

Apple to Launch iPhone 4G in April?

SMAATO — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 16:12:38 +0000

Koreatimes.co.kr wrote:

“KT, an exclusive local partner of Apple to sell iPhone, plans to introduce an upgraded version of the device ? 4G iPhone ? to the domestic market in April at the earliest.

Talks over initial sales volume of such gadgets have already been under way and KT is set to sell the devices to its bigger local corporate clients as a “litmus test” in April, KT officials said.

KT, the runner-up of SK Telecom in the local telecom market, however, plans to provide the upgraded iPhones to local distributors in June.

“We don’t see any bigger hurdle to introduce 4G iPhones here, as legal issues were completely cleared. It’s possible to launch the devices within the first half,” a high-ranking KT executive told The Korea Times, asking not to be identified.“

“How many apps do you think will hit the app stores in 2010?” Smaato Facebook Fans Answers

SMAATO — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 16:38:04 +0000

Become a fan of Smaato Facebook page at: facebook.com/smaato

Smaato Blog » Mobile

Smaato Launches iSOMA SDK for Apple iPad

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