Interview

AdColony's Will Kassoy on how its mobile video ads are up to 10 times more effective than online

Plus you can hook into virtual currency incentives

AdColony's Will Kassoy on how its mobile video ads are up to 10 times more effective than online
AdColony isn't the only company focused on mobile video advertising, but thanks to its previous experience as an app developer - under the Jirbo Inc brand - it argues it has a bottom up view of what works well. 

Indeed, it was early into the market and, despite the increased competition from the likes of Tapjoy, Flurry and SponsorPay, remains bullish enough to bill itself 'the most effective mobile video advertising platform in the world.'

Perhaps the most potent area of Adcolony's services lies in its self-serve mobile video ad platform for iOS, Adcolony Express, a service it argues boosts user loyalty.

We caught up with CEO Will Kassoy to find out more about the services on offer.

Pocket Gamer: Why do you think that videos are a good basis for a mobile advertising network?

Will Kassoy: Over my 20 years of marketing, video has consistently been the best medium for advertising.

Delivering a message with sight, sound and motion is both effective for communications, but more importantly, it evokes emotion and desire for a brand unlike any other form of advertising.

Today, the $1 billion dollar mobile ad market is dominated by banner advertising, which, in my opinion, is one of the least effective ad units in the world.

With AdColony, we set out to create a mobile network dedicated to video because of two reasons. Firstly, the market gap opportunity. New smartphones and tablets were capable of delivering HD video instantly but most ad networks continued to focus on selling more banners.

And secondly, our Instant-Play technology. We've perfected a proprietary technology that delivers video ads instantly addressing one of the biggest issues with mobile videos which is long load times.

What are the key technical challenges to run such a network?

Our AdColony business was a pioneer in developing a proprietary technology that serves HD video ads instantly on mobile devices.

Since 2008, we've never taken our foot off the pedal of innovation and are always looking to the future at new ways of leveraging technology to deliver a high quality mobile advertising experience and improve the mobile ecosystem.

We are serving hundreds of millions of videos a month so we're working with a level of technology and infrastructure that is pretty advanced and, like many top tech companies, scaling what we do while maintaining triple-A quality is a continual focus.

What does AdColony offer its clients and developers that other advertisers don't?

We are the only mobile ad network that has developed over 200 apps!

We aren't developing apps any more but that experience in mobile is unparalleled. So we understand publishers' needs and develop both technology and best practices/insights that is very relevant to their business.

Our own catalog of apps gives us a library of titles to explore and test new ad units on, before sharing our technology with third party partners.

Today, our catalog represents a very minimal part of our network, but remains strategically important since it allows us to test and optimise video ad products with live apps. It has allowed us to innovate and perfect technologies like our proprietary HD Instant-Play technology and new ad units like Videos for Virtual Currency.

We were the first mobile ad network to bring these technologies to mobile and we pride ourselves on our innovation.

Why is your self-service option important and how has it changed the scale of your business?

In October 2011, we launched AdColony Express - a self-service platform where any developer could up-load a 15 second trailer of their app, and have it run in our AdColony network in minutes.

It allows you to run any size campaign big or small, for agencies and developers. However, we see that it's particularly attractive for developers.

Once the video runs, there is a 'companion ad' which is an end frame graphic with a call to action and button to download the app.

To illustrate how easy it is, just last night we had a developer from Switzerland place a $100 campaign at 11pm at night. The campaign ran and they had a 6 percent click through to the app store!

Two hours later they had acquired users and were already placing another media buy.

With hundreds of thousands of developers all over the world, we wanted to provide an easy way for them to drive discovery of their app and a way we can scale our business without relying exclusively on needing a gigantic sales organization.

We believe that automation is a big trend and will be a key driver of how we scale our business.

Can you reveal any metrics in terms of your user base and what sort of Click Thru Rates are experienced?

AdColony reaches tens of million mobile consumers and we are delivering hundreds of millions of completed video views a month.

And what's even more incredible is the click through and engagement rates.

Compared to Facebook or the web where 0.5 percent is considered a success, we generally see click through rates for apps in the 3-5 percent range which is 6-10 times more effective than social or online.

We also see on average 14 minute session times of the apps in our network, so you know you are reaching a high quality, engaged user versus other mobile networks who may have a lot of mobile web apps where consumers don't spend much time with the app.

With a fast growing network, how hard do you find it to maintain fill rate in terms of attracting advertising clients?

That was definitely a challenge in our early years, but today we have a very stable base of day-in, day-out advertiser clients who love our network.

Clients range from the top grossing app developers in the world to Fortune 500 brands and advertising agencies looking to advertise to this rapidly growing user base.

How does the Video for Virtual Currency system work?

We designed Videos for Virtual Currency to address a big need among social mobile game developers. Many of their apps were free but used in-app transactions to monetise.

But the reality is that only approximately 5 percent of users purchased items. We developed V4VC to address the other 95 percent of users, helping developers monetise and ultimately support their app.

One common use is to place a button in the menu of the game that allows users to Earn Free Coins in exchange for watching a video ad. Once the video ad completes, the user is rewarded with a coin.

That could be hard currency, soft currency or any other type of unit (in our texting apps, for example, the publisher offers free phone call minutes).

We've conducted research that shows that once a user tries Videos for Virtual Currency, they are 2-4 times more likely to do an in-app transaction in the future.

So it not only provides a revenue stream for publishers for the video ad, but it also serves as an boarding tool to give consumers a sampling of the benefits of virtual currency, ultimately increasing user retention and monetisation.

What do you think are the future challenges for video ad networks in general and AdColony in particular?

The mobile market place moves extremely quickly. We've already pioneered some big industry firsts for a mobile video ad network including both our Instant-Play technology platform and the first Videos for Virtual Currency ad unit.

It's our background and insight developing apps that gives us an advantage unlike any other ad network.

We look at our innovation through the lens of how to help publishers monetise their apps and how to help advertisers drive demand for their brands and reach new audiences.

We believe the innovation and product quality sets us apart, but at the end of the day, it's about delivering a high quality user experience in mobile helping our partners deliver against their business needs.
Thanks to Will for his time.

You can check out what AdColony gets up to via its website



When Matt was 7 years old he didn't write to Santa like the other little boys and girls. He wrote to Mario. When the rotund plumber replied, Matt's dedication to a life of gaming was established. Like an otaku David Carradine, he wandered the planet until becoming a writer at Pocket Gamer.