mKhoj-Vuclip to spearhead mobile advertising

BANGALORE, INDIA: Mobile advertising has become one of the preferred media by many companies and marketers. It is being used extensively by advertisers as it helps them structure not only creative campaigns but also package them innovatively.

mKhoj, one of the largest mobile Ad networks that offers solutions for advertising and monetizing on the mobile, has now entered into a mobile advertising partnership with Vuclip, a leading mobile video search and delivery provider.

In assocaition with Vuclip, mKhoj will provide ads on Vuclip's mobile website and popularize Vuclip's mobile video search and delivery platform among the hundreds of publishers and millions of subscribers that are a part of mKhoj's mobile ad network.

Vuclip allows access to any video on the Internet and watch it on any video-enabled phone. It can find videos, transcode and optimize them "on the fly," and then deliver them to a user's mobile phone in real-time.

“Our transparent model, high quality ad inventory and cutting edge technology were the key factors in cementing the partnership with Vuclip. mKhoj allows advertisers to discover their target audience using its advanced targeting technology via mobile Internet sites and it enables publishers of such sites to monetize their traffic,” says Naveen Tewari, CEO of mKhoj, in an interview with CIOL. Excerpts:

CIOL: How has been mKhoj's journey so far in the mobile ad network space?

Naveen Tewari: mKhoj is currently the largest ad network in the Asia Pacific region, and is one of the largest ad networks in the world. We entered this space in 2007, and the journey has been extremely exciting since then. Especially, over the last six-eight months, we have grown from a small team of seven-eight people to 65 people and from serving a few million ads a month to almost a billion ads per month.

CIOL: Tell us about mKhoj entering into a mobile advertising partnership with Vuclip?

NT: We believe that Vuclip is one of the pioneers in mobile videos and our partnership with them is to help them monetize the traffic in the most efficient and optimum manner using our advanced ad serving technology and our vast Ad sales team across Asia.

We are continuously working with the team at Vuclip to better the revenue generation and we are trying to solve the problem of video monetization by working together to a common solution.

CIOL: What is  the Vuclip Video API Program?

NT: The Vuclip API program lets publishers /site owners have access to the Vuclip search technology so that they can show it to their own customers under their own brand name. This helps in proliferation of mobile videos across the mobile web. 

CIOL: What is your business model?

NT: mKhoj is a mobile ad network that helps advertisers reach millions of customers in a targeted manner and helps publishers earn revenue by using its ad serving technology. mKhoj partners with publishers and monetizes its traffic in the most efficient way to generate the maximum revenue. We enable advertisers to reach their audience in a targeted and a measurable way. 

The advanced analytics at mKhoj helps the advertisers measure every action of the consumer. mKhoj recognizes that each customer is different and leverages that uniqueness to customize the message they get resulting in dramatically higher ROI for their advertisers.

CIOL: What is the scene with regard to mobile advertising across the world vis-a-vis India?

NT: Mobile advertising in developed countries is not a primary mode of digital advertising, whereas in India (and similar countries in the region) mobile Internet is the primary mode of digital advertising which reaches a large mass of people. Thus, the take up by advertisers for using the mobile as a medium for advertising is far more aggressive than probably in the more developed countries. We expect the advertisers signing up for the mobile medium to even greater in 2009.

CIOL: Are there any new initiatives in the pipeline?

NT: mKhoj will soon launch specific offerings for advertisers and publishers, who want to leverage social networking paradigm. We are developing an exclusive strategy for devices such as iPhone like devices that are the future of smart phones in India. With social media and iPhone like devices being the buzz word, mKhoj is not far off in being a part of this unprecedented growth.