Here’s why this Indian ad exchange with clients in 200 countries just pivoted

Not so long ago, an ad exchange connecting marketers, advertisers, and publishers with mobile users was the hot new thing. There was no bigger news in late 2012 than social network Facebook kicking off its own ad exchange, FBX, to monetize its millions of users.

Just a few months back, Indian superstar InMobi – dubbed “the world’s largest independent mobile advertising network” – launched its ad exchange to capitalize on a growing trend of programmatic buying and selling of ads. Now, the next wave is already here as marketers want to go after only those users who are most likely to buy their wares.

Seeing the writing on the wall, Vserv, one of the leading mobile ad exchanges from India, has just pivoted. “We have repositioned ourselves as a smart data led mobile marketing company. Now, we deliver smart data led results to marketers,” says Dippak Khurana, co-founder and CEO of Vserv, in an exclusive chat with Tech in Asia.

For this, Vserv has partnered with key telecom companies across emerging markets – from Vodafone, Airtel, and Aircel in India to Globe in the Philippines, Indosat in Indonesia, and MobiFone in Vietnam. “We are the world’s first and only company to partner with telcos this way,” Khurana says.

The telco tie-ups are vital in mobile-first markets like India, where smartphone adoption is taking off but credit card penetration is crawling. Most users don’t have the means for in-app purchasing of various products and services with credit cards or other instruments. What they can do, thanks to Vserv-like initiatives, is to use their prepaid or postpaid mobile cards to buy apps or in-app offers, which gets tagged to their mobile bills. Innovative companies are even topping up talk or data time for users on their mobile accounts in exchange for engaging with an ad.

For Vserv, it’s a double whammy – the telcos allow users to buy apps and respond to ads, and Vserv also gains valuable user data. The company is no longer just an ad exchange, it’s a key facilitator in the mobile ad ecosystem.

From big data to smart data

Khurana founded Vserv in Mumbai in 2010 with Ashay Padwal, who now spearheads the technology and product development function of the startup. With 30 years of combined experience in the mobile and digital advertising space, they are used to spotting trends, thinking fast on their feet, and staying nimble. In four years, Vserv grew rapidly to garner clients in 200 countries and offices in 10, including the US, UK, and parts of Southeast Asia.

Khurana has been watching the internet spreading like wildfire in emerging markets like India. He noted how the majority of new adopters leapfrogged over desktops to sample the web first on their smartphones. For many of them, mobile phones were their primary as well as only digital medium. So they spend a lot of time using their smartphones to play games, buy products, read news, connect on social networks, and so on.

Vserv’s pivot was spurred by the voluminous data that appeared, thanks to the frenetic smartphone usage, countless apps, and various needs being fulfilled on the device.

“From telecom operators to marketers, all are witnessing the flood of big data. And they want to participate in this opportunity. Some of them want to just engage with consumers, some are seeking sales, and some want to generate transactions from users. To do any of that effectively, someone has to transform the voluminous amounts of data into smart data; in other words, make sense of the data available, mine insights from them. We are now doing that,” Khurana says.

Vserv has picked the key facilitator role in this mobile advertising ecosystem. To marketers, it will deliver sales. To app developers who are seeing plenty of users engaging with their apps, Vserv will help them monetize.

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