Crisp Media Opens Shop in Singapore, Locks Horns With InMobi, 2359 Media

Overview of Crisp Engage

Exclusive — Six months after receiving $6 million in fresh funding, New York-based Crisp Media told us that it is ready to announce its new APAC office in Singapore. (Welcome welcome!)

This new office in sunny Singapore plans/builds/manages HTML5 mobile ads for its clients. Its Crisp Engage product is a self-serving platform that allows clients to self-build and manage ads which are compatible across all mobile platforms — following the ORMMA standards.

Sound familiar? Yeah, InMobi (under Sprout) and 2359 Media (under MobDis) also provide similar self-service mobile ad management solutions and both are also ORMAA friendly and fighting for market share in Asia.

When asked about Crisp’s hiring and expansion plans in Singapore, Tom Limongello, VP of Marketing of the company told me that they plan to hire three to five team members in 2012 in Singapore who will focus on serving brand advertisers in the Asia Pacific region. Besides sales, the Singapore team will also focus on R&D and product development. Limongello shared more about Crisp Media’s plans in Asia:

Our plan for 2012 is to focus on regional opportunities in Singapore as well as local opportunities in China, Korea and Japan, and to that end members of the Crisp team have made trips to those countries recently to meet with agencies, ad networks, media reps and publishers.

Credit: dailymail.co.uk

That’s nice to hear! But InMobi seems to be a step ahead in Asia. It has bagged $200 million (led by Japan’s Softbank) and has also recently set up an office in China. Plus, InMobi already has a strong presence in the APAC region. Then again, Asia is surely big enough for more players to enter into this dog fight.

Meanwhile things are getting a little worrying for Singapore-based 2359 Media which has only launched MobDis three months ago. Since then, we haven’t heard many updates from the company.

Limongello also told me some factors that motivated Crisp to set up a base in Asia and not in Europe: he said that Asia is a larger and less fragmented market. Labor cost is also much more affordable here in Asia than in Europe. “You can develop Europe from US but not Asia,” he added.

Plus, Crisp also manages global customers in its New York office, including the Wall Street Journal and Microsoft who want ad campaigns done in Asia too.

From what I understand, WSJ has already gotten Crisp to serve campaigns in China, which is certainly a good step forward to opening accounts in the middle kingdom.