Everybody hates mobile ads. Here’s how an InMobi monkey makes them more friendly

Ads – on television, computers, and now mobile – have always been an annoyance. We wish they would go away; often we take a loo break when they interrupt our favorite TV shows. In a mobile app, our patience wears even thinner.

But what if an animated brown monkey follows you from app to app and tells you about a killer discount at your favorite shoe store or that a book you’ve been hunting for is available on Amazon? What’s more, the monkey lets you bag the shoes or book right there without stepping into another app. That’s basically what Miip is. It’s the latest product from Indian adtech titan InMobi.

InMobi believes Miip to be a “revolutionary” leap forward in advertising. Why? For one, Miip can help you shop for anything from anywhere. That means you wouldn’t have to shut the Tech in Asia app in the middle of an engrossing article if you spot an iTokri ad with an enticing pair of silver jhumka (Indian earrings that look like little umbrellas) at the bottom of the page. The virtual monkey will help you buy the earrings you just discovered while you stay inside the news app.

It will show you ads of only those products and services you are most likely to be interested in. Miip does that using InMobi’s worldwide ad network and a huge pool of user data.

Custom-made ads

The Indian startup has one billion monthly active users in its network, lands 138 billion ad impressions every month, and tracks 2.6 billion app downloads. With all these, InMobi is betting that Miip can bring a new level of personalization to mobile ads.

Another new aspect to the ad monkey system is that the ad itself is going to be packaged differently. It won’t be a tacky banner or a clumsy box any more. Instead, that cute, brown monkey mascot will present the product or service to you gently without being too obtrusive. If you hate the suggestion, you have the option to tell Miip so, and that will shut him up. But if you like what Miip is showing you and want a more personalized product discovery experience, you can tell him more about your interests.

“We believe this is really a first by any firm to solve the problem of discovery on mobile,” says InMobi co-founder and CEO Naveen Tewari. He was talking to journalists on a conference call from San Francisco, where he launched Miip.

Miip from the backend

Now we know how the ads appear from a user’s perspective – so how does it fare from the advertisers’ and publishers’ point of view?

InMobi says Miip lets advertisers position their messages to consumers not just on the basis of external contexts like location, weather, or content, but also personal sentiments such as likes, dislikes, and tastes. It promises a more targeted audience and a wider reach. That coupled with reaching buyers on any app which lets Miip in.

“Traditional retailers and ecommerce merchants can now showcase their catalogs to more than a billion mobile users and drive sales outside their existing stores,” says Tewari.

With Miip, users will discover products and services which do not clash with the native app. That is, it blends with the app and doesn’t interfere much with the user experience. That’s a headache less for developers and publishers, who could use Miip to monetize their apps through ads unobtrusively, states InMobi.