Abstract

InMobi, a mobile advertising company based in Bengaluru, India, started its operations in 2007 and grew rapidly to become the largest independent mobile advertising network in the Asia-Pacific and Africa regions and India’s first Advertising Unicorn by 2011. InMobi started its operations with Short Message Service (SMS) or Text message based search engine services for mobile e-payments for advertisements. However, due to the changing scenario in the advertising industry, the increasing use of the internet, and the growing demand of customers, the company changed its business model and moved from SMS advertising to mobile advertising. Over the years, it launched various ad platforms and began using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and other technical innovations to offer a personalized advertising experience to customers. It also partnered with various companies to expand its presence across the world. While exploring growth opportunities in the advertising industry and enhancing customer experiences, InMobi faced several challenges. The challenges were mostly related to regulations like Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and App Tracking Transparency (ATT) regulations, which created barriers for it in the scaling of data, reaching out to the target audience, and tracking user activities. The low adoption rate of iOS 14.5, decrease in the effective Cost Per Mile (eCPM) for Limit ad tracking (LAT) and problems in the company’s retargeting campaigns were the other challenges that InMobi faced. It would be interesting to see, against this backdrop, how InMobi will navigate the regulatory challenges. Going forward, what are the strategies the company is likely to adopt to sustain its position in the Indian mobile advertising industry?

Learning Objectives

The case is structured to achieve the following Learning Objectives:

• Understand the concept of mobile advertising and how it works.
• Analyze how technology impacts the advertising industry.
• Examine the various challenges faced by a mobile advertising company in growing its business.

Keywords

Mobile advertising; geo-context targeting; affinity targeting; Digital marketing; Advertising and communication