Network Effect: SingTel-Owned Amobee Expands Mobile Ad Platform To Cover Its Globe, Optus And Telkomsel Holdings

When the pan-Asian mobile carrier SingTel paid $321 million to acquire mobile ad platform SingTel in May last year, the thinking was that the Singapore-based SingTel could use Amobee to serve targeted ads to its 480-million mobile subscriber base across the region. Some eight months after the deal has closed, that network effect is coming into play: today Amobee is announcing that it will take over all mobile ads for SingTel, as well as Globe in the Philippines, Optus in Australia and New Zealand and and Telkomsel in Indonesia. The deal is exclusive and will mean that all four carriers will be served ads through Amobee’s PULSE mobile ad platform — which was initially developed by Amobee in California but has since been integrated into SingTel’s servers in the Asia-Pacific region. Initially, this deal will cover 200 million users, Amobee says, but will be extended out to eventually cover all of SingTel’s 480 million subscribers. Overall, SingTel is active in 20 countries. Amobee continues to work with other carriers that are not part of the SingTel group. These include AT&T and Sprint in the U.S., Vodafone and Telefonica, as well as others across Europe and the Middle East. But the Asia-Pacific portion of its business is now growing. Whereas last year it made up 10% of Amobee’s revenues, this year that rise to at least one-third. The idea is for SingTel to gain better control over ads across its network of operations, and offer publishers a more attractive, targeted advertising option than going with one of the other established players — such as Google, the king of the mobile advertising hill. “Instead of competing against Google, it?s about doing something different,” noted Mark Strecker, COO for Amobee, in an interview with TechCrunch. “A lot of carriers are looking for alternatives to Google.” That strategy, of course, will take on a new twist for SingTel in the coming years. SingTel is one of the 18 carriers that has signed on to work with Mozilla in the development of the Firefox OS for mobile (and the two partner on investments to boost that ecosystem, too, such as this $25 million investment in mobile search startup Everything.me). One of the promises of the new HTML5-friendly platform is that it will give carriers a bigger say in how mobile services are localized for their respective customer bases. That will include what ads get delivered,

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