InMobi launches programmatic exchange around in-app advertising and video

In a bid to become the largest independent platform for in-app video advertising, InMobi has launched a programmatic exchange for the APAC region.

Reportedly capable of reaching 800 million mobile devices, the mobile-first programmatic platform offers advertisers and agencies the ability to scale across all markets, according to InMobi.

According to Abhay Singhal, president of the advertising cloud at InMobi, the launch supports the three pillars of programmatic growth and adoption, namely trust and transparency, the growth of in-app advertising and the success of the mobile video. With a network covering 1.6 billion identified unique users, half of which reside in the APAC region, by 2020 InMobi intends to capture up to 15% of the programmatic market with the new exchange.

According to a report by App Annie, by 2021, the global app economy will be worth $6.3 trillion and the user base will almost double to 6.3 billion, while the time spent in apps will grow to 3.5 trillion hours. Of this, 12% will come from the APAC region, amounting to $77 billion.

According to Jayesh Easwaramony, SVP and MD of the APMEA region at InMobi, both mobile in-app and video will constitute 85% of all programmatic buying by 2020. Today, mobile-only comprises 40% of all digital programmatic buying, and within that 15% is in-app.

"The paradox of the situation is that 65% of all the time spent on digital channels is on mobile apps," said Easwaramony. "Besides, apps that run on device IDs perform far more effectively than cookies on every metric because device IDs are persistent in understanding users better as against transient cookies."

InMobi hopes that the newly launched programmatic exchange will accelerate adoption in APAC.