This first in a series of exclusive interviews with mobile ad networks profiles JumpTap and details what today’s announcement means for advertisers, publishers, and market rivals. Look for more interviews/podcasts with ad networks you need to know better, including Greystripe (CEO Michael Chang tells how his company made the move from advertising enabler to ad network); Mojiva (CEO Dave Gwozdz walks us through a new white-label platform for publishers); and itsmy.com (CEO Vince Staybl talks about targeting options in itsmy.biz, the mobile social network’s ad network). If you are an ad network with a story to tell, then contact me directly or arrange a briefing with Andrea Henninge (andrea@msearchgroove.com).

On the heels of JumpTap’s announcement of tapMatch, its pay-per-click (PPC) performance mobile ad marketplace, I can finally post this exclusive Q&A with Paran Johar, JumpTap CMO. During the pre-briefing, we went through the nuts and bolts of the offer (unlike Google, which offers keyword bidding  and MCN – a provider of mobile search management, search merchandising, and PPC content promotion solutions offering category bidding- Jumptap offers both), and took a closer look at how the search technology potentially maximizes performance by delivering contextually relevant advertising.

By way of background, tapMatch builds audience profiles from multiple sources including search queries, context, and click thru history to match the most relevant ad messages to each mobile consumer. Advertisers can target their marketing message according to keywords, categories, location, demographics, mobile carrier, publisher, and mobile handsets including Blackberry and iPhone. Ads run across a comprehensive set of categories including automotive, careers, finance, fitness, and health, enhanced by keyword search parameters. They are priced and served by auction, and advertisers only pay when consumers click on their messages.

JumpTap tells me it can decipher the keywords from mobile Web pages and use that information to create categories of users. For instance, in this chocolate example above, if the user has gone to a site about mobile phones and then another site comparing different mobile technologies, the system knows that a search for “chocolate” has a higher probability of meaning the mobile phone “chocolate” instead of something you eat. JumpTap can then place the correct advertiser ads in front of the user that relate to chocolate phones and not candy.

Q&A EXCERPT:

Q: Let’s start with the landscape. When I read the draft press release I thought it competes with Google at one level and MCN at another. What is the differentiation?

A: Well, that’s really the point. It’s not just a pay-per-click marketplace. It is a pay-per-click marketplace that allows advertisers to bid all the way to the keyword level. Smart advertisers understand that keyword level buying is the best way to target users. So this allows you to target context, and [target] carrier handset, all the way to the keyword level.

Q: How does your technology do it?

A: Our technology crawls the page, extracts the relevant keywords, builds a taxonomy based on those keywords, and then builds a preference set to develop an audience profile to serve a relevant ad.

Q: How does this fit in with the other products and announcements I’ve tracked on MSG? I’m thinking here of your white label search, your premium ad network – the works.

A: You mention the premium mobile ad network. Now this has been an evolution to our business model. We started with tapSearch, which is our white label search product. We evolved into the premium mobile ad network, which still exists and is really toward let’s say the upper funnel of mobile advertising to drive brand awareness, consideration, purchase intent. We’ve got our platform, tapLink, to extract data from carriers. This [tapMatch] is the last piece of the puzzle, utilizing our search technology to develop audience profiles in a pay-per-click marketplace. It [tapLink] addresses the ROI sensitive advertiser. So, if the premium mobile ad network is really focused on the upper funnel, tapMatch is really on the lower funnel -  driving ROI, whether that is click-through, click-to-action, click-to-SMS, or click-to-call.

Q: What about publishers?

It provides publishers with access to multiple resources for their inventory monetization. First, they can allocate a percentage of that [inventory] toward brand advertising – actually as much as possible to get those high effective CPMs. Second, they can take any remnant inventory and run it through tapMatch with full transparency and full control to make sure that they’re not running let’s say, punch the monkey ads. The advertiser also could control on the other side, what types of publishers they run on.

Q: Relevancy is a big part of your messaging here. Is this because you sense a change in what advertisers require? It used to be about showing an ad and now it’s about making sure the ad matches context somewhere along the way.

A: Yes. Our goal is not to run billions and billions of impressions. Our goal is to make an impression – with both the consumer and the advertiser – with relevancy. The mobile phone is a very personal channel. We think the appetite for a user to accept what I call ’spam advertising’ has really diminished, and that’s why we really focus on driving relevancy from all sources.

Q: What is the fit with iPhone?

A: Well certainly iPhone apps are part of both networks. An iPhone application developer is really like a publisher with much more dynamic abilities for creative insertion in terms of integration into maps, integration into address books, whatever. So absolutely, a publisher has the opportunity to participate in either or both [ad networks]. And they can allocate their inventory based on their choice.

Q: Of course there are a lot of ad networks out there. How are you going to continue to differentiate?

A: If you can name me another ad network with 17 carrier relationships and search as part of its technology, then we have competition. The only one I know that’s even close is obviously Google. Google and Yahoo we compete with. But the AdMobs and the Quattros of the world are in another space. If you just look at the ad network component of our business, then, yes, we compete, but they don’t have that white label search technology and they don’t have any of the carrier information either.

Q: That may be – but the space is crowding fast…

A: We organized a mobile advertising conference in Florida a couple of weeks ago on a Saturday night through Sunday. And we had almost 200 brands and agencies show up. I organized that and I reached out to our friends at AdMob and our friends at Quattro, and they participated as part of this mobile advertising conference. They are ad networks, and there is differentiation. We all know Quattro – they take a different approach which is ‘I’ll build your WAP site in exchange for the ad revenue’. AdMob takes the long-tail approach.

Ours is completely different. We have those carrier relationships. We’ve got the white label mobile search technology that builds relevancy, we’ve got the premium mobile ad network for the top funnel, and then we’ve got tapMatch, a performance marketplace that builds relevancy; that takes it all the way to the keyword level, utilizing hyper-targeting.

You can’t just go out and get 17 carrier relationships. You can’t just go out and build a white label search engine and utilize that technology for hyper-targeting. That kind of stuff takes years and years of development.

Q: What about the mobile analytics? What can I track and target?

A: It’s fully self-service. The app has tracking mechanisms so you can set up click-to-SMS, click-to-call, click through, and track all of that at the individual campaign level.

Q: And the difference with AdSense here?

A: Certainly AdSense is similar. However, they don’t do carrier targeting or handset targeting or context. So it takes AdSense specifically made for mobile to the next level.

Q: You have 17 carrier relationships. These include:  AT&T, Alltel, Boost, Virgin, US Cellular, Orange Spain, TeliaSonera Group (in seven countries), 3 Sweden and Bell Mobility. It’s a good mix, but I miss more operators in Europe and Asia.

A: We’re looking at the rest of Europe, and we’re obviously looking at parts of Asia. But we’re doing so very carefully. Given the economic times, excessive capital expenditure right now does not make sense. We have to look at those opportunistically to make sure it’s the right time. And you’re going to hear a big announcement for us in Spain in the coming weeks.

Q: Let’s talk about some hard numbers. In your press release you state: “Reaching qualified mobile audiences with highly targeted, relevant ads elicits strong consumer engagement, increased click thru rates and higher conversions according to early testers of the tool.” What is the range of CPCs you see?

A: It really depends on the category and the keyword. The more granular you get in terms of your keywords, the more expensive the bid price. And it’s dynamic and all in real-time. What are the keywords on Google or Yahoo? It depends on the keyword and it depends on the category, and it depends on the day and time. It could range from $0.10 to $0.25 in some cases to several dollars.

Q: Not a ball-park figure?

A: Peggy, it just depends on the keyword and the time of day. It’s almost like saying how much does a TV spot cost. It depends if you’re in prime-time; daytime; late news. And it’s similar here.

Q: Many will read today’s announcement as  throwing down the gauntlet, challenging Google and Yahoo. Is that how you see it?

A: Yes, definitely it’s a David verses Goliath story and we don’t mind being David. The fact that people reference Google and Yahoo in an on-going basis with JumpTap is a good thing for us.

Q: So let’s wrap up with some nuts and bolts. When are you live and in which countries?

A: We can give you a demo log-in – it goes live on the 15^th. It’s only the U.S. right now.

My take: Competition is heating up, but JumpTap’s connection with mobile operators (and access to valuable customer data that Google and Yahoo will never see) is the source of competitive advantage. JumpTap’s marketplace (category and keyword) and spread of networks (Premium Ad Network and now tapMatch) position it to offer a powerful combination of premium and performance advertising, going a long way toward ensuring the best ads will appear on a site. The technology is in place, now JumpTap has to focus on execution and slow but steady expansion of its operator footprint.

Tags: AdMob, behavioral targeting, Google, Greystripe, itsmy.com, JumpTap, MCN, Mo'jiva, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Search, Quattro Wireless

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 15th, 2009 at 2:03 pm and is filed under Mobile Advertising, Mobile Research, Mobile Search, Personalization. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.