Naveen Tewari, the founder and CEO of InMobi, sent a hilarious email to his contact list today.
The context here is that InMobi is the largest independent mobile ad company on the planet. It has revenues of around $400 million and about 900 employees. Some people think Google ought to buy it. If you have seen an ad on your phone, you've almost certainly seen one served by InMobi.
Here's what Tewari's email said:
"Is there a way to turn off these irritating ads on my phone? I don't know if anyone ever clicks on them. I wonder who spends time putting these ugly ads on my phone," my daughter asked me one day at dinner, oblivious of the business I was in.
Ouch.
Even the daughter of one of the most important mobile ad execs on the planet hates mobile advertising.
Tewari used the anecdote to launch Miip, a new mobile ad product from InMobi. Miip is an animated monkey, who will watch your app and browsing behavior on your phone. If Miip sees that you're interested in something in an app, it will jump out onto your screen with curated shopping recommendations. The Miip app will track your phone usage from app to app, giving InMobi data to make better recommendations than regular mobile ads (and giving InMobi a lot more data on you than a single ad in an app would).
It's not clear whether consumers want more interruptions instead of ads, but Tewari's bet here is that if those interruptions are served in the form of a cute monkey people might complain about them less.
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