InMobi Acquiring Mobile Tools; WSJ: $150 Million Booked Ads For YouTube

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InMobi’s App-ortunity

More evidence that there’s good money in driving mobile app installs, as InMobi snatches up Metaflow Solutions. It’s the second such buy for InMobi this month, following the acquisition of MMTG Labs. TechCrunch’s Ingrid Lunden says Metaflow “works with ‘thousands’ of active mobile developers and helps distribute apps and other content to some 350 app stores and operators worldwide.” Read on.

The Sleepy Audience

MediaPost columnist Steve Smith reviews some new data that reveals sleepy smartphone users “will give up something of value (sleep) to them in order to engage in an activity.” Read it. An insight from the study: “Among those who did engage in past-bedtime media use, most were using their devices as portable video screens. In the survey, 59% of the up-laters were using a tablet to view a video, movie or TV show and 55% were using their smartphone to do the same.” Sounds like brand opportunity – for Tylenol PM.

YouTube Ad$

The Wall Street Journal’s Amir Efrati reports that Google is pouring the marketing spend into YouTube with some positive side effects. “The company says it will put in another $200 million to market the channels as it attempts to upgrade its content from simple user-generated videos and to lure more viewers and advertising. (…) YouTube has secured commitments from advertisers to run more than $150 million of ads on the channels this year, according to a person with direct knowledge of the sales.” Those ads include both video and graphical display ads. Read more (subscription).

Lotame’s Android Target

Despite the excitement over targeting mobile users, the ability to do so across Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android systems are actually pretty thin. That said, data management company Lotame is voting for Android. Doug Pollack, Lotame’s director of Platform Solutions tells Mediapost’s Steve Smith, “In the Android OS, you can drop a third-party cookie, so we are able to honor user privacy.” In the meantime, the cookie-less iOS remains “on the roadmap,” but Lotame will take a wait-and-see approach to the expected tracking replacement for the Apple’s unique user ID. Read more.

House For Your Thoughts

“Ad networks and vendors go to great lengths to catch the attention of media buyers and agencies, paying for clothes and other merchandise at ‘tangible meetings,’ giving them laptops in return for insertion orders, and tickets to concerts and Yankees games.” But, that’s not all – Digiday’s Jack Marshall reviews the summer houses of the ad networks. Dis-gusting – unlesss you’re invited.

Contextual TV

Aiming to “make online video ad buying similar to television,” former YuMe exec Michael Mathieu has climbed aboard the re-branded SET (was Affine Systems) and tells MediaPost’s Laurie Sullivan all about it: “The SET platform targets ads by content, based on keywords, such as swimming or gymnastics, and uses computer vision and natural language processing to place ads. It lets advertisers see where the ads place before they run.” Read more.

But Wait. There’s More!