Mobile advertising platform Medialets' founder Eric Litman has advised start-ups seeking to monetise mobile applications and services to "follow where the dollars are, not where you think they might be".
Speaking at DEMO Europe in Moscow today, Litman described how he jumped on the app store boom by building his mobile platform in just 41 days when Apple launched its mobile store in 2008
Since then, said Litman, a stable industry has built up that is differentiating itself from the world of desktop computer-focused advertising that came before it, adding that start-ups would do well to stick to "alternative models" to simple banner advertising.
Litman advised gaming companies to focus on "paid app downloads and location-driven offers", while companies with "a bit of scale and audience" in their model, or those with content-related deals with larger organisations, should stick to selling bundled packages of services to consumers.
Litman also predicted huge growth in demand for video from advertisers, pointing out how television companies in particular are "thinking very differently from other digital companies", and commanding as much as $8 CPM [cost per thousand impressions] compared to "as low as a few pennies" for traditional banner advertising.
Litman believes Facebook’s mobile revenue stream is now safe thanks to its retargeting model – displaying ads for consumers on sites other than Facebook after an initial advert has been clicked – based on data it possesses from signed-up members.
But Litman offered up a challenge for wannabe entrepreneurs at DEMO Europe: "The answer for the rest of the world is: be smart - figure out another way to measure. The world hasn't figured them all out yet, but there are other ways."
Litman's words chime with those of Mailbox founder Gentry Underwood, who in his earlier keynote described online advertising as "an unsolved problem up to now".
Underwood also urged start-ups to "think about simple designs" rather than attempting to match the complexity of products such as Apple's speech recognition app Siri, or Google's upcoming Glass.
While Underwood branded Glass "ridiculous from a design perspective", and "bizarre", he acknowledged that wearable technology in some form would have a place in the market, and probably remain preferable to the "pain" of having surgery to fit implanted technology in the body.
