Vserv.mobi Appifies Print Publishers Through Mobile Apps

Vserv.mobi, a mobile advertising exchange, has announced its strategy in helping more than 30 leading print publishers “App”ify their content across emerging markets. 

The “App”ification intitiave, a key Vserv.mobi offering, has seen print publishers such as the India Today group, Vaartha, Pioneer Book Co, Rajasthan Patrika, Detikcom, Antara, Utusan and others reach out to a larger audience spectrum through mobile apps. Vserv.mobi will roll out over 100 apps across languages, categories and operating systems with this initiative.

“Towards the beginning of 2013, we realised the potential that the consumption of content on mobile was the next big phase in the industry. With print readership migrating, content publishers were looking at various models of approach to address the growing shift of audiences in emerging markets. With the rise of mobile internet users, the solution was to create an “app”ortunity that will benefit the industry.” said Prashant Dixit, Director - Global Business Development, Vserv.mobi. The “App”ification initiative was to engage with traditional news, magazines and other content publishers, and bring them a strategy that we believed was going to be the next big thing in the mobile universe. Over the past year, we have “app”ified over 100 publications in multiple languages across categories like women, technology, health, media, news, sports etc. Today, Vserv plays the role of the catalysts to the growth of the mobile app ecosystem by helping publishers and brands leverage the mobile medium effectively.”

Premium publishers such as Rajasthan Patrika, Vaartha, India Today, Pioneer Book Co, Vikatan Group, Asianet, Bindiya Group, Upkar Prakashan, Eenadu, EFY Group, Cyber Media Group, Detikcom, Wolipop, Antara News, Suara Merdeka, KasaKusuk amongst others, have benefitted from the strategy to “app”ify their content in emerging markets, coinciding with the high growth of mobile internet users.

Aman Malhotra, Digital Marketing Head, Samsung India, said “Multilingual Content getting Appified is key for the growth of mobile media consumption in Emerging Markets. At Samsung, we are always looking for smarter ways to take our ads to the next billion customers, especially to the right customer. This strategy by Vserv to help multi lingual content publishers “app”ify their content, comes at the right time. Publishers creating apps in local languages give us an opportunity to extend our relationship with them, into a new medium. This opportunity along with the other features that Vserv has brought to Samsung, makes them one of the very few companies that’s striving towards unlocking the true potential of the mobile medium. “

The strategy to “app”ify content is a boost to the publisher industry, it also opened a door of opportunity to various brands looking to target ads based on readership patterns. With content delivered directly to the mobile phone, brands such as Samsung will be able to micro-target their advertising dollars towards customers tailoring concepts based on the user language and content preferences.

Gerry Leo Nugroho, Dept. Head Marketing Service - Sales & Marketing Directorate, detikcom said, “With the increase in 3G infrastructure and adoption of smartphones, the emerging market mobile consumers are looking for regional content. Through the “Wollipop” app, we were able to take content directly to the consumers. While consumers were one part of the puzzle, the ability to monetize the app was a great strategy by the Vserv.mobi, giving us an alternate revenue model as well.”.

Gourav Sharma, CEO, Rajasthan Patrika Digital said, “We realised that mobile matters more to our marketing and business strategy now than ever before. Vserv.mobi has enabled us to make our brand, a part of our users’ daily lives while providing us with very high yields.”

Salil Kumar, COO, India Today Group Digital said “The ubiquity of smartphones and tablets is making readers demand comprehensive and up-to-date news coverage. Vserv.mobi’s passion for mobile reflects in the counsel and execution capabilities that has helped us realise how best to meet our consumers’ expectations on mobile and the role of advertising in monetisation of our growing mobile user traffic.”

Rajiv Pahwa, Director - Pioneer Book Co. Pvt Ltd, the publishers of Meri Saheli, the #1 woman centric magazine of India, said, “As traditional publishers, the mobile medium offers us a new avenue to reach a larger audience and effectively leverage our expertise in women centric  content with  Vserv’s  understanding of the mobile ecosystem.”

Through this initiative, Vserv.mobi has played a pivotal role in enabling content for publishers across languages such as English, Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Gujarati, Punjabi, Bengali, Malayalam, Bahasa, Malay, Swahili and many more to be added soon. Aligning with the target audience of the publishers, the appification strategy has been devised across operating systems like Android, iOS, Windows etc.

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