Arctic Startup

We interviewed Joakim, the CEO of ironstar helsinki, and they’re building a service called MoiPal.

This time we feature a bit longer story as Markus Råmark from Mobile Advertising Solution (MAS) provides us more insight into how they see mobile marketing evolving and what they are trying to achieve. (Full disclaimer: the author’s employer has a business relationship with MAS.)

MAS launched their 123play portal a while ago in the UK, and aims to open new countries in Europe still during this year. The company plans to have the service available globally by the end of 2010. MAS is currently owned by the operative management and private investors, and is now executing a new financing round and checking for potential new investors, including also VCs.

1. Could you tell us a bit about why you founded MAS and got into the ad-funded mobile games market?

The combination of advertising and gaming on mobile is something which I have always thought would happen, ever since the birth of the whole industry around mobile content and services back in the late 90’s. Advergames, in-game advertising and ad funded gaming are interesting business models and they work well if utilized correctly. My main reason for creating MAS when I did was that it was the perfect time; all the necessary enablers were in place to establish this type of company. The mobile games industry at large is in need of new revenue streams and new effective distribution channels, and advertisers are also looking for new effective channels to reach their target groups. What this means is that there is a clear opportunity to combine these two needs, whereas until now content and advertising would have always competed for the consumers attention. We already know that millions of people regularly play mobile games; equally, the advertising industry is worth nearly half a trillion dollars a year; combining the two is an obvious thing to do.

2. How do you position 123play against and differentiate from the other ad-funded portals?

We are focusing quality, not quantity; we don’t believe that offering hundreds of poor quality games is the right approach. All the games that we distribute need to be top quality and have a high re-play value, otherwise there is no value to our advertisers. This is what makes our ad funded model successful; the more consumers play our games, the more ad impressions they generate. We have strict content guidelines which means we don’t allow adult material, bad language, and violence in our games or advertisements. This means that both big advertisers and game publishers can feel safe about distributing their ads and games in our channel, as there is no chance of their brands being misrepresented or damaged.

3. Regarding partnerts and clients, who’s looking to advertise in mobile games right now?

The ad spend on mobile at present comes from both big global brands and also pure play mobile content. However, the ad funded gaming model is still in its infancy and is being seen as an increasingly popular channel for clients to increase brand awareness and drive consumer call to action. We are running campaigns for clients as diverse as Britvic, eBay, The Sun and NME - it’s accepted that within a few years that mobile will leapfrog online as the most immediate way to reach an audience. I think that as we reach the end of 2008 we will see this channel as a key part of any company/brand mobile strategy.

Obviously, for publishers the operator is still the main focus, but whereas they may get featured on the games portal for a few weeks at best, we can get their games seen by consumers over a much longer period of time.

4. How does one make mobile advertising work?

One of the key things to make ad-funded content a success is relevance; you need to be able to serve people ads that reflect their interest. That’s made even worse if the way the advert is delivered in a poor experience or feels ‘cheap’. Some of the early attempts of ad funded mobile games have been poor quality, so that’s something we are making sure we avoid. We have found the “click to browse” type of ads work well where you can drive more traffic to your mobile site; what’s important is making sure the kinds of adverts you offer are ones that match the profile of the average mobile gamer - so things that focus on lifestyle and having fun. When we have tested these kinds of adverts, the click through rates have been very good, so that’s certainly something we will offer. Games are also a good vehicle for creating brand awareness, due to the amount of time and attention you can capture.

5. How much revenue can one make via ad-funded model?

The revenue potential depends on CPM price and the amount of game plays a certain game generates. We share the NET revenue with game publishers. At MAS, we are targeting the casual-gamer first and foremost, and so far this seems to be working well. One game can easily generate the same amount of income for a publisher as the pay per download model can, if the game is good quality and the re-play value is high. This combination of short, sharp portal downloads and slow and steady ad-funded is the way for publishers to get as much value as possible from the content they create.

Shot during our event last Thursday. Congrats to CompanyCube!

I interviewed Mr Pekka Roine last week about the initiative, that we’ve written here, to take Finnish startups to Israel to learn their secrets of success. Mr Roine has been sitting in numerous company boards both in Finland and in Israel. He also has an understanding of the differences between these two countries many would crave for.

I personally wondered why the initiative was put forward by individuals such as Mr Roine, Mr Juha Ruohonen and Greater Helsinki Promotion and not the members of parliament. After discussing for a good half an hour I understood why.

To understand the backgrounds of this exchange, one must understand Israel and what they have gone through in the last 15 years or so. Israel is one of the leading incubators and accelerators of startups in the high tech industry. During the last 15 years, Israel has “sent” more than 100 companies to Nasdaq. They also have a very systematic way of doing this and it does not rely on assumptions such as the “connections between the jews in Israel and America” or any nonsense of that sort.

However, the story goes further back. In 2004, an event was organised in Finland, followig the signing of an Agreement of Understanding between the two countries on the government level. The agreement creates the framework to work together to increase the chances of cross border co-operation and eventually, success. Needless to say such an agreement did not work very well.

In May 2006, Erkki Virtanen, the permanent secretary of TEM, together with a delegation of business and government executives visited Israel to further deepen the understanding. After the visit the understanding and keys to success began to unfold.

February this year, the chairman of the Israeli Venture Association was over for a visit in Finland and invited Finnish companies over. The visit is timed in sync with the IVA’s annual conference which gathers a lot of people from many areas of business.

The goal of the visit for the Finnish delegation this time is three fold; 1) there are lots of Israeli startups and knowledge to be shared, 2) Israeli investors are present and 3) many international investors are at the event as well.

When the program for the visit was announced in February, Greater Helsinki Promotion received applications from about 20 companies. Seven have been considered qualified for the visit. The companies travelling to Israel are Ball-it.com, Concilio Networks, Eniram, EpiCrystals, Ramblas Digital, SenseG, and Whatamap.

These seven companies will visit Israel in two weeks time. IVA’s conference is held on the 19th and 20th of May. After the conference the Finnish startups will have a chance to pitch to some Israeli startups and investors and get feedback from them, perhaps land an investment deal as well.

The program is primarily funded through sponsorship from Greater Helsinki Promotion and Technopolis Ventures BornGlobal, but there is a lot of work put in place pro bono.

Arctic Startup will be following the event very closely and we’ll be reporting on the outcome of the conference later in May.

A big thanks to everyone who showed up last night, it was definitely a blast! We’ll continue organising these events in the future and as always, we prefer to learn from our past so give us your commets in the comments form below or send us an e-mail at info(at)arcticstartup(dot)com.

I’d also like to thank Asmo Halinen, Jani Penttinen and Kristoffer Lawson for participating in the panel as well as our sponsors Mysites.com and Floobs.

We’ll be uploading the videos later on during next week.

Photo credits to pni.

The informal Finnish marketing bible, M&M reported today (article in Finnish) that Fruugo, a mysterious Finnish startup with a world class Board of Directors including Jorma Ollila (Shell, former Nokia), Risto Siilasmaa (from F-secure fame and an active Finnish Angel investor) and Marko Parkkinen (from Bob Helsinki fame), has hired three Helsinki digital agency-world big timers, namely Janne Waltonen, Sami Keinänen and Kim Stenbäck.

According to the Finnish trade register Fruugo’s line of business includes market place software development, digital market place maintenance and related activity. To shed further light into the startup, all Mr. Waltonen is ready to reveal at this point is that Fruugo is aiming at international markets right from the beginning.

More on the topic by Startupbin here and here.

Last minute reminder to all those who are in the Helsinki region tonight; get yourself down to Dubrovnik, Eerikinkatu 11, at 6pm tonight.

The event is sponsored by Mysites.com and Floobs. On the panel we have Asmo Halinen from Apaja, Jani Penttinen from XIHA Ltd and Kristoffer Lawson from Scred.

We have about 70 people marked showing up through Open Coffee and Facebook. There are people I know are coming as well who haven’t signed up so it’s going to be a full house for sure!

Looking forwards to meeting everyone there tonight!

BarCamp lands in Helsinki! Helsinki has seen some interesting international event concepts land in the city within a short time frame including Ignite and OpenCoffee Club. This Saturday is BarCamp’s turn.

BarCamp is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos, and interaction from attendees. Antti Akonniemi (from the IgniteHelsinki fame) is partly responsible for bringing the event to Helsinki. Along with Antti, Mari Koistinen a prominent blogger, is part of the organizing committee. Both active Jaiku users, Antti and Mari along with a few others kick started the event organizing in the Jaiku forum.

The proposed BarCamp Helsinki sessions include the following:

• Time management
• Creative flows
• Case studies: Effects, aspects of use of Jaiku as organizing tool
• Location-based services
• Microformats for bloggers: What, why and how?
• Scred vs BillMonk (with Peter Robinett

The event takes place in the new Fjord offices on Saturday 10th May.

I interviewed Ville Vesterinen last a few nights ago as he’s joining our team here at Arctic Startup. We’ve been organising startup events together with Ville for a while and thought it only made sense to further combine our efforts. Ville has also been running the Open Coffee Club here in Helsinki.

Welcome Ville, really glad to have you on the team!

Updated the video player to Blip.tv, which seems to have very good quality video playback.

Zipipop (see our previous coverage) launched recently an English version of their “Mennäänkö yhdelle?” application in Facebook, now called “Going for one?“. It’s an application designed to make it easier to get your friends in the same place for a drink. Helene Auramo, CEO of Zipipop, provided us a bit more insight into the company’s plans.

Helene comments it was clear from the beginning that if the application would fare well in Finland, they would produce an English version. The Finnish user interface has done the trick in getting the application to spread around, and it seemed right now was a good time to make the international debut.

Helene reveales Zipipop has actually used the Going for One? application as a demo for a bigger “Event Organizer”, to learn about users’ wishes and behavior. They were especially interested in learning how spontaneous small event organizing works with social media.

Then the obvious follow-up question, where’s the money? Helene comments Zipipop is currently developing “creative advertising models” supporting the usability of the applications and providing thus added value for the users, as opposed to banner advertising. In addition Zipipop continues to make Facebook applications for other companies. Helene confirms Zipipop is profitable already, so seems they have been able to keep costs under control so far.

In the future Zipipop will be expanding into mobile. Going for One application is already usable on mobile, and according to Helene the main focus of development will be seen on that front. She also flashes iPhone as one of the target platforms, and the company is also looking into Open Social.

While the Facebook/social network sector can be a tough place to do business in, it’s good to see brave activity there (and there are some good examples also). These days it seems everyone’s up to creating different advertising models, though, but I hope Zipipop finds the correct mix. I also heard through the grapevine Zipipop has something to do with a Finnish technology consulting firm, who is among other things specialized ramping up startups and acquiring funding…maybe there’s something coming up?