Airtel has partnered with mobile advertising platform InMobi to capitalise its Airtel TV app and advertise to users. Through this strategic collaboration, brands will now have a wider reach to premium ad inventory on the Airtel TV mobile app on the InMobi network, the companies said in a statement.
Airtel TV is an OTT app by the telecom service provider, available for free to Airtel users until June 2018. Airtel already has a partnership with InMobi for its music app Wynk.
Airtel TV app will also roll-out other features for cricket viewing, coinciding with IPL 2018, which advertisers can use to engage viewers, said Sameer Batra, CEO for content and apps at Bharti Airtel. While Hotstar holds digital rights for IPL, Airtel and Jio have partnerships with the platform to stream IPL on their OTT apps.
Airtel’s OTT platform also has content deal to feature ALTBalaji’s content on its app. It integrates content from Sony, Eros, Hooq and Amazon Prime Video as well. The company claims that users have spent over two billion minutes watching videos on the app since the beginning of the year, and the app is soon expected to reach 50 million downloads.
Telecom service providers are now foraying into OTT services, as the demand and consumption of video content leaps. Both Jio and Vodafone offer similar apps free, for their respective users.
InMobi’s expansion
In January this year, InMobi acquired US-based mobile video ad startup AerServ for $90 million in cash and stock deal. Post this, the company’s video and programmatic (automated digital advertising purchase technology) business will account for 35 percent of the overall company revenue and will help the company to strengthen its position in the mobile video advertising industry in the US.
Early last year, InMobi also partnered with Chinese mobile manufacturer Xiaomi for advertising on the latter’s devices, to provide video ads on the phones. This was InMobi’s second international partnership after it partnered with US based Tapjoy to monetize the latter’s mobile gaming apps like 8 Ball Pool, Criminal Case, Subway Surfer etc., in India.
