Progress Scouting Report: Mobile World Congress

Barcelona, Spain – March 20, 2017 GSMA hosted its annual Mobile World Congress in the week from February 27th ? March 2nd 2017. Held at the Fira Gran Via and the Fira Barcelona, the conference featured all the newest technology in the mobile space. Over 108,000 participants attended the event, all interested in learning and discussing where the future of mobile is headed. Throughout our time at Mobile World Congress, it became clear that this year?s convention was not just about mobile phones, but more about the business opportunities mobile phones have created.

The conference was split into two different convention centers. The Fira Gran Via featured eight sprawling halls of established companies ranging from mobile OEMs and platform providers to connected car manufacturers. A short shuttle bus ride away, at the ?4 Years from Now? (termed: 4YFN) exhibition in Fira Barcelona, we interacted with more than 600 startup companies seeking to change the future of the mobile landscape.

Throughout the main halls at Fira Gran Via, we had the chance to meet several expansion and growth-stage companies, some of which we had met previous and others that represented new introductions and opportunities. We are continually impressed by the progress of these companies and the innovative steps they continue to take in maximizing the tectonic shift apparent in the mobile marketplace. Some of these growth-stage companies included:

  • AppsFlyer is a platform for mobile attribution and mobile advertisement and marketing analytics. Data-driven marketers are using AppsFlyer to analyze their apps and maximize their return on investment, by receiving independent measurement and tools to grow their mobile business.

  • Digital Turbine provides end-to-end solutions for mobile operators and OEMs to allow them to monetize mobile content. They offer mobile app management along with application stores mobile payment platforms and content management solutions.

  • Emarsys is a leading global provider of marketing automation software and the first marketing cloud providing white-glove service to retail and ecommerce market players. The Emarsys B2C marketing Cloud enables one-to-one interactions between marketers and consumers across all channels.

  • Liftoff provides a mobile app marketing and retargeting platform which uses post-install data to run true CPA-optimized campaigns.

  • ViDillion is an advertising technology company that gives video content creators the opportunity to connect TV viewers and advertisers. It gathers the ad inventory from multiple platforms and delivers the ads to viewers. The company also offers a connected TV solution, that negotiates between multiple ad platforms to determine the appropriate ad to display by country and ethnic community, thereby maximizing advertising revenue for content owners

At 4YFN, we also met several early-stage businesses that caught our attention as potential disruptors in the mobile-focused advertising and marketing technology verticals. While far from an exhaustive list, some of the most intriguing players who exhibited their technology included:

  • FluidAds is a data-driven platform aimed at creating personalized dynamic advertisements. The platform allows anyone to create and design, data driven HTML5 creatives, at scale, across devices, in all different shapes and sizes, in minutes.

  • Fluzo provides an Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) platform that allows companies to Monitor media consumption & track how users watch TV across devices. This helps companies turn content and audience into actionable and useful data.

  • NicePeopleAtWork is a big data and technology company catering to the needs of the online media industry. Using real-time data NPAW helps their customers deliver flawless TV-quality experiences. NPAW provides OTT platform with all they data they need to give their consumers the best viewing experience possible.

  • TheMotion provides dynamic video advertising capabilities for its customers by generating hundreds of thousands iterations of each creative unit to define a new level of targeting in the geographic and demographic sphere. The Company operates on a subscription-based revenue model, with customers paying a monthly fee based on their level of content production.

As the mobile device continues to become an extension of our own being, we see Mobile World Congress as an increasingly important event, with major players making significant investments to showcase their hard work in front of industry peers each year in Barcelona.

Read more about the MWC 2017 highlights here: http://bit.ly/2nayVOh

 

Progress Partners MWC 2017 Cocktail Party (Barcelona, Spain)