The promise of "in app" advertising

Businessworld has an article explaining how and why there's an ad for SBI in the free version of Angry Birds that you download on your tablet/mobile.

In a country obsessed with mobile devices, cool new apps on smartphones or tablets are often part of watercooler conversations. This viral growth of apps is creating an ecosystem for a new genre of mobile app advertising. Apps such as Angry Birds — which has registered over 7 million mobile downloads in India across platforms such as Android, iOS and BlackBerry — are creating captive audiences for brands.

...Sponsored advertisements allow interactivity that advertisers hope will lead to engagement and brand building. The advertisement rates depend on the number of downloads, time spent on the game, among other things...The usual revenue split is that for every Rs 100 earned through in-app advertising, Rs 30 goes to the app store, and of the remaining Rs 70, 60 per cent or Rs 42 goes to the publisher and the rest goes to the advertising network.

...A well-organised online advertising market has helped create a readymade playground for app-based advertising. Similar to the online advertisement market, advertising agencies buy inventory on behalf of their clients from advertisement networks who, in turn, buy inventory from advertisement enablers who aggregate it (media space) from the publishers. In effect, advertisement networks and advertisement enablers play the role of intermediaries bridging the gap between the brand advertisers and the publishers. The medium is also supported by analysis providers who collect location and demographic-based information of the users to help advertisers identify relevant apps.

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