This is interesting. InMobi, an international mobile advertising network based in Bangalore, India and backed by a substantial amount of US-based venture capital, has come up with an innovative means to boost its mobile ad market-share in the U.S. while the big players (Google & Apple) are busy battling things out in other areas.
The company today announced a $2 million world developer fund
to encourage application developers to use InMobi for in-app advertising- making all developers on the Android, iPhone and iPad platforms eligible. What’s interesting about the plan is that InMobi usually keeps 40% of gross advertising revenue and 60% goes to the developer, but during this program, developers get to keep 100% of the advertising revenue. InMobi’s 40% cut comes out of the $2 million developer fund.
Once the fund dries up, the normal 60/40 split will take effect, but not before they likely encourage a huge amount of developers to utilize their platform in hopes they’ll continue once it’s all said and done. It’s a unique approach, and a good way to one-up the competition by giving developers the one thing they’ve always wanted- use of a third-party in-app mobile advertising platform while keeping 100% of the profits. Should be interesting to see how this one plays out in the end, stay tuned.