Exclusive | Believing in strong engagement: Appsnack's Sandy Shanman

Appsnack (www.appsnack.com), is a mobile advertising solution that provides rich-media brand engagement campaigns for brand advertisers through in-app and mobile web advertising inventory. A division of Exponential Interactive, the global digital advertising company also owns global display advertising provider Tribal Fusion, engagement video platform Firefly Video and in-stream video advertising specialist AdoTube.

During Adtech, one the most appraised digital advertising event, Sandy Shanman, General Manager, Appsnack spoke on  the evolution of mobile. He believes that mobile is the next piece of the puzzle that will be vital in integrated marketing programs in India in 2013 and beyond. To succeed in these programs, agencies and advertisers are faced with three core considerations when looking at a mobile ad strategy – Relevance in regard to ad content and context, measurability or ROI and Rich media considerations to capitalize on the possibilities of the mobile screen.

Adgully caught up with him to understand more about the organization and also to learn how their year has been.

Just launched in India and have marked their presence in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, New York so in terms of key markets, when asked how you would rate different markets and where would you like to place India in it, he said, “India is strategically a great market. There is a huge tectonic shift in the market and looking at that it seems India is really growing in terms of organizational behavior. So for us it makes good business because of the fact that mobile has grown robustly among Indian population. The acceptance power here in India is quite interesting.” Within nine months of launch their strategy to massively reach out to brands and deliver revenue has worked for them quite positively. The company expects a 20 per cent growth.

According to Shanman, 2012 was a sluggish year for the company and the industry as a whole. When asked what strategies have always worked for you; in India and abroad, he said, “Within the span of nine months we have grown quite literally. We are working with huge names both nationally and internationally. We have brands like Disney, Starbust etc. We believe in strong engagement and evolving with market and as per the demand of the market. We have built a lot of rich engaging creative apps for our brands hence enabling them to engage further. We leverage our product and services through massive reach.”

He believes that app-advertising is a great place to be and their approach to market is to just engage and advertise creatively. “We wanted to understand the behavior of the users, to reach out the segments and match up with them. How high users are there on web and that is what we do. We are enhancing ourselves with our partners by working on what will work and what will not work for channels,” says Shanman.

In terms of competition, how Appsnack is different, he said, “With Appsnack we offer the advertisers a rich-media advertising experience through an app-like creative practice that enables engagement thus facilitating the users to get engaged and involved with features like video, product info, locations of nearby retail stores etc. Everybody wants to create an app to advertise today but it’s not easy to just create an app and engage. What matters is the fact how you make use of that app,” Shanman concluded.