Read the wacky email that got us an instant meeting with a VC. Using a poker analogy for our startup,  we sent this cold email out and got a reply 30 minutes later from the Managing Director of the fund. I guess sometimes, you just have to be a little crazy or maybe we are just lucky . Let us know what you think !

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Pocket pairs, pre-flop : MobileApps.com & XYZ Ventures! (Subject of the email)

Hi Team XYZ Ventures!  (name has been changed for obvious reasons)

What do you do when you have pocket pairs and the flop hits trips? Do you slow-play or do you raise the pot?

My name is Alvin Koay and I am with MobileApps.com. 

My company MobileApps.com had raised seed at USD400K, 10 months ago from a public company in Japan. They are also our strategic business partner. And, that is our pocket pair.

Now, 10 months later, we have a great team of 15, a completed product, launching 2 other biz units soon (MobileAds.com & RichMediaAds.com). We are also launching in Japan, talking to Dentsu, Orange Capital, Tigris Capital, Teak Capital and others. We also got the founder of Plurk.com as our advisor and building an ad network to test out with them. It seems we have a pretty good flop that made our pocket pair trips!

So now, we want to raise the pot and flush out the threats. We want to raise a follow-on seed fund of $300K to extend our runway. We want to start scaling and build out this "big, hairy, audacious goal" of ours. And we want to have more funding options to scale with.

I was wondering if XYZ Ventures are interested to be a part of our grand vision and to help us win the pot. We need money to raise and flush the other players out. We need backing from industry veterans like your team.

Unfortunately, I am not able to make it to the poker game that XYZ is organizing this month, but we will be in Singapore next week to talk to a few investors. 

I wonder if you can oblige a short meeting mid of next week. I will send you our pitch deck if you are interested.

Thanks for your time and cheers!

To your best and highest,

Alvin Koay
MobileApps.com | CEO & Founder

"Rise and rise again, until lambs become lions."

So, the latest buzzword in online advertising is CPE or Cost Per Engagement. In CPE, the advertiser pays only when their Rich Media Ad is engaged by the user. And yes, CPE only works for Rich Media Ads. Static text-link or banner ads do not qualify because users cannot engage or interact with them.

But will advertisers really want to pay for ad engagement? The conventional CPM (Cost Per Thousand Impressions) and CPC (Cost Per Click) models clearly target specific types of advertisers. Big brands with big budgets – Coca Cola, Volkswagen and Gucci – often adopt CPM because they want maximum exposure. Cost to them is hardly a consideration. That’s why we see big brands advertising on premium publishers with high CPM. Their main purpose is to get their brand out to as many viewers as possible.

On the other hand, CPC works very well with respond- or ROI-focused advertisers. They will only pay if a user clicks on their ad. CPC allows a cost-conscious advertiser to better control his ad campaign budget. Ads on the CPC model are usually placed in “long tail” publishers. Google AdSense/AdWords is a very successful “pay per click” network popular among these types of advertisers and publishers.

Then, what about the CPE model? Big brands with their Rich Media Ads on premium publishers would certainly like to know how effectively users engage with their ads. But do they really care about engagement cost if their goal is to expose their product to a large consumer base? Then we have the small businesses and individuals with specific products or services to sell. These guys are only concerned about results. Period. And CPC serves this objective very well. Like the big brands, they would be interested in how their ads are being engaged; however, paying for engagement is futile if the ad doesn’t generate any clicks.

Ad engagement by itself is an undeniably valuable measurement because engagement equals increased brand recall, awareness, favorability and purchase intent. But will advertisers prefer the “pay per engagement” (CPE) mode over the well-established CPM or CPC? Will CPE take off or will it become one of the flotsam and jetsam of the online advertising world?

Do you find your conventional web page content crummy and boring? While mobile apps are currently all the rage, you look at your own mediocre website, thinking what to do next in order to join the app frenzy.

You are in luck.

MobileApps.com allows you – bloggers, portals, forums and websites – who are hell-bent on jumping onto the app bandwagon, to spice up your site with highly targeted apps, all immaculately contained in a widget that actually functions like a “mini plugged-in app store”.

Do you own a toddler site? Add value by presenting toddler apps in our web widget. Toddler games or potty training apps would be just the thing! Do you run a car review blog? Pleasantly surprise your visitors with our blog widget showcasing car racing games, vehicle tracking apps, as well as apps by BMW, Toyota and Mercedes.

Here’s an example of our app widget, fully customizable to blend inconspicuously into your website:

AND… on top of showing cool apps on your website, you get to make some money.  You see, app owners or developers actually pay MobileApps to put their apps into the widgets. And we will happily split the advertising dollars with you publishers.

Itching to get your hands on our widgets? Sign up here, design your widget, then copy/paste a snippet of code into your website. The entire process is absolutely free. And see your rejuvenated site pack a wallop!

Show relevant apps on your site. Make some money. How much cooler can our free widgets get?

Play with it HERE!

The other day, I tried drawing Eminem on Draw Something. With furrowed brows and beads of nervous sweat forming on my upper lip, I dragged my finger across the iPhone screen in an attempt to sketch my favorite rapper.

The end result looked more like, well, an aubergine. Needless to say, my opponent and girlfriend called it quits and, with a spurt of irritation, asked how I managed draw an eggplant sporting a cap instead of Eminem.

(Image source: bestofdrawsomething.com/drawings/of/eminem)

“So let’s not use a stylus. We’re going to use the best pointing device in the world. We’re going to use a pointing device that we’re all born with – born with ten of them. We’re going to use our fingers. We’re going to touch this with our fingers. And we have invented a new technology called multi-touch, which is phenomenal. It works like magic.” ~ Steve Jobs

When the iPhone was announced in 2007, Jobs pompously declared that “nobody wants a stylus”. But damn, if my fat fingers can’t Draw Anything on Draw Something, I am certainly buying myself a stylus. Like a lot of Draw Something addicts, I cannot avoid trumpeting my laughably limited artistic skills.

But I just can’t do it with my clumsy finger. Our ten digits simply can’t replace what a pen, pencil or stylus can do with such style and grace – write and draw.

Demo Asia 2012

Our next appearance will be in Demo Asia 2012 which will be happening in Singapore by the end of February. We will be showcasing MobileApps.com to all the top VCs & investors there and we are really excited about it!

Details of the event as below:-

Date: 29 February 2012 ~ 2 March 2012

Venue: Matrix @ Biopolis, Singapore

Demo Asia is a platform for startup with new and world changing technology to showcase their companies and products to the Asia Pacific’s region. This is a great opportunity for us to showcase ourselves and get more exposure in the Asia Pacific’s region.

We really can’t wait and is definitely looking forward to this event. For further details on our appearance in Demo Asia 2012, please stay tune as I will update you guys with the details soon.

Congratulations to our honorable investor, I-Freek, for the recent opening of their new office in Singapore. I-Freek Inc. is highly acclaimed in Japan’s mobile industry segment. Founded in 2000, I-Freek is based in Fukuoka, Japan. The company offers mobile content to cellular phone users and also e-commerce marketing solutions for mobile phones.

Some of the I-Freek’s staff in Singapore

MobileApps.com’s humble gift to I-Freek

Bruschetta with tomato and bacon – one of the many dishes served at the opening ceremony

From MobileApps.com’s side, Alvin and Peter (our CEO and CTO respectively) headed down to Singapore on Dec 2, 2011, to attend the much-anticipated opening reception at The Clift, where everybody was generously treated to a scrumptious meal accompanied by lots of wine and champagne. Thank you I-Freek and we wish you great success.

There are a few major changes on our ad campaign creation pages to make the process simple and more organized.

The original campaign creation only allows a single set of publishers to be used in a campaign no matter how many ad units are made. The publishers can be removed and added but it has to be done manually, out of the initial campaign creation page.

The new campaign flow allows different ad units to be linked to different set of publishers all inside a single campaign. This makes the ad highly targeted according to the most suitable ad unit.

In the original ad campaign flow, advertisers would need to set their daily budget, set the ad duration, set the number of impressions you would like your ad to show and set your bidding price. In the new ad campaign flow, there is no requirement to preset the impressions you would like to buy.

Advertisers will only need to set their daily budget, ad duration and bid price where our system will automatically run your ads according to what is set. This will ensure that your ad will end according to the budget and duration set, not earlier than expected when the impressions have all been used up.

Our team just got back recently from an exciting week at the Mobile Asia Congress in Hong Kong. Held on November 16 and 17, the congress offers much more than an average industry event. Some of the highlighted features are

• A thought-leadership conference featuring visionary keynotes and panel discussions
• A cutting-edge product and technology exhibition by various mobile industries
• Best venue for industry opportunities and networking
• App Planet, the Centre of the Apps Universe

For more info check out www.mobileasiacongress.com. We are glad to have a chance to exhibit our services among huge mobile companies such as China Mobile, Orange, Airpush, GSMA, Huawei, Starhub and many more. Here are some pictures of us and our humble booth.

It’s a well known fact. We only give ads a less-than-a-second glance as we browse through web pages. Let’s look at the MobileApps rich media display ads. Well, whaddya know… our display ads has icons! This is in contrast with a lot of other text-only or image-only display ads.

MobileApps.com display ads is actually a hybrid of text and pictures. A picture conveys a thousand words. Icons in ads are generally proven to drive higher click-through rates compared to ads without pictures. After all, what use are ads if they do not get clicked through?

We have also reduced the clutter in display ads. In the sample ad above, we have 4 ads per page view. The title links and call-to-action description are also very well organized. MobileApps.com display ads’ arrangement is easy on the eyes, thus making the ads very attractive.

Our interactive display ads are sure to get visitors engaged, as they work like mini plugged-in apps store. Visitors can browse for apps, read their description and download these apps via our display ads. The ads have many fun themes to choose from, which could be customized in any way to best blend into a site. From the left; WidgetDroid, Featured, iWidget.

Publishers can also set the ads to be targeted to the content of their sites. It could be targeted by country, platform (be it Android, iOS or Blackberry), categories and keywords. An effective ad is always one that is targeted to the right audience.

Good day everyone! Our team is working hard to ensure our system runs smoothly. Currently we are tweaking our Rich Media Display Ads to obtain the best click-through rates. Some major changes made include making the app icons larger and including a clearer call-to-action app description.

New Four App per Page                                            Previous Six App per Page

We have also fixed some bugs:

• Corrected the translation of non-english characters
• Reduced the load time of our display ads
• Tallied the earnings and payment records

Lastly, we are reducing a couple of friction points in our system. You can now sign up/login to our site using your Facebook account. And the ad campaign module will be simpler and fun to use. More details in the next couple of blog posts!