Tell us about your journey into Marketing and Advertising Technology. How did you arrive at Pocketmath?
I’ve had a long career in technology most on the finance side. Very early on in my life, I witnessed the power of business growth and when paired with my love for people and numbers I naturally felt at place in tech start-ups with VC investments. I joined Pocketmath in 2014 as CFO and worked to restructure the company for long-term success. Since then, my role has expanded and now as I transition into CEO I’m eager to not only grow the business in the marketplace, but to innovate AdTech by leveraging a highly underused channel with Audience Network platforms.
What is Pocketmath and how do you differentiate from other AdTech companies?
Pocketmath is a global provider of programmatic advertising solutions that specifically connects marketers with mobile audiences. Our approach is to build products that give marketers access to highly-targeted audiences while at the same time enable Super App publishers the ability to control their monetization programs and advertising inventory. We are a pioneer in this space, finding ways to go beyond only programmatic advertising by using the power of data in self-contained communities.
How do you define Audience Networks?
Audience Networks specifically defines a platform that powers mobile app publishers with the ability to develop and manage monetization programs through promotions, campaigns and programmatic advertising. It goes beyond only a programmatic DSP because we are able to hand over an entire ecosystem of monetization options for app publishers to offer marketers that serve up many opportunities for them to access highly-targeted and relevant end users.
How do you define Super Apps and what is their role in advertising and sales?
Audience Networks are most effective with Super App publishers. These are self-contained communities, often with millions of members and participants, that provide a wealth of highly-granular data to publishers. Often Super Apps find several revenue streams to support their apps, however, it can be difficult to monetize end users. Using Audience Networks, Super Apps will be able to provide many advertising opportunities for marketers that can help monetize their apps and bring in additional revenue.
It is largely an untapped market because Super Apps may not have the expertise, technology, or bandwidth to monetize in this way. However, with new innovations in Audience Networks, they will have the tools and control to do so, providing their own marketing platform for marketers and brands to plug into and an easy way to track and provide advertising inventory.
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How do you leverage technology for audience monetization?
We use programmatic technology to funnel mobile user data into a single platform that can then be white-labeled and used to create your own advertising network to monetize audiences. Our technology allows a substantial amount of tools for both the marketer and the publisher, as well as powerful retargeting and data-aggregation features.
What are the pitfalls for moving into the audience network space? What are the pitfalls of doing so?
Mobile app monetization is much larger and more complex an ecosystem than most types of advertising platforms. It requires an understanding of how apps function and the important ways in which end user data is controlled and facilitated. Super Apps especially have the need to completely control and operate their platforms and keep the data within the self-contained space—something that some other ad platforms would not permit. It requires innovation and forward-thinking and while the benefits are clearly the way forward is trickier than it appears.
What are your predictions around how Super Apps and monetization will change in the next year? In 5 years?
- Super apps will become more and more like walled gardens ala Google/Facebook
- Learning from the observations of existing walled gardens, they will look for ways to interconnect and federate in order to create virtuous cycles of advertising inventory and audience segments
- Ultimately, a lot depends on the evolution of the market networks concept and how the super apps penetrate the global consumer mindset to become as prevalent as some of today’s household names
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Which events and webinars do you mostly attend and why?
ExchangeWire’s ATS events around the globe, MWC, DMEXCO
Your advice to other CMOs and sales professionals in the AdTech industry.
Open minds, look for ways to generate value for clients that might be outside current offerings, that’s where innovation and disruption tend to be found.
Tag a person whose answers to these questions you would like to read from the industry.
Sonal Patel, DAN
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Thank You, Joanne, for answering all our questions. We hope to see you again, soon.
Joanne Joynson-Hewlett is a seasoned adtech executive with over 10 years’ experience in managing and optimizing a company’s ability to balance profits and growth within the extremely fast-paced and competitive advertising and technology sectors. Combining a finance background and experience with rapidly growing companies, Joanne’s expertise and acumen in business development, business strategy, and strategic planning positions her employees and organizations for both short and long-term success.
Recently elevated to CEO, Joanne has led Pocketmath’s funding and restructuring efforts while managing the day-to-day roles of her prior Chief Financial Officer position. A numbers guru, Joanne is always prepared with Plan A, Plan B, and Plan C within a rapidly changing industry. Combined with her passion for people, she has a deft understanding of how to best manage the complicated ecosystems of fast-growing companies from all angles.
Prior to joining Pocketmath in 2014, Joanne moved to Asia as the Chief Financial Officer for Sequoia-backed voice blog start-up Bubbly. She has also fostered company-wide growth in her roles with e.law Asia Pacific and MercerBell, and is a member of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA). She holds a degree in Business Studies from Leeds Beckett University.