Opera gets into the ad business with its Open Mobile Ad Exchange
Opera Software announced today that it is officially getting into the advertising business with the launch of its Open Mobile Ad Exchange. — The service brings cloud-based ads to feature phones and smartphones via …
Context & Ripple Effects
Opera Software has spent years building reach rather than desktop share: Opera Mini passed a million downloads within weeks of its November 2007 release, and the company fought Microsoft through European antitrust channels over Internet Explorer bundling rather than winning users through OEM deals.
The Open Mobile Ad Exchange converts that distribution into a revenue line. Because Opera's cloud infrastructure — the same approach behind Opera 10's Turbo compression mode from 2009 — already proxies page loads for handsets, the company can insert ads into that stream across both feature phones and smartphones, a footprint most ad networks struggle to cover.
First-order effects
- Advertisers gain programmatic access to Opera Mini's installed base of feature-phone and smartphone users through a single exchange, and Opera gains an ad revenue stream layered onto free software that previously earned nothing per user.
Second-order effects
- Mobile ad networks and agencies now face a rival that owns the rendering pipe itself, pressuring them to open their own exchanges or partner with browser makers to keep inventory access.
Third-order effects
- If browsers and proxy services keep converting reach into ad platforms, mobile advertising consolidates around whichever intermediary sits between handset and web — shifting leverage away from device OS vendors and toward access-point owners.
The trend: Browser makers are turning mobile reach into ad-market infrastructure, monetizing every proxied page rather than the client itself.