Mr Mikael Norberg: A lot of the ad agencies and mobile technology companies are using Singapore as their Asian headquarters, and business relations must be built from here.

24 Mobile Advertising Solutions (24 MAS) is a company that found itself at the right place at the right time. With its portfolio of mobile technologies, the company is well positioned to ride the strong growth of mobile advertising and applications in the region.

The company began in 2001 as a small Swedish start-up, and has since grown to have more than 130 employees spread out in eight offices worldwide. 24 MAS originally worked on developing advertisement-funded mobile games distributed by mobile operators and large media partners. With the current global mobile boom, particularly in smart phones, the company has fortuitously found itself well-positioned to leverage on
this expertise.

“We are in a lucky position since we developed our application and mobile advertising technology long before Google Android Market and Apple App Store became popular,” said Mr Mikael Norberg, Managing Director, Asia-Pacific, 24 MAS. “And we have always focused on developing and implementing new revenue models for mobile operators. The marriage of applications and advertising has been an instrumental aspect of our global success with more than 120 mobile operator contracts worldwide.”

Today, 24 MAS continues to focus on application and advertising development for the mobile phone. It is currently developing a new advertising platform to monetise mobile operators’ advertisement inventory from applications and the mobile web. “Advertisers want to work with the mobile operators to reach their target customers and 24 MAS makes this possible with its technology platform and its relations to agencies and brands,” said Mr Norberg, who counts Samsung, Proctor & Gamble, Malaysia Airlines, GNC and BlackBerry amongst others, as 24 MAS’s clients in the Asia Pacific region.

Apart from using the common application stores such as the Apple AppStore and Google Android Market to distribute its current portfolio of some 3,000 mobile games and apps, 24 MAS also works with mobile telecom service providers who want to operate their own application stores. “In Asia we work with companies like M1, StarHub, Indosat and Maxis to distribute our applications, and one large up-coming title we are about to launch is the former Formula 1 world champion Kimi Räikkönen’s iPhone, iPad and Android game,” Mr Norberg added.

The company’s growing list of Asia-based customers is largely the result of 24 MAS’s decision to set up its regional headquarters in Singapore end of 2010. “We moved here from Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia since a lot of the ad agencies and mobile technology companies are using Singapore as their Asian headquarters, and business relations must be built from here,” Mr Norberg explained. “All of our advertising sales for Asia come out of Singapore which enables us to launch campaigns in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines.”

In addition to its regional sales force based here, the company has also added technical staff such that Singapore now forms part of its 24/7 global customer support network in tandem with offices in Europe and America. On top of that, Singapore is dedicated to product development for the new mobile advertising platform, Mr Norberg said. The company currently has 10 employees, half of whom are technical staff. It expects to double its headcount by the end of the year to take care of regional accounts within the Asia Pacific area.

“Singapore has been a very successful nation in its strategy to have the best possible work force for companies working with new digital technology such as 24 MAS,” said Mr Norberg. “There are lots of highly skilled professionals for application and advertising sales as well as for mobile development.”

24 MAS has also received tremendous support from the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA), said Mr Norberg. “It comes in various forms, from being included in recruitment fairs to financial grants to set-up our development hub here in Singapore. These funds subsidise the soft costs for our mobile advertisement development project, which has been an important part of our success story here in Asia.”

All these have put 24 MAS in good stead for continued growth in Asia as well as the rest of the world. “With Singapore as our Asian headquarters and an instrumental part of the company’s global strategy, we are very confident we can continue to serve the market with the best possible applications and advertising solutions for many years to come,” said Mr Norberg.