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24.com and Acceleration pioneer mobile ad serving in Africa

Acceleration, a leading provider of digital marketing consulting, outsourcing and technology services, has implemented a mobile ad-serving solution for 24.com that will allow the online publishing group to drive a new revenue stream and to offer its advertisers a powerful new channel to market.

The solution has created additional inventory for 24.com, meaning that the sales team has the opportunity to market and sell mobile advertising to both existing advertisers and new advertisers drawn to this emerging medium.

Since 24.com is the first South African publisher to offer such a sophisticated mobile ad-serving environment to its advertisers, the solution has helped it to differentiate itself from its competitors and position itself at the forefront of the fast-growing mobile advertising market. The seamless integration between 24.com's mobile and Web ad-serving platforms gives advertisers transparency into, and control over, campaigns run over both channels and affords 24.com Ad Operations to traffic campaigns for both channels through a single user interface.

24.com, South Africa's largest digital publishing group, has long recognised that the mobile channel offers a host of opportunities to engage with readers more effectively by delivering relevant content and interacting with them wherever they are. The group wanted to monetise the mobile space by extending its available inventory - thus increasing sales opportunities and providing a richer experience for both readers and advertisers.

Says Gustav Goosen, National Sales Manager at 24.com: "Although we recognised that the emerging mobile space offers excellent opportunities for publishers and advertisers alike, we also realised that there are a number of business and technical challenges that complicate the rollout of a mobile ad-serving strategy. We turned to Acceleration - one of our existing service providers - for assistance."

24.com tasked Acceleration with putting together a solution that addresses the following challenges in the mobile ad-space:

• Fragmentation of the audience across devices;
• Difficulties in identifying a user, user session, browser or device, which complicates delivering the right ad to the right user at the right time in the right size; and
• Tracking and measuring ad impressions and available inventory.

Since 24.com runs its website ad-serving through DoubleClick's DART for Publishers (DFP), Acceleration suggested that the publisher use the DoubleClick Mobile platform because it is an extension of the DFP suite that offers excellent functionality and tight integration with DFP.

"This solution is able to deliver dynamic, interactive and trackable ads to the company's mobile audience. It allows 24.com to target and serve ads based on specific criteria determined by 24.com's advertisers. The ad-serving platform also supports a wide range of devices and boasts full management and reporting functionality," says Richard Mullins, Director at Acceleration.

Acceleration provided a test environment to run test campaigns, impressions and reporting, to ensure that all of 24.com's needs would be addressed by the new solution. On-site training was also provided to get the ad operations and mobile teams up to speed. After implementation and training, 24.com was able to deploy its mobile advertising offering with the same confidence and control as its online display ads.

Integrating the mobile platform with their current online ad-server has given 24.com an expanded, manageable and efficient ad-serving operation. Reporting, tracking and measuring can be tracked per campaign, irrespective of the platform used: website or mobile.

Concludes Gustav Goosen, National Sales Manager at 24.com "The mobile market in South Africa is growing at a rapid pace and is extending the Internet to many users outside the traditional Web community. By implementing this solution, 24.com is able to offer advertisers access to a broader market and a differentiated advertising channel, which in turn helps us to grow our revenue base."

About Acceleration
Acceleration provides unrivalled digital marketing consulting, outsourcing and technology services to clients around the world. We have more than a decade of experience creating customised solutions that optimise digital marketing, automate complex processes, harmonise technology and maximise our clients' return on digital investments.

With key offices in London and New York, Acceleration employs expert teams throughout North America, South America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and maintains strategic partnerships with industry leaders including Omniture, DoubleClick and Epsilon.

For more information, visit www.acceleration.biz.