Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Rob Jewell, Founder and CEO of Spruce Media (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: You needed to provide this service. Rob Jewell: Yes. We had to build a layer of services on top of that to ensure our clients were successful. Our thoughts have always been that as these channels mature, clients tend to want to bring advertising in-house. We’re in the process of handing the reins

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Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Rob Jewell, Founder and CEO of Spruce Media (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: That would be great for the Facebook API. Facebook right now [has] three billion [dollars in advertising revenue] or something? Rob Jewell: Yes. I think they’re probably four billion. SM: Four billion. So, how much of that is going through this kind of optimization? How much is going direct? RJ: I don’t have

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Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Rob Jewell, Founder and CEO of Spruce Media (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: A customer or lead? Rob Jewell: A lead, someone who has signed up for Living Social’s daily deals newsletter. SM: So, Living Social decided to go with your media buying team and technology over its own media buying team and technology to buy on Facebook. Would you talk in a more specific way

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Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Rob Jewell, Founder and CEO of Spruce Media (Part 1)

Most marketers today know that a social medium like Facebook is a powerful advertising tool. But in 2008, when Rob Jewell founded SocialCash, Spruce Media’s predecessor, using social media to market businesses, products, and services had yet to become common practice. Although social advertising is gaining traction, there is still far much too unmonetized advertising

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Monetizing Premium Social App Ad Inventory and Scaling a Capital-Efficient Business: appssavvy CEO Chris Cunningham (Part 7)

Sramana: What was your strategy for funding appssavvy? Chris Cunningham: Our strategy for raising money was basic. We started in early 2008 by bootstrapping. Both Michael and I put our American Express cards to the limit. We got buy-in to the business on our own dime. We were talking to friends and family as well

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Monetizing Premium Social App Ad Inventory and Scaling a Capital-Efficient Business: appssavvy CEO Chris Cunningham (Part 6)

Sramana: How do you price that model ? How do you sell an activity to an advertiser? Chris Cunningham: We actually don’t sell an activity to an advertiser. We sell them an audience. Our ad is triggered by activity.

Monetizing Premium Social App Ad Inventory and Scaling a Capital-Efficient Business: appssavvy CEO Chris Cunningham (Part 5)

Sramana: One of the activity advertising concepts you talked about was branded interviews. Would you provide more details about that concept? Chris Cunningham: There was an application called Social Interview. Users could post interview questions to their friends. It was almost like a gaming behavior. We took that interview and were able to get it

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Monetizing Premium Social App Ad Inventory and Scaling a Capital-Efficient Business: appssavvy CEO Chris Cunningham (Part 4)

Sramana: How long did you carry on with your initial business model, and what were your revenue ramps in the early years? Chris Cunningham: We went from 80 partners in 2008 to several hundred in 2009. We went from just under $4 million in revenue in 2008 to $9 million in 2009 and over $20

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