Opera Mediaworks expands to the Asia-Pacific

Vserv's Vikas Gulati brought on board as MD - Asia for the new mobile ad platform

BestMediaInfo Bureau | Mumbai | February 5, 2015

Opera Mediaworks, the mobile ad platform from the creators of Opera Browser, has expanded its presence to include key geographies such as India, Indonesia, South Korea, Australia, Malaysia, Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand. The Asia operations will run out of the parent company Opera Software's Singapore office.

The company has also brought on board Vikas Gulati as Managing Director in Asia. Gulati will be responsible for building and scaling revenue and operations, enhancing the platform's capabilities and strengthening Opera Mediaworks' position in the mobile advertising ecosystem in the region.

A statement from the company informed that Gulati will work closely with his team to drive network growth and relationships with advertisers, premium publishers and developers in the Asia-Pacific region. Gulati was previously Vice-President at Vserv, a mobile ad exchange, where he built the company's South East Asia business.

“We see huge opportunities in mobile video adoption and, in turn, mobile-video advertising in the Asia-Pacific region,” Gulati said, adding, “We also see other trends in the Asia-Pacific – the adoption of better audience targeting, and big retailers and e-commerce sites such as Flipkart and Snapdeal strengthening their focus in m-commerce as consumers get more comfortable making purchases on their mobile devices.”

The company also informed that based on data gathered through their Opera browser, internet surfing behaviours among APAC users revealed that social, entertainment, and video sites continue to drive the majority of mobile internet traffic. In India, ad impressions from social sites and apps stand at 31.1 per cent, followed by 21.4 per cent from the Music, Video & Media category. In Indonesia, ad impressions from social sites and apps are at 61 per cent, followed by 17.6 per cent from Music, Video & Media sites and apps.

A majority of Opera's 350 million Opera browser users come from Asia. Of which, 50 million users are in India and 30 million users in Indonesia. The company also noted that half of these users used smartphone devices.

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