Mobile display continues to be the headline grabber: Google, Apple, Amobee and Opera have all made significant acquisitions in the past couple of months to bolster their presence in the space. The market is due to grow significantly this year due mainly to the take-up in smartphone apps.

Exchanges and ad network optimisation are now emerging in mobile display. The latest mobile ad net optimisation service to be rolled here in Europe comes courtesy of Improve Digital. Janneke Niessen, COO of Improve Digital, took time this week to speak to ExchangWire.com about the new offering for European publishers.

Can you provide more details on the new new mobile ad optimisation service?

JN: Improve Digital's mobile ad optimisation platform will connect to the optimal mix of mobile ad networks according to the publisher's content, audience and brand safety requirements. From there it makes decisions in real-time about which of these networks can best monetise each impression, and then selects the highest paying network to serve the advertisement. Basically it will undertake the same as we currently do for web display but take the specific requirements of mobile into account.

Will the optimisation service be radically different for mobile?

JN: Improve Digital's mobile ad platform will offer the same ad network optimisation techniques (outlined above) as its web-based service, which sees premium publishers in the UK and Europe increase their advertising revenue by anything between 50 and 300 percent. Mobile specific data points such as device, user location and user demographics will also be considered as part of the ad network and exchange selection process.

The mobile display market is a lot smaller than online. Do you see big growth in the market?

JN: Compared to its online equivalent, the mobile display market appears small. However, the more important figure is the growth that the mobile advertising market is seeing. Among the key findings of the IAB UK's mobile ad spend figures published in 2009: £28.6 million was spent on mobile in 2008, a figure almost double the previous year. Looking ahead, recent study by GroupM forecasts that mobile advertising spend will increase 19 percent to $3.3 billion in 2010.

Will it be available on the same platform?

JN: Yes – Improve Digital's mobile offering will be integrated with its current platform. This sees various advantages including the same comprehensive brand control capabilities that protects Improve Digital's web publishers from unwanted ads, channel conflict and ad latency. There will also be a consolidated dashboard so that publishers can manage and review reporting and analytics from both their web-based and mobile ad sales.

How is this going to benefit the publisher?

JN: The huge increase in the number of people using smartphones has assigned vast revenue-making potential to the mobile internet. However, despite the increasing need to monetise the mobile web, publishers have very few tools with which to do this. The Improve Digital offering will tackle this issue, and premium publishers will be able to maximise their advertising revenue regardless of the device on which their site is being viewed.

How is Improve Digital going to help publishers maximise revenue from their mobile ad inventory?

JN:Through our advanced algorithms we optimise eCPM's and revenue for our publishers, and the different ad placements on mobile do not limit this. The web offers many different buying methods and the technology calculates everything back to eCPM - again, that will be the same for mobile. In addition we take the specifics of mobile into account in the optimisation as mentioned above.

Is this the start of a convergence between mobile and online display?

JN: We believe it is important to retain a distinction between mobile and display. As long as the screen sizes and use of applications differ as much as they currently do between web and mobile, advertisers will regard them as separate channels. However, from our perspective, it does not matter how people view content We will optimise revenue for the publisher across all digital devices and platforms.