Where programmatic and performance connect: Our MWC 2019 story

Well that’s it for another fun-filled 4 days in Barcelona. If you’ve been scrolling through your LinkedIn feed recently, this probably isn’t the first “what happened at MWC 2019” article you’ve seen or clicked on.

By now, you’ve definitely heard all about the 5G buzz from the conference (if by some chance you haven’t, check out what we’ve got to say about it) and most likely something about foldable smartphones, robots or even automated vehicles.

But the other exciting news that you may have missed, is the coming together of Glispa and Mobfox. Continue reading to learn about how we’re now one family and see what our amazing teams got up to at this year’s show.

Where programmatic and performance connect

MWC 2019 marked the first major event for Glispa and Mobfox. Now, the industry will benefit from a game-changing, shared offering, where Glispa integrates with exclusive supply through Mobfox’s leading SDK – and vice verse.

Glispa and Mobfox under one umbrella provides advertisers a multitude of benefits, not only are they able to leverage the existing programmatic inventory but now they have the opportunity to explore our Glispa Create offering, a SaaS solution for those that want to bring playables in-house.

What happened at our co-branded booth?

Representing both Glispa and Mobfox, we chatted to clients and partners about our full suite of innovative offerings. From our UA enriched capabilities with programmatic media, playable ads and retargeting, to the benefits for publishers with over 200 DSP’s and direct demand from Glispa’s existing client base.  It served as the perfect platform to have a discussion about our future, and we are so excited about the conversations and collaborations that took place at booth 8.1F70!

Beyond serving as the epicenter of our work for the week, we also saw our booth as an opportunity to tell the story of who we are and to have fun! Starting with our table settings:

Anyone who follows us on social media knows that we love the #DogsOfGlispa. And even though they couldn’t make the journey to Spain, we made sure the puppy love still traveled to the show. Our teams had the pleasure of conducting their meetings at tables aptly named after some of our iconic pups (Thimba – the largest dog – of course getting the largest table).

And no, your eyes aren’t deceiving you, we did put a shoe and a paper plane on our wall! Instead of a graphics, we decided to use physical objects to represent our product offerings. We had fun thinking outside the box (or frame in this case!).

And of course, our booth wouldn’t have been complete without Nuria, who has become part of the team with the way she fueled us (and hundreds of conference attendees) with her incredible coffee, biked to perfection.  If you had a cup, you could see why everyone was calling it the best coffee at the conference (for the 2nd year in a row)! In case you didn’t get to see it in action, her biking actually powers the coffee grinder AND the mechanism to heat the coffee, so no electricity is used!

And, we raffled away an iPad to the lucky winner of our booth questionnaire! During the show, we surveyed over 200 attendees about their industry challenges – did you know that ad fraud is still among the biggest concerns?

Our team can also never say no to a good time and we proved that on Monday and Wednesday of the conference with our beach themed happy hours! From fresh Sangria to our spicy mexicanas, we kept our bar going long after conference meetings ended.

What did we learn?

Before heading back home, we also took some time out to ask our experts about this year’s conference. Here’s what some of them had to say.

“There’s always been talk about how amazing and wonderful 5G will be when it arrives. MWC  felt different to other conferences because some of the world’s leading tech players and brands actually showed us what it can do. Our Head of Marketing, Johana Leeflang, already talked a bit about what this will mean for the industry and from my perspective, it was also fascinating to visualize what’s possible.” Julie Huang, Head of Business Development SEA Glispa

“It’s hard to talk about the highlights of the show without mentioning 5G and foldable smartphones – this was everywhere. We were presented with something tangible from the likes of Samsung, LG and Huawei, and you could feel the excitement around these new devices – they look incredible and are so close to being available in the market. As always, I noticed there were some fantastic and eye catching booths, like ZTE and AppsFlyer’s mobile jungle. For meeting with our partners, it was great to have the ad tech industry under one roof” Kumaran Sambandam, SVP Global Revenue Mobfox

“We talked to a lot of clients and contacts at MWC about interactive and playables ads for mobile. This is still a new format and one that I believe has nowhere near reached its full potential. I realized there’s still a great deal brands and companies out there that aren’t aware of the benefits this type of advertising can bring.” Tom Lerner, Head of Glispa Create

And with that, thank you!

Like all conferences, this was a team effort and was made so successful thanks to not only the work of our team that was there, but the Glispians and Mobfoxers that helped in our preparation. A wholehearted thank you to our amazing colleagues!

We would also like to thank partners and clients we met at MWC this year! We had an amazing time catching up, and we are looking forward to an even brighter future.

Weren’t at the conference, or just want to get a peek into the fun we had? Then be sure to check out our Insta Stories. If you want to learn more about the mobile app space or get in touch with us, you can also visit our blog for more insights.

Thanks and we’ll see you next year in Barcelona!