In this edition of Gamesforum Meets, we sit down with Sharan P.C, VP of Publishers Business Development at InMobi, and a seasoned leader in adtech with over 17 years of experience. Leading a global team, and managing over 7,000 publishers, Sharan shares his journey in mobile gaming, as well as his thoughts on Vietnam’s unique role in the mobile gaming eco-system.

Hi Sharan, can you tell us about yourself and your background in mobile gaming?

With over 17 years of experience in the ad tech industry, I have cultivated a deep expertise working with advertisers and publishers across various verticals on a global scale. Currently, I lead the Business Development, Customer Success Management (CSM), and Publisher Operations teams for InMobi worldwide.

Throughout my ad tech journey, I’ve had the privilege of focusing extensively on the publisher side, particularly during the early days of network-level monetization. Between 2011 and 2015, I collaborated with renowned gaming studios such as Outfit7, MAG Interactive, and Fingersoft, building strong partnerships across EMEA and North America.

In my current role, I continue to engage with publishers globally across multiple verticals, with gaming representing our largest segment. My team and I at InMobi Advertising work closely with over 7,000 gaming publishers, spanning enterprise, medium, and small-scale businesses, to drive success and unlock growth opportunities in this dynamic industry.

Since January 2024, you’ve been VP of Publishers Business Development, Customer Success Management, and Operations at InMobi, can you tell us about your role?

I lead a globally distributed team across the USA, UK, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, India, China, and Southeast Asia. Together, we manage an ecosystem of over 7,000 publishers with a portfolio of approximately 60,000 apps.

In addition to optimizing yield for our partners, I am responsible for driving global business development initiatives to expand our SDK footprint across various genres. This effort enables our advertisers to access a diverse and robust supply portfolio, empowering them to execute campaigns effectively across the marketing funnel. By fostering non-intrusive and engaging advertising, we help both gaming and non-gaming partners enhance user retention while delivering a rich and balanced advertising experience.

How important a market is Vietnam for InMobi Advertising?

The Vietnamese mobile gaming market has emerged as a critical region for InMobi Advertising's strategic growth plans in 2024 and going into 2025. This market stands out due to the exceptional quality of games being developed by innovative, agile, and forward-thinking companies. Vietnamese game developers

are setting benchmarks by striking an ideal balance between in-app ads and user experience, an approach that aligns perfectly with our commitment to delivering impactful advertising solutions.

InMobi Advertising’s focus in Vietnam will be on:

· Leveraging our programmatic platform to help publishers maximize ad revenue while maintaining user satisfaction.

· Offering deep analytics and actionable insights to empower developers to refine their monetization strategies.

What stands out to you as unique about Vietnamese mobile games publishers?

Vietnam’s combination of innovative game development, strategic monetization practices, and rich data ecosystem perfectly aligns with our mission to build impactful connections between advertisers and users. By focusing on this vibrant market, InMobi Advertising aims to unlock new growth opportunities and redefine mobile advertising experiences for both publishers and players.

How are you helping publishers globally to increase and diversify their ad monetization?

InMobi Advertising empowers publishers with meaningful, authentic, and non-intrusive advertising experiences. Leveraging 17 years of global relationships with advertisers, agencies, and DSPs, we bring publishers a diverse portfolio of ad solutions. By partnering with advertisers who have full-funnel objectives, InMobi Advertising unlocks opportunities for publishers to display less intrusive, contextually relevant, and high-quality ads, spanning categories beyond gaming.

This approach ensures a seamless integration of ads into the game environment, preserving user experience and reducing churn. By fostering real connections between advertisers and users through its gaming partners, we support meaningful monetization at a global scale.

Additionally, our extensive global presence and local expertise enable publishers to optimize ad opportunities in underutilized regions, maximizing revenue potential and creating a balanced advertising ecosystem tailored to diverse markets. With InMobi Advertising, developers can effectively monetize inventory worldwide while maintaining user satisfaction and engagement.

What do you think is driving challenges in monetization globally?

Limited Demand Diversity: Without a diverse range of advertisers across verticals, publishers miss revenue opportunities and rely too much on specific demand sources.

Under Utilization of Data and Signals: Publishers often struggle to fully leverage the rich user data and signals they possess across all monetization partners. This can limit the potential for personalized and high-value advertising experiences.

Challenging Global Yield Optimization: Achieving optimal performance across diverse regions remains complex, requiring sophisticated tools and expertise to maximize revenue in a global market.

Balancing Performance and User Experience: The biggest challenge lies in striking the right balance between high-CPM performance ads and user acquisition campaigns with maintaining user experience and minimizing churn.

Addressing these challenges requires collaborative efforts with monetization partners, and a focus on creating seamless, user-first advertising experiences.

What trends in adtech do you think will be most important for mobile games companies in 2025?

The year 2025 is poised to be a transformative period for ad monetization strategies, particularly for SSPs and programmatic partners. As the industry evolves, key areas of focus will include:

1. Diversification of Demand: Ensuring a wide range of advertisers across verticals will be critical. This helps publishers reduce dependency on specific categories and allows for a more robust monetization ecosystem.

2. Enhanced Auction Dynamics: Improving auction mechanisms and signal sharing, will play a pivotal role in increasing transparency, efficiency, and competition among buyers, ultimately driving higher yields for publishers.

3. Better Signal Utilization: Leveraging rich user signals effectively across partners will enable more personalized and relevant advertising. This will not only enhance ad performance but also improve the overall user experience.

4. Full-funnel Advertising with Performance Metrics: Integrating upper, mid, and lower-funnel campaigns within the programmatic ecosystem, backed by clear performance metrics, will open new opportunities for advertisers while providing game developers with higher-value ads that align with user engagement strategies.

5. Balancing In-App Advertising(IAA) with In-App Purchases (IAP): Managing ad frequency while ensuring a seamless balance between ads and IAP strategies is essential to retain users.

In a programmatic world, building trust will be critical, as developers must share high-quality signals to enable precise targeting and advertisers need to honor user-centric ad placements.

Yield partners must work closely with publishers to optimize the "pipes" — the technical and data infrastructure that supports seamless ad delivery and performance tracking.

This collaborative, data-driven approach will define the ad monetization landscape of 2025.