Tokyo listed Adways Inc. has bought 13.8% stake in indian affiliate marketing company VC Internet Media.

The investment amount remains undisclosed. However Adways has the option of eventually hiking its stake to 66% over three phases by the end of this fiscal.

Last October the two had revealed their strategic and capital partnership to expand into the Indian web advertising market. Prior to that Adways established itself in India by commencing its New Delhi branch in June as a market research and business development hub.

VC Internet Media was formed in 2007 by Tarang Bhargava and Parul Mehta and in 2008 they commenced an affiliate network – vCommission.

This partnership is an ideal step forwards towards our grand plan in becoming the No.1 affiliate marketing player in Asia” said Adways Executive Vice President, Junko Yoshino. “Adways’ strengths is its ability to seek out potential opportunity and moving onto it with great speed and intensity. This is how our founder became the youngest CEO to IPO in Japan and how we became the #1 affiliate player in Japan and China. To become the # 1 player in Asia, India is a vital market and we believe we were able to form an alliance with a fitting partner. VC Internet Media also has a great culture to move on things with velocity and we believe this quality has a perfect synergy with Adways.

vCommission was India’s first international affiliate network and initially focused on U.S & U.K markets till 2010. With the current focus on the Indian market, it has serviced over 100 Indian brands with a publisher base of approx. 11,000 registered affiliates/publishers.

Adways, headquartered in Tokyo with offices in China, Indonesia, Philippines, Singapore, Vietnam and U.S.

It runs the largest mobile affiliate network in Japan as well as the largest smartphone app distribution service.

The deal is structured to work as a JV with Adways involved in the day-to-day operations with expertise and VC Internet provides the Indian experience and client relationships.

Medianama also provides us with some of the deals in this space. ShooGloo Affiliate Marketing was rebranded last year and Tyroo & Anurag Gupta acquired DGM India for R3.35 Cr.

The technology that is offered to consumers now is in a constant state of change, and these consumers are still in the process of adapting to these endless changes. One of the notable adaptations that are being made is the immense shift people are making from watching television shows and movies on their actual televisions to now viewing these things digitally. As companies like Netflix, Hulu, and of course YouTube have made a huge number of television episodes and popular movies available at the simple click of the mouse, or even the tap of a screen, internet users have made the choice that anyone would expect them to. Although this change may not be so great for TV advertisers, digital marketers can definitely get excited. As more consumers are using digital televisions and film channels, more marketing options have become available to advertisers on the web.

With a bit of help from eMarketer’s new report, “Digital TV and Movie Streaming: A Rising Tide of Devices, Content and Viewing,” we can see just how the shift to digital TV will rise over the coming few years. By 2017, the amount of internet users that watch shows on digital TV channels will reach upward of 145.3 million. That is a significant increase from the reported 106.2 million from 2012 and the forecasted 120.7 million viewers for 2013. However, what is possibly most exciting as far as digital TV numbers go is that, “Digital TV viewers will cross a critical tipping point in 2014, surpassing 50% of the US internet user population.”

In a survey reported by eMarketer, conducted by Belkin and Harris Interactive, a significant number of cable subscribers saw digital media platforms like Netflix and Hulu as at least a somewhat suitable replacement for their basic cable packages. About 12 percent of respondents said that they would definitely consider making the switch, while another 18 percent said that they would somewhat agree that these channels would be a good replacement.

Now that the world knows just how big digital television is likely to get, digital media channels are naturally hopping on the marketing band wagon. Although one of the more popularly used digital television companies, Netflix, is a paid subscription that brings in profits through pay from subscribers, there are companies like Hulu that rely entirely on advertising to bring in revenue. Also, Sony’s Crackle is entirely ad-based. “The monetization strategies vary as much as the content, and so far it seems the market is accommodating all approaches.”

Marketing with digital media channels that show users the most popular television shows in an instant format will probably become one of the more effective methods a few years down the road. What is important right now is to see the growth that eMarketer predicted actually take place, in order to make digital TV an actual viable marketing destination.

It has been well established that mobile is of the utmost importance in any successful advertising campaign today. Just as it has happened with digital marketing on desktop platforms, mobile is not evolving into many different forms of marketing, and more options are opening up. However, what may be most important is considering how mobile users are using their devices. A new study from Compuware Corporation, a company that deals with technology performance, shows how mobile users prefer to use their devices. In this case, we are dealing with two options; mobile apps and mobile websites. Each of these are heavily used by today’s mobile community, but this study tells us that 85 percent of those mobile users surveyed prefer mobile apps to mobile websites.

The company states that this preference for mobile apps from mobile users is based on the convenience of apps over websites. For the most part, mobile apps are far faster in terms of loading time, and much easier for users to navigate.

Mobile applications are thought to make life easier by streamlining calendars and grocery lists, offering entertainment while in line and making it easy to collaborate with co-workers. Consumers now associate apps with banking, paying bills, shopping, booking hotels and travel, as well as with staying productive and connected with both home and office tasks.

However, even though the majority of mobile users preferred mobile apps, it is interesting to see how many things these users find wrong with them. Here are some of the complaints about mobile apps that were found through the survey of 3,500 mobile users around the world.

• 62 percent reported a crash, freeze or error.
• 47 percent experienced slow launch times.
• 40 percent have tried an app that simply would not launch

So, although users love mobile apps, they also are very specific about which apps they choose to use. If an apps is not fully functional and all bugs are not worked out, users are only tolerant to a certain degree. Compuware Corporation writes, “Users will not tolerate problematic mobile apps, 79 percent will retry a mobile app only once or twice if it failed to work the first time.”

Of course, this is information that mobile marketers should be aware of, considering that it will greatly impact their choice of ad placement. According to this study, the best place to show mobile advertising is within applications. However, a bit of research is necessary first. Marketers should first ensure that their ads are not being placed within apps that are constantly malfunctioning, or in apps that are a bit confusing for mobile users. If this were the case, users would barely allow the app enough time to load, giving the advertisement no chance to hit the user’s screen.

Stephen Pierzchala, the technology strategist at the Compuware APM Center of Excellence, said

With consumers expecting greater experiences with mobile apps now more than ever, fulfilling those expectations doesn’t just happen — it takes a conscious effort throughout every stage of the design and development process to get it right.

Performance is a crucial contributor to providing a dependable mobile app user experience, so performance should be considered a key driver in the design process. Mobile applications need to focus on a core utility, and they need to be fast and reliable in order to be valuable.

Most of the big news we have seen from the mobile advertising community has been in relation to companies like Google or Facebook, which have been innovating in the field in order to push more advertisers toward mobile as a platform of choice. However, everyone knows that there are plenty of other social networks and companies to pay attention to, as the entire digital world goes mobile. Twitter is a great example of a popular social network that is not known by many as a viable destination for mobile advertising placement. However the broader picture for Twitter advertising, in which all ad types are considered, shows that Twitter is one of the fastest growing social advertising platforms on the web.

The well-known marketing research company eMarketer recently released some new projections regarding Twitter’s ad revenue growth in the next few years. By the end of 2013, the company forecasts Twitter ad spend will reach $582.8 million overall. Further down the road, by 2014 eMarketer predicts that Twitter’s overall ad spend will closely approach $1 billion. Naturally this means that by 2015, spend will surpass the billion dollar mark, estimated by eMarketer to hit about $1.33 billion.

What’s really interesting is that for 2013, the company predicts 53 percent of that $582.8 million coming from mobile advertising alone, while back in 2011 almost none of Twitter’s ad spend was on mobile. By 2015 though, about 60 percent of all ad spend will be coming from mobile advertising, so eMarketer forecasts.

Why will Twitter be gaining so much mobile attention? Well, Twitter itself will not be able to take the credit for it. Here is what eMarketer believes will be the cause for all of this mobile growth:

eMarketer believes Twitter has ultimately benefited from the increased focus on mobile by competitors like Google and Facebook, which have both expanded their own mobile ad offerings and worked to convince advertisers to shift dollars to mobile devices. The launch of the Ads API will also contribute to incremental growth for Twitter this year, though eMarketer had already built that product into its December forecast for mobile ad revenues.

As for the mobile ad revenue that Twitter will gain, eMarketer has made an estimate that by the end of this year, it will have reached about $308.9 million, more than the company brought in from all ad types in 2012. By 2015, mobile ad revenue for Twitter will be up to $811.3 million, if things go as eMarketer thinks they will.

If things pan out like eMarketer has predicted, there will be yet another important social network to consider in creating mobile marketing campaigns. Twitter’s mobile platform has already gained quite a bit of attention, but in no way has it reached the level of Facebook. However, it very well could, especially considering the company has gained quite a bit of attention since the release of its Ads API.

It seems that Twitter is turning into something that mobile marketers need to keep an eye on, and that will only be more true over the span of the next few years.

Alex Campos of Lead Start talks briefly at LeadsCon about their business of Lead Generation, and how they generate leads and improve lead quality. LeadStart specializes in providing marketers with highly convertible leads through leveraged technology and call center integration. Providing unmatched value with its proprietary iOption leads, LeadStart delivers value added benefits of immediate personal pre-contact on all leads delivered to your sales force with warm transfers from its integrated call center.

Considering that for a very long time, Facebook only allowed marketers to advertise to users using the side bar of the Facebook home page, the amount of advertising that has recently been appearing in the News Feed may seem a bit over the top. For a company that started off hesitant of allowing any advertising at all, it now seems as though the News Feed is filling up more and more with different types of ads. So far, we have things like Page Posts, Sponsored Stories, and more recently Promoted Posts. Now, there may be an addition coming to this group of News Feed ad types, and they will be in the form of Facebook Exchange ads.

As of right now, Facebook says that they are simply doing “a small alpha test” to see how these Facebook Exchange targeted ads will perform in the News Feed. Facebook Exchange ads have been great so far for marketers, allowing them yet another way to target consumers on Facebook. Here is the reason Facebook gives for starting tests to include these ads in the News Feed:

We wanted to give advertisers and agencies the opportunity to deliver highly relevant ads in News Feed, the most engaging place on the web. Previously, advertisers could run standard ads on the right hand side of Facebook on the desktop.  Starting today, advertisers can run Page post link ads on the right-hand side of Facebook and in News Feed on desktop. As they do today, these ads will point back to specific landing pages to help direct-response advertisers drive conversions.

There will of course be mixed opinions about adding another type of ad to the News Feed. Facebook users probably will not notice much of a change, considering that Facebook writes, “Introducing Facebook Exchange in Desktop News Feed will not change the number of ads people see in their News Feeds.” But then that brings to question where Facebook will find the room to include these ads. Essentially, the only way to make room for Facebook Exchange ads in the News Feed without changing the amount of ads users see is to get rid of some of the ads that are already there.

Chances are, Facebook will push the free advertising types out-of-the-way a bit, like Page Posts for example. Facebook seems to be making a change to their reputation as the best place to advertiser for free to a huge audience. Now, advertising with Facebook is starting to come with a price tag, but at least it isn’t a hefty one. Maybe such a successful advertising destination coming at no price at all was just a good thing that had to come to an end at some point. Either way, adding Facebook Exchange ads to the News Feed will probably make them more successful overall, with the News Feed being “the most engaging place on the web.”

As long as Facebook users don’t mind News Feed ads, which they don’t seem to, and marketers continue to see some sort of success using them, Facebook’s evolution over time will continue.