Hyderabad-based digital marketing company Ybrant Digital will be acquiring a minority stake in Web 3.0 of Israel, which operates in the digital fields of web, mobile web and performance-based marketing and applications development. The size of the deal has not been disclosed.
Ybrant’s investment in the 35-people strong Web 3.0 comes in the wake major initiatives both the companies are making in the mobile space.
"Web 3.0 is the largest company in terms of tie-ups with advertising companies and penetration into the mobile marketing arena in Israel. The minority stake acquisition is part of our decision to focus more on mobile marketing, which is now witnessing a significant traction," Suresh Reddy, chairman and chief executive of Ybrant, told Business Standard.
Studies estimate worldwide spend on mobile marketing, advertising and messaging to exceed $3.3 billion in 2011, and reach $20.6 billion by 2015. Search ads and location-based ads will particularly drive the growth. Brand spending on mobile advertising will grow from 0.5 per cent of the total current advertising budgets to over 4 per cent in 2015. Asia has and will continue to dominate global mobile ad spend.
"The minority stake acquisition in Web 3.0 is the first step in making big strides towards reaping benefits from the burgeoning mobile marketing industry worldwide. We want to embed Web 3.0's processes into our systems and develop tools based on their platforms," Reddy added.