Mobile advertising company Mojiva Inc. is opening a new office in London to facilitate the growth of its European business.

Mobile Marketer?s Peter Finocchiaro interviewed Dave Gwozdz, CEO of Mojiva, New York, about the company's Old World ambitions. Here is what he said:

What is the strategy behind the expansion?
The strategy is to tap into the growing mobile advertising markets in Britain and Europe.

We have many customers there already in terms of advertisers, publishers on the Mojiva network and platform customers for mOcean Mobile [Mojiva?s mobile ad serving and analytics platform], so it was natural to provide a more local presence to support and grow the businesses.

What will Nick Marsh?s responsibilities include?
As sales director of EMEA, Nick will manage the British and European sales efforts for Mojiva and build a sales team.

Nick has many years of experience in digital advertising so knows the marketers, ad agencies and content publishers well. We expect he will be able to attract and manage a world-class team.

Why London? What?s the mobile advertising market like there? How does it differ from mobile advertising in the States?
Even though we are small, we have something like 100 years of collective digital and mobile advertising experience here at Mojiva.

All of that experience tells us to hire the best people wherever they are, but try, if possible to align our talent to where the business is.

So In addition to New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco here in the states, we felt the best place to establish a beachhead for all of the European countries where we have customers and partners, was in the London.

London has a strong agency core, great mobile vibe and talent pool. We have already been able to attract London-based talent to join Nick who speak many European languages and are familiar with the customs. It just makes tremendous sense to start in London.

What is Mojiva?s outlook on mobile advertising in 2010 and beyond?
It is very bullish for sure. Not only do we read all of the various analyst predictions about the growth of mobile advertising, we are experiencing some very exciting usage growth of the medium.

The obvious early spenders were the mobile infrastructure players, ringtones and etcetera.

Then platform and services piled on, as did some large brands, testing at first and then settling into the medium.

That will continue to grow. Now, we are seeing some very positive signs that the small brands, and local advertisers are jumping in, a real signal to us that this market will finally be used by advertisers for its full potential.

As, or even more exciting, is the need for publishers and application developers to be ready for this and we are seeing a great surge in our mOcean Mobile ad serving platform business.

What will be key drivers?
Key drivers will be technology and ease of use.

What had been holding back mobile advertising was a definitive lack of easy to use tools for marketers and publishers, and technology to really make the proper ad match between consumers and brands.

We have spent several years working hard to bring the most sophisticated technology to the market and as a result, have made it easier and more efficient for all parties.

How will Apple/Google/Microsoft play a role?
Clearly they see the massive potential and are positioning or posturing to be significant players in this space.

We are partners to some degree with all of them. It is interesting to say the least.

Final Take
Peter Finocchiaro, editorial assistant at Mobile Marketer, New York