“Do Israelis have cellphones?” Teens in Ohio asked this question of Tomer Hen when he was visiting the United States as a junior ambassador during high school. They sure asked the right guy.
Hen, now 19, is one of the world’s foremost experts in exploiting the marketing potential of mobile devices. His multimillion-dollar Tomer Hen Mobile Marketing Consulting grew out of playing around with his smartphone during 10th grade in Netanya.
He and his friends were using their phones to look up train schedules and find the nearest pizza shop — but unlike on the Internet, search results rarely came along with advertisements.
“I saw that more and more people were using their phones to access products and services, but there weren’t many ads on smartphones,” he said. “This was an untapped market and the prices were extremely cheap.”
Hen, already an experienced eBay trader at 13, used more than $3,200 of his bar mitzvah gift money to join an affiliate network (an intermediary between publishers and merchants) and place mobile ads for insurance companies, dating sites and hotel booking sites.
“I lost a lot of money, but I learned a lot,” he said. “I learned about the market in Azerbaijan, in Germany — all over the world. Once I realized the right way to do it, what the audience is looking for, I started making money.”
At first he was pocketing a mere $50 a month. Half a year later, that amount increased to $500, and then grew to $5,000. The income was not only from mobile affiliate and business mobile marketing but also from teaching others his secrets.
“It was amazing,” he recalled. “People heard about what I was doing and wanted to learn how. So at age 15, I was charging 70 shekel [about $20] per hour for coaching.”
Before long his fee had increased to $165 an hour. Just shy of 16 years old, Tomer founded Mobile Marketing College.
His first workshop attracted 120 people. Everyone from hair salon owners to insurance executives wanted to know how to make their advertising budget work on mobile.
“I don’t have to sell them on the beauty of mobile because they’re all using it themselves,” he said. “Once you see how it can help your business, it becomes addictive.”
The field is worth an estimated $60 billion a year worldwide, and is expanding rapidly. Hen made his first million dollars before graduating high school.
His fame has spread way beyond Israel. “A few months ago, Alec Ross, senior innovation adviser to the [U.S.] State Department, came over to Israel, and wanted to meet a few entrepreneurs and innovators who can use technology and innovation in order to solve some of the world’s biggest problems,” he said. “I had the honor to meet him with 14 other entrepreneurs in Tel Aviv for dinner, and discuss an optional collaboration.”
Working out of a Tel Aviv office, Hen began offering a weekly workshop that has so far has trained 3,000 people. He grooms overseas clients, primarily in North America, via videoconferencing.
“My success is just having the courage to do things,” said Hen, whose parents fully support his unconventional path in life.
His staff creates, designs, writes and places mobile ads, leaving the technical aspects to outsourcers. Hen is constantly educating himself on new mobile markets.
“I’ve put up campaigns in Congo, the UAE, Iran … and I want to be a master of South American markets, so I’m learning the carriers and mobile operators there,” he said.
He gets down to the detail level, such as what Colombians like about mobile gaming.
Until last year, Hen worked solo. Now he employs a staff of 13 — primarily former clients, ranging from 21-year-old novices to 40-something ad execs with master’s degrees. Hen never took a management course and is younger than all his employees, but he reports that people are eager to work for him.
“What is amazing is that they come to me and I say, ‘You know you’ll get less pay here than in the biggest ad agency in Israel,’ and they say, ‘I want to learn from you.’ And I just don’t get it. I learn from them.”
Hen was always looking to fill consumer needs. In fifth grade, he started his own newspaper, printing it at home and selling it to classmates for one shekel. Later, he operated a drink stand at a festival in his hometown of Netanya.
And it hasn’t stopped. On a recent drive in northern Israel, “there were 30 kilometers with no gas stations,” he said, so he started researching how to open a gas station.
The 19-year-old also is community-minded. Though exempt from military service because of a chronic back condition, he is interviewing for a national service volunteer position for next year.
And he talks about wanting to use his skills to improve lives in Africa, where mobile marketing is more common than Internet marketing.
Though he has many business competitors in Israel and elsewhere, Hen says he is not afraid of competition, and has stopped worrying whether others will steal his material. “I know what I am worth,” he says, with a confidence few others of his age possess.
While still in high school, Hen participated in ambassador programs to Cincinnati, Ohio, where his delegation spoke to 500 non-Jewish peers about life in Israel; and to Germany, where he and other young Israelis befriended Christian teens and stayed at each other’s homes for a week. He takes pride in educating others about Israel — beyond what is portrayed in the media.
As for those who are wondering: Statistics show that per capita, Israeli use of mobile phones is much higher than in the United States or United Kingdom. And a whopping 94 percent of Israeli high school students admit to using their phones in class.