Los Angeles-based Rubicon Project today announced that it had acquired the San Fracisco-based mobile ad tech platform Mobsmith. Read More »
Sense Networks believes it’s got a way to make location-based ads effective by looking not only at place, but matching it to the unique behavioral profile of users. The company is now putting its know how to use with two new products that are debuting Wednesday. … Read More »
A team ex-AdMob and Google scientists are launching Drawbridge, which allows advertisers to target consumers across desktop and mobile. The company is coming out of stealth mode with $6.5 million in funding from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sequoia Capital Read More »
Facebook showed off a new suite of premium ads that enables brands to create more engaging stories for users and finally brings marketing to Facebook’s mobile properties. It’s part of a broad effort to generate revenue for the social network as it prepares to go public. … Read More »
Apple said to cut iAd pricing once again
By Tom Krazit, paidContent
Feb. 14, 2012, 6:13pm PT
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Apple has once again cut prices on its iAd system for rich in-app advertising on iOS applications, as ad buyers continue to balk at the up-front cost of participating in Apple’s vision of how mobile advertising should work. Read More »
As the world goes mobile, it’s prompting a boom in mobile advertising, which is poised for a huge year in 2012. The winners include companies such as Nexage, a real-time bidding exchange provider which told me that it hit 100 billion ad requests today. Read More »
Appstores.com is launching an app distribution network that allows web publishers to curate their own app galleries, highlighting relevant apps for their audience. Appstores.com is also releasing a mobile ad unit that allows web publishers to inserts ads for apps that are tailored to its users. Read More »
Rich media ad firm Medialets is launching Medialets Private Marketplace, a buying platform that lets advertisers directly plan, buy and execute on Medialets’ collection of top publishers. The marketplace reflects the emergence of private exchanges in mobile and the growing maturation of mobile advertising. Read More »
Mobile ad network Millennial Media has filed to go public as it looks to capitalize on the big shift in advertising toward mobile devices, a market that is expected to grow rapidly in the coming years as smartphones and tablets proliferate. Read More »
Kiip, a mobile monetization startup that offers real rewards to game users who hit in-game milestones, is now going after bigger brand advertisers with a new feature called Swarm, which engages millions of users in multi-player tournaments with the top winners walking away with big prizes. … Read More »
Global mobile advertising and marketing is expected to grow from $3.4 billion in 2010 at a compound annual growth rate of 37 percent to $22.5 billion in 2016. Berg Insight said that by 2016, mobile advertising worldwide will represent 15.2 percent of all online ad spending. Read More »
Pontiflex, a New York start-up with a mobile sign-up ad platform that allows consumers to pick what kind of ads and offers they want to see, is releasing an international SDK that allows developers to place country-specific ads in local languages. Read More »
More Must Reads
Xyologic, a mobile app search firm, has come up with what it says is the first break down of mobile advertising on Android apps, showing that Google’s AdMob is well ahead of rival ad providers. It found 89 percent of the top Android apps use AdMob. Read More »
Location, location, location: It’s not just for real estate. Mobile advertisers are increasingly prizing location-based ads, according to real-time bidding exchange Nexage, which said that mobile publishers and developers are getting 3.8 times more for ad impressions that include location data in the last three months. Read More »
Tapjoy, which ran afoul of Apple’s ban on incentivized install campaigns, is getting back into the business of helping drive downloads of iOS apps with a new web app called Tapjoy Games that allows it reach out directly to consumers. Read More »
Mobile ad server MoPub is now poised to offer what it calls a one-stop monetization shop with the launch of a real-time bidding exchange for mobile apps and web sites that will allow it to fill out its ad-serving platform. Read More »
New data out of eMarketer shows that mobile advertising is finally starting to attract the respect — and the money — it deserves. Advertisers will likely spend $1.23 billion on U.S. mobile ads this year, the first time the industry’s annual revenues have surpassed $1 billion. Read More »
Google has been prodding mobile website owners to optimize their sites for mobile. Now, it’s taking a more aggressive step by announcing that it will consider whether an advertiser has a mobile optimized site when assessing ads quality for all AdWords campaigns. Read More »
Mobile advertising network InMobi has raised a whopping $200 million from Softbank in one of the largest investments ever in the mobile Internet market. The money is another sign of the growing momentum behind mobile advertising, which is heating up with big deals and funding. Read More »
PlayHaven, a San Francisco start-up is looking to bring the real-time web to mobile marketing with a new platform that brings the dynamism of the web to mobile ads. The new platform gives mobile game developers the ability to react quickly to their shifting needs. Read More »
Skype’s purchase of GroupMe has largely revolved around the communications side of the deal. But a big component is also GroupMe’s plans to monetize conversations by presenting local offers and discounts that help people make group decisions in real time. Read More »
IAC introduced its mobile incubator program Hatch Labs in March, calling it a technology sandbox where innovative mobile ideas can be prototyped. The first graduate, Blu Trumpet, is now launching and is taking on the problem of app monetization for publishers and app distribution for advertisers. Read More »
The money in mobile apps is increasingly tilting toward freemium apps and that is helping companies like Tapjoy, which said it now has 10,000 apps that are using its monetization and distribution platform. The company is also delivering more than 1 million ad completions every day. Read More »
Mobile advertising companies are turning their small ad real estate into showcases for immersive 3D ads that could potentially achieve much greater engagement than traditional static and dynamic banner ads. Amobee today is announcing new 3D ads that use technology from Cooliris. Read More »
Millennial Media is using its 50th mobile intelligence report to look at some of the changes that have occurred since the company began its reports in March 2009. It marks an era in which the smartphones have gone from techie tools to almost mainstream devices. Read More »
Kickanotch — a Kansas startup that is building a one-stop app management and monetization platform for media companies, starting with radio stations — is now coming out with RevKick, a content- and ad-management tool that lets companies easily deploy, manage and monetize their apps from one … Read More »
It’s often said that the rise of mobile devices means that people are now “always on.” But it turns out there are still times when people are more “plugged in” than others. A new study about how — and when — people really use mobile apps. Read More »
LocalResponse — a marketing platform that allows advertisers to send out targeted tweets to consumers based on where consumers have checked in or where they say they are on social networks — has found that its targeting work is paying off with significant engagement from consumers. … Read More »
Pontiflex, a New York–based startup, is helping crack the code on mobile advertising with its ad platform, which lets users sign up for the kinds of promotions they want to see. The tool is now coming to the iPad after a successful launch on iPhone and … Read More »
Though they’re still emerging, location-based services are expected to bring in $10 billion in revenue from consumers and advertisers by 2016, according to research firm Strategy Analytics. The biggest chunk, just over 50 percent, will come from location-based search advertising. Read More »
New figures from analytics firm Flurry suggest that mobile users across Europe’s biggest markets are ravenously hungry for apps — and that even despite high smartphone adoption around the continent, there is still plenty of room for further growth in the coming years. Read More »
With the FTC’s crackdown on privacy extending to mobile, the shifting climate is opening up opportunities for start-ups like PlaceIQ and BlueCava that enable advertisers to target mobile users without personally identifying them. Read More »
Tap Me, a mobile advertising startup, is getting underway with its ad tool, which allows brands to sponsor power-ups in games. It’s a good example of how mobile ads are making the necessary evolution from something pushed on to users to something valuable they interact with. … Read More »
Mobile advertising is ramping up quickly and is poised to grow by more than 40 percent over the next several years, outpacing traditional online advertising. And that is fueling a spate of funding announcements and deals as the competition in this space heats up. Read More »
Freemium game apps have an outsized influence in the Apple App Store, making up 40 percent of all free game downloads in the App Store in March. But with the recent crackdown by Apple on incentivized installs, freemium app makers are having to adjust. Read More »
There’s a reason why search companies, advertisers and local merchants are so interested in smartphones. It’s because they’re turning out to be a powerful tools for people looking to search locally, act quickly and improve their shopping, according to a smartphone user study commissioned by Google. … Read More »
Medialets, a New York mobile ad company, is looking to make rich media mobile ads much more easier for advertisers and publishers to use by launching a new dashboard and toolkit called Muse, which simplifies the creation, management and analytics of rich media campaigns. Read More »
Kiip, a new start-up coming out of stealth mode this week, is looking to upend the mobile ad model by offering gamers tangible rewards, offers and discounts at the time they hit in-game milestones or tough achievements rather serving traditional mobile display ads. Read More »
AdMob is releasing a software development kit for Windows Phone 7 developers and is updating its platform to full HTML5 for iOS, Android and Windows Phone 7. The changes mean developers will be able to include rich media AdMob advertising units easily across all three platforms. Read More »
Early signs of success for mobile rich media ads suggests they’re poised to take off. Volvo recently completed a video ad campaign with Admob on the iPhone and found the ads have led to almost a 10x improvement in click-through rates compared to traditional banner ads. Read More »
Android has finally surged past iOS in ad impressions on Millennial’s ad network for the first time, breaking a two-month tie. The numbers reflect the obvious growth of the Android platform and solidifies the idea that Android has become the top platform for mobile advertising. Read More »
JiWire is leveraging its network of 4,000 Wi-Fi hotspots to serve up a new kind of highly-interactive location-aware ad that operates more like an app than an ad. JiWire is hoping by packing in app-like features, consumers will be more likely to make a purchase nearby. Read More »
MoPub, a mobile ad serving start-up built by ex-Google and AdMob guys, has raised a seed round from Accel Partners and Harrison Metal Capital. The team is angling to become the DoubleClick of mobile, serving up ads to apps and websites from various networks. Read More »
Most of the recent focus on near-field communications and RFID technology is targeted at mobile payments and advertising. One company, however, is thinking beyond the basics and using the tech to recall your memories — if you consider memories to be user-generated content from smartphones. Read More »
Medialets has found that competing against iAd can be a good thing. Now the New York start-up is looking to offer its ad tools to agencies and in-house creative teams to help keep the rich media mobile ad wave going. Read More »
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