Nearly two years after MTV Networks (NYSE: VIA) created its Tribes ad network as a way to extend its cable channels’ ad sales to like-minded websites, the Viacom property is moving into mobile. Mobile Tribes will begin rolling out ads on MTVN’s mobile wap sites, but the major focus will be on apps, starting with the network’s current 37 iPhone apps, Sol Masch, director of Mobile Advertising for MTVN, told paidContent. There are no immediate plans to bring Mobile Tribes to Google’s Android system, but Masch expects it to happen in the next few months.
MTVN’s mobile ad effort will begin with campaigns by Kraft for its Miracle Whip brand. Over time, MTVN believes it can add its fast food advertisers, as well as consumer packaged goods, beverages, wireless providers and movie studios to the Tribes’ extension, which at the outset promises marketers the ability to reach 2.4 million monthly uniques for general buys. Individually, the Addicting Games/Shockwave Mobile Tribe claims to reach 3.7 million monthly uniques, while the Spike/Comedy Central Gametrailers Mobile Tribe has a reach of 1.6 million monthly uniques.
In addition to its 37 app, MTVN will look to partner with third-party developers that have apps that fit into its three mobile verticals. As it does with outside websites that have joined Tribes on the PC side, MTVN can offer its advertisers even wider reach beyond its owned and operated properties, but with what it calls the credibility of MTVN’s stamp of approval.
That trust is especially important in mobile, which despite some phenomenal growth over the past year, remains a fairly small business in the wider online advertising world. “Mobile is still experimental for a lot of advertisers,” Masch said. “But lately, we’ve been seeing increasing demand for mobile services, more than we can meet, so this is a good time to expand Tribes for that purpose.”

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