Greystripe Inc To Go AdMob’s Way?

It seems Greystripe Inc., a San Francisco based mobile advertising company, might go the AdMob way. Its founder Michael Chang said in a recent interview that he has been talking to a lot of what he calls ‘potential suitors’.

Started in 2004, Greystripe has been going strong for the past six years and is one of the leading rich media mobile advertising networks in the world today. It specializes in delivering full screen ads on the iPhone, Java, and Android platforms. It also serves flash ads on the iPhone using a unique transcoding technology. The company has raised nearly $18 million in venture funding and is expecting its sales to triple this year. Michael expects the company to be profitable next year.

Ever since Google bought AdMob, a lot of eyes have turned towards Greystripe, which is a competitor to AdMob. Michael Chang says that in the last two months, he has met a lot of people who have expressed their interest in buying the company. He says that a lot of people were actually interested in Greystripe even before Google’s acquisition of AdMob.

Going by what Michael Chang says, it is safe to assume that Google’s acquisition of AdMob, albeit inadvertently, has made a lot of people focus their attention on companies like Greystripe. By acquiring AdMob, Google has become the top player on the market with 30 to 40 percent market share. So, companies like Yahoo and Microsoft might try to acquire small and medium sized mobile advertising companies to consolidate their market share. Microsoft, in particular, is in dire need of a revival and I will not be surprised if they make the first move. It should be interesting to see how things unfold in the coming months.

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising.

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New Interactive Mobile Advertising Service from America Movil and MyScreen

America Movil, a well known wireless service provider in Latin America, has joined hands with MyScreen, a Canada based mobile advertising company, to launch an interactive mobile advertising service across Latin American and the Caribbean.

This, as you can imagine, is an opt-in service which is available only to those who subscribe to the service voluntarily. Customers will be delivered interactive full screen ads at the end of every call. Banner ads will be served when customers are browsing the net on their mobile phone. The subscribers who opt in to the service will get special discounts, offers, and free services which are not available to regular subscribers of America Movil.

The ads delivered are highly targeted based on the preferences of each subscriber. The subscribers can get ads from different categories like health, entertainment, lifestyle, and sports. Subscribers can accumulate reward points for every ad they view on their mobile phone. They can redeem these reward points to get free services and other such offers from their operator.

America Movil and MyScreen conducted a trial this year to get an idea of the response from subscribers. Much to everyone’s surprise, the ads from MyScreen generated 20% CTR (click through rate), which is unprecedented to say the least. Just so you know, online ads, which have become ubiquitous these days, generate a CTR of 1%. In other words, the response to mobile ads, at least in this scenario, was 20 times higher than the response to online ads. This encouraged the parties involved tremendously to introduce the service to America Movil customers.

In my opinion, the timing of this alliance could not have been better. A recent report from Juniper Research says that mobile advertising in Latin America is still in its nascent stage and is expected to grow significantly in the coming years. In 2012, the amount spent on mobile advertising in the region is expected to be somewhere around $1.3 billion. Considering the fact that America Movil has millions of subscribers from the region, it makes sense for them to join hands with MyScreen to come up with such a service.

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising, All things mobile phones.

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