Digital Media

Greystripe announced Wednesday it raised $5.5 million in a third round of venture capital funding as it seeks to gain traction for its ad-supported mobile game advertising network.

Incubic Venture capital led the round, which included additional existing investors Monitor Ventures and Walt Disney Co.-backed Steamboat Ventures.

Greystripe has raised a total of $15.6 million to date, last raising a second round of $8.9 million in May 2007 and a $1.2 million first round in October 2006. The company declined to discuss whether its latest round was at a higher or lower valuation.

The start-up has developed technology designed to allow advertising agencies to click on a mobile option to extend their existing online advertising campaigns beyond computer screens or TV. Greystripe aims to take flash advertisement and extend it beyond its online format to a mobile format. Flash advertisements have predominantly appeared online, rather than on mobile devices.

Michael Chang, Greystripe chief executive, said in a statement:

For too long the mobile advertising world has built a silo approach to their business.

Those days are over. It's time to join the online advertising world and bring new value in terms of reach, targeting and interactivity.

Among the smartphones that Greystripe works with, it delivers rich media flash ads on Apple's iPhone.

MyScreen Mobile announced Thursday it is offering a version of its advertising rewards service for Google's Android smartphones.

Under the service, users sign up for MyScreen Mobile to receive targeted ads on their mobile phones. In exchange for viewing the full-screen ads, users receive rewards points for such subsidized mobile services as ringtones, mobile games, and gift cards.

MyScreen, which already has versions of its service for BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Symbian, and Palm OS devices, is offering up a service that is akin to other Internet advertising incentive programs that have popped up over the years from the former AllAdvantage to the former CyberGold.

Mobile advertising start-up AdMob announced on its blog on Thursday that it has added $12.5 million to the Series C funding round that it began amassing last fall.

The money comes from the Draper Fisher Jurvetson Growth Fund and Northgate Capital, adding to the round's existing lead investor Sequoia Capital and repeat investor Accel Partners. The funding brings its Series C total to $28.2 million.

AdMob recently launched a business unit specifically to handle advertisements on Google's Android platform. The reason for the Series C round, the company said, is to keep up growth, even as the advertising industry takes a hit. It'll be focusing on some new international markets, as well as expanding its sales and business development teams in the United States.

"We believe that now is a critical moment for us to cement our leadership position by making the investments that will help us to come out of this challenging economic environment even stronger than when we went in," AdMob's blog post read. "As mobile Web and application usage continues to grow rapidly worldwide, and smartphones--from the iPhone to the G1--gain in market share, we see a real opportunity to expand the mobile-advertising market."

AdMob put out a call Tuesday for Android developers, as it unveiled an ad unit specifically for applications running on Google's smartphone.

AdMob's ad unit is designed to allow third-party developers to generate revenue from the applications they create for Google's Android mobile phone. AccuWeather, Jirbo, and TapJoy developers have already put AdMob's Android ad unit to work, the company said.

"We are already seeing strong interest in developing applications for Android-based devices, similar to what we saw with the iPhone last summer," Ali Diab, AdMob vice president of product management, said in a statement.

AdMob, based in San Mateo, Calif., serves mobile banner and text ads. The company works with more than 6,000 mobile sites and 450 iPhone applications.

Google now can show search ads on the iPhone's browser.

(Credit: Google)

The iPhone and T-Mobile G1 come with pretty much full-fledged Web browsers, and Google now is according them that status by showing search ads on the phones.

Advertisers bidding for search ads through Google's AdWords service now can choose to have ad campaigns run exclusively on iPhones and the T-Mobile G1, the first phone with Google's Android operating system, which also has a robust browser. Alexandra Kenin, product marketing manager for Google's mobile ads team, announced the move on the company's Google Mobile Blog Monday.

By using the "iPhones and other mobile devices with full Internet browsers" option in AdWords, advertisers also can exclude this class of devices from their ad campaigns, Kenin said.

Unlike with display ads on mobile devices, search ads work the same. "Because the G1 and iPhone has full Internet browsers, you'll be able to display your standard AdWords ads and landing pages on these devices without having to modify them," Kenin said.

Apple's iPhone jumped to the top spot on the AdMob Network for the month of October, with 4.1 percent of the mobile ads requested from the network, according to the AdMob Mobile Metrics Report released Wednesday.

Requests from advertisers for mobile ads targeted to iPhone users rose to 236 million in October, more than doubling from the 103 million requests recorded in the previous month. Worldwide, AdMob's mobile-ad requests for all device makers grew 13.8 percent in October, to 5.8 billion.

AdMob delivers banner and text ads to mobile devices, and these figures were analyzed and aggregated as part of its monthly Mobile Metrics report. AdMob-served ads are seen by people visiting clients' Web sites with their mobile phone. Advertisers can choose to have their ads appear on a certain type of device, or region of the world, and then AdMob places the ads on partner publishers' mobile sites.

Mobile advertising is on a fast track, with research firms projecting market revenue to reach $19 billion per year by 2011, up from the approximately $3 billion seen for last year.

Fueling the iPhone's October performance was particularly strong traffic outside the United States, which accounted for 37 percent of its ad requests, according to the AdMob report. Western Europe represented 17 percent of the iPhone ad requests, and Asia represented 8 percent.

Other handset players following close behind included the Motorola Razr V3, which received 3.4 percent of the requests; Nokia's N70, with 3.2 percent; and the Motorola Krzr K1c, with 1.8 percent.

But in the U.S. market alone, the iPhone ranked No. 2, with 6.9 percent of the requests, while Motorola's Razr V3 led the market, with 7.7 percent. The U.S. market accounted for 62.8 percent of the iPhone's ad requests in October.

Requests from advertisers for mobile ads targeted to iPhone users more than doubled from September to October.

(Credit: AdMob)

AdMob and reportedly Like.com have managed to go against the grain, landing additional venture funding rounds in sectors that are now under great pressure.

AdMob, which supplies banner advertising to mobile devices, received $15.7 million in a third round of funding led by Sequoia Capital and participation from existing investor Accel Partners, the company said Wednesday.

For AdMob, its funding round is particularly interesting, given it serves the advertising industry, which is currently facing challenging times in the tumultuous economic climate. In addition, its lead investor was Sequoia, which recently issued a dire warning to its portfolio companies to prepare for the worst.

Meanwhile, e-commerce site Like.com managed to raise a substantial $32 million in third-round funding in August, according to a report in TechCrunch. Menlo Ventures reportedly led the round, with new investor Crosslink Capital and all previous investors.

Yahoo is under financial pressure this year, but it's shaking up management of its mobile phone group as part of a plan to make its phone and TV division profitable next year.

The company on Monday named David Ko to be senior vice president of the mobile group, which handles software, advertising, and partnerships in the mobile phone market. He reports to Marco Boerries, executive vice president of the Connected Life division, which is trying to extend Yahoo's business to mobile phones and Internet-connected TV sets.

David Ko

(Credit: Yahoo)

"I am very happy to introduce today Connected Life v3.0, which is designed to take our leadership in mobile to the next level," Boerries said in a memo about the changes. Version 2.0 was about laying foundations with technology development and distribution deals, but 3.0 will be about money.

And it will be the phone group that's carries the profit burden, he added: the TV effort is still in an earlier development and distribution stage so far.

"Our goal is to become a contributor to Yahoo's bottom line in 2009," Boerries said. In other words, to make Yahoo overall more profitable, not less.

That mobile revenue comes from text and display ads, and partnerships, Ko said in an interview. Though Ko sees competition from Google and others, he's confident of Yahoo's position in mobile Internet services: "We are absolutely leading in this."

Google is aggressively expanding into the mobile market, though, with advertising, software, the Android operating system, and services. And the threat is real: earlier today, Cowen and Co. analysts said Google Maps will help lead it to dominance in mobile search.

The phone group will carry the Connected Life profit burden initially, Ko added: the TV work is still in an earlier development and distribution stage so far.

Ko replaces Steve Boom, who "after 10 years at Yahoo has decided to leave the company to pursue other opportunities," Boerries said. A Yahoo spokeswoman said Boom was leaving voluntarily. Ko was general manager of Yahoo's mobile work in Asia, a post now held by Matthias Kunze.

Also leaving Yahoo are Geraldine Wilson, who handled Connected Life business operations in Europe--her work included ousting Google to become T-Mobile's preferred search mobile search provider--and Bruce Stewart, who worked on business development in the United States.