Amobee, a company that enables mobile carriers to insert advertising into nearly any form of mobile content, has raised a $22 million strategic round from Cisco, Motorola, Vodafone and a number of returning investors that include Accel Partners and Sequoia Capital.
Unlike mobile advertising advertising companies like AdMob, which makes deals with publishers, Amobee is not an ad network. It works only with the carriers, who use Amobee’s technology to offer their customers ad-supported content for free or at reduced prices. Should a user choose to receive ads instead of pay subscriptions, Amobee’s technology can push advertising into video, music, games, SMS messages and mobile web pages.
So far, the company has made deals with 11 carriers in nine countries around the world, with 20 more soon to roll out. Chief executive, Zohar Levkovitz, says he cannot yet talk about potential partnerships in the United States, but made it clear that this round of capital was more about creating synergies with investors than a need to raise money.
The company has raised two previous rounds. The first, at $5 million, was in 2005 and the second, an undisclosed sum, came in 2007.