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AOL’s Platform-A Launches New Mobile Ad Platform

Platform-A, the advertising business of AOL, has launched a new third-party ad serving platform through Third Screen Media, the company they acquired just over a year ago. The platform offers “inventory partitioning”, a new technology which Platform-A says will increase monetization for publishers.

Third party mobile ad servers like this allow publishers to have access to many different ad networks. This should enable them to fill more of their available ad inventory, and therefore increase monetization of their mobile site.

As a part this new platform, Platform-A is introducing a new solution that will let publishers dictate exactly how their inventory is distributed across multiple networks. With this new “inventory partitioning” feature, publishers will be able to assign specific percentages of their inventory to be allocated based on any combination of ad network, subject area, location and more.

Lynda Clarizio, President of Platform-A explains the company’s strategy - “Platform-A sees mobile as a key component of the digital advertising landscape, and is aggressively focused on building its mobile advertising business… By implementing inventory partitioning as a part of Third Screen Media’s third-party ad-serving solution, we’re offering publishers a powerful new way to manage, control and prioritize the distribution of inventory to their advertising partners.”

Google Begins Testing Ads In Mobile YouTube Videos

 

This is a test -- ads on YouTube's mobile site

Over the past year, we’ve focused on creating and delivering a full-featured YouTube mobile user experience. We think we've made great strides in doing this, allowing you to access YouTube wherever you are, whenever you want it. YouTube for mobile continues to grow exponentially, and today, people watch hundreds of millions of YouTube videos every month on mobile devices.

You may have noticed that we started running a test of display ads on select pages of the YouTube mobile site in the U.S. and Japan. This is our first step in testing mobile advertising for YouTube -- it will give you a new way to interact with content on the go, while allowing us to learn how video viewers engage with mobile advertising. Our test advertisers will also have an additional branding tool at their disposal and the opportunity to reach the millions of people who visit YouTube every day on their phones.

At YouTube, we are constantly testing new ways to deliver the kinds of ads that contribute to the user experience while making the most sense for advertisers, and we've learned a lot about what works for YouTube and what doesn't. We're excited to explore new approaches to mobile advertising, and will evaluate this test closely over the next several weeks to make sure we provide our community, our partners and advertisers with the most valuable and effective mobile experience possible.

Posted by Christine Tsai, Product Marketing Manager, YouTube

Amobee raises $22M strategic round from Cisco, Motorola and others for mobile advertising

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.