Somewhere along the line someone didn’t get the memo about how hard it was to succeed on the mobile Web. Netherlands-based MADS, has announced it has won over 150 of Europe’s online publishers with its mobile ad-platform, a reach which represents 60 million mobile consumers across across 15 countries. So far publishers including Gazzetta dello Sport (Italy), Telegraaf Media Group (Netherlands), TV4 (Sweden) and Aftenposten (Norway) are now using the MADS platform, which is not a million miles away from being a kind of DoubleClick for Mobile. Competitors to MADS would be San Francisco-based Amobee, Cambridge, MA-basedJumpTap, Third Screen Media and AdInfuse in Belgium.
The three year old privately held Netherlands-based company founded by CEO Ashu Mathura now has brands like Adidas, Mercedes-Benz, Peugeot, Mini, H&M, Coca-Cola and British Airways using the ad platform. It also offers its platform to operators and agencies and combines mobile web, SMS push/insert, MMS push/insert, mobile video, mobile games and applications, idle screens and ring back tones.
But of course the ones to beat in the mobile advertising platform stakes currently is AdMob which today said it was now allowing advertisers to track App Store downloads, conversion rates and cost-per-download. AdMob says its ad network reached 8.4 million unique iPhone and iPod Touch devices worldwide as of December 2008.
I think there’s plenty of room for something like MADS to co-exist with admob as they are offering a slightly different proposition. There are hundreds of different types of ad networks in the online world ranging from Google ad-sense to niche networks focused on particular demographics, subject areas or ad creative types. The same thing will be true in mobile
Crucial point in mobile advertising is not the uniqueness of the product, but the ability to sell the product and, let’s not lie ourselves, how far is your reach (who you know and how well you know him/her).
Mike, I’d not position either JumpTap or Amobee as near competitors for MADS – there are plenty of other players closer to their model include quite a few in the UK. There are a few directories around, eg http://www.mobiadnews.com/?page_id=542