Different approaches to monetizing opportunities in mobile advertising.

Moderator: Sean Wise, Wise Mentor Captial
Judges: Gabriel Ventures Partners
Intel Capital
T-Mobile Venture Fund

Companies:
Admob
Focus: The company’s marketplace is designed to offer advertisers access to a large network of mobile web inventory,
targeting tools, real-time metrics and reporting, enabling them to run ads across a range of mobile content channels, including communities, entertainment, news and portals.
Funding: Sequoia
Akin to Google’s AdWords, after less than one year, AdMob’s network currently serves ads in 156 countries, with the majority of its traffic coming from the U.S., Europe, and Asia.

Cascada Mobile
Focus: Powers the recommendation and distribution of mobile apps, content, and branded marketing initiatives
Funding: Series A
Cascada Mobile allows any brand mobile app provider to leverage viral distribution sans carrier integration any wireless deck/offdeck/storefront. Track users and identify “super distributors.” Two primary products, Tag Engine and Tag Marketer, enable content promotion and sharing of mobile content across across carriers, handsets, and geographic regions.
Leverages user-behavior of referrals and recommendations within network of friends. Overcoming fragmentation problems, enabling carriers and publishers to capitalize on growing market.

Greystripe
Focus: Portal with broad range of free games supported by in-game ads.
Funding: Series A
Business model: Ad supported games
Distribute games through Greystripe’s own portal (Gamejump.com) and through various partners.
Greystripe’s online, mobile web portal, currently has hundreds of thousands of users today and they expect to hit the multi-million mark sometime next year. Each game is adwrapped in patent-pending technology and requires no work on the developer side to do this. Advertisers can traffic their game. Distribute through own portal and through various partners.
Issue: mobile gaming still nascent w/users. The challenge is that mobile gaming is in its infancy stage with users. Year-end 50 publishers over 450 games. While publishers that use Greystripe get lower price per download but they do get wider distribution. Greystripe will be pushing on more partnerships to extend distribution.

MobilePlay
Focus: A community network, ad network, and portal that provides content in a browser and downloadable application.
Funding: Series A
Ad network for major media brands (40% of content proprietary). The companies can sell their add or Mobileplay can sell them and do a rev share. According to the judges, the challenge in this space is distribution. Content needs to be more compelling. It will be critical to get users to pay for this via subscription. OEM distribution is the Achilles heel.