If you’re seeking evidence that mobile marketing is truly-and finally-gaining ground, look no further than Third Screen Media’s bottom line.
The Boston-based firm claims it saw more revenue in July than during the entire first quarter of the year, thanks largely to big-budget campaigns from major brands including American Express, Toyota, ExxonMobile and Burger King. Third Screen said it has tripled its ad impression total-loosely defined as one ad viewed once by a wireless user-from 30 million a month to more than 100 million a month so far this year.
“One of the fun parts about what’s happening is that, unlike in the early days of the Internet, we’re seeing Fortune 500 brands right out of the box,” said Tom Burgess, Third Screen Media’s chief executive officer. “We’re seeing (advertising) budgets that last year were $35,000 and are now in the $350,000 range.”
And while Third Screen is deploying big-budget campaigns, others are taking a more grassroots approach. AdMob Inc., a Palo Alto, Calif.-based startup that bills itself as “the world’s largest mobile advertising marketplace,” claims it delivers 250 million impressions a month to mobile users in the United States, Europe, Asia and Africa.
The company, which quietly deployed its service with a soft launch last December, serves as a kind of clearinghouse for mobile advertisers and publishers with space for rent. Advertisers with budgets as small as $10 have used AdMob’s network to place marketing messages on mobile phones, although the company said global brands are also among its customers.
Google Inc. quietly launched its own mobile marketing service, allowing customers of its AdWords service to develop their own ads and create mobile marketing campaigns. Google Mobile Ad users can set daily budgets, establish scheduled marketing messages and pay only when consumers click the ad or call the business. The U.S. offering follows April’s launch of a similar service in Japan.
Bellevue, Wash.-based Wireless Services Corp. officially joined the field, as well. The company said it snared $31 million in Series C financing and rebranded as SinglePoint to reflect its new focus on direct-to-consumer content and mobile messaging.
“We are just seeing the tip of the iceberg for mobile marketing,” said Doug Busk, vice president of marketing and product strategy for SinglePoint. “The U.S. broadcast media’s use of mobile applications and interactivity was once an add-on before a commercial break. Now it occupies four or five minutes during a 30-minute show.”
Not all the news was good for mobile marketing firms, however. NeoMedia Technologies Inc. hit a speed bump in its aggressive bid to become a player in the space, scrapping a $4.5 million deal to acquire Connecticut-based startup HipCricket Inc. The pact fell through, according to NeoMedia, after the two companies were “at an impasse and unable to agree to material terms” outlined in a letter of intent signed in February. HipCricket, which develops customized mobile marketing campaigns and claims to work with five of the top 10 radio networks in the country, is on the hook for two loans from NeoMedia totaling $500,000 that must be paid within three months.
NeoMedia also said it has secured $5 million in financing from Cornell Capital Partners L.P. The short-term note bears an annual interest rate of 10 percent and is convertible at Cornell’s option into shares of NeoMedia common stock at a price equal to 90 percent of the lowest closing bid price for 30 days prior to the conversion.
NeoMedia-which, improbably, also operates a line of auto-painting products and services-made headlines earlier this year during a $60 million spending spree in which it snapped up a handful of mobile marketing startups on both sides of the Atlantic. Recent attention has focused on its bottom line, however. The company lost more than $9 million last year and, according to a statement released Wednesday regarding the new $5 million loan, “pledged all of its assets as security for the convertible debenture.”
The Florida-based outfit is planning to launch a flagship software platform, dubbed qode, that aims to link marketers and consumers on mobile phones. In an effort to free up cash for its mobile marketing business, NeoMedia late last week said it has inked a letter of intent to jettison its Micro Paint Repair business for an undisclosed sum.
But while NeoMedia struggles to herd the half-dozen cats it bought earlier this year, its competitors continue to gain traction in the early days of mobile marketing. And operators that once kept such efforts at arm’s length are beginning to embrace wireless advertising.
“U.S. carriers have completely embraced advertising,” said Third Screen’s Burgess. “They’re in the process of determining how they will best roll it out on their networks. It’s less a matter of if; it’s definitely a matter of when and how.”
