Mobile marketing on the up-and-up

Mobile marketing and advertising outfit Velti has announced the launch of its mobile developer program while simultaneously releasing its software developer kits (SDK) for Android, Symbian, Windows, Blackberry and Apple’s iPhone and iPad.
The Irish firm says its new offerings will allow developers to distribute rich media advertising in apps, with types of ads ranging from plain old banner and interstitial to expandable banners, full screen text banners, HTML canvas, pre-roll/post-roll and shakable video.
On top of that, Velti boasts that its ads can also contain various calls-to-action including; click to call, click to app stores, click to email, click to landing page, click to buy and click to map.
The company says it believes the local landing page functionality on its SDK for iPhone is a “key characteristic,” as it allows the mobile app user to land on pages packed with mobile internet sites, video, email, maps and SMS —all without all without leaving the application.

One already happy Velti customer is popular magazine Sports Illustrated (SI), a client of Azuki Systems which recently used Velti’s iPhone SDK to create its ad-supported “freemium” SI 2010 Swimsuit app.
According to SI.com managing editor Paul Fichtenbaum, just three weeks after launch, SI had delivered 570,000 downloads with a ten percent conversion to paid users and by the end of March 2010, SI had delivered more than 700,000 downloads.
All this to indicate that both mobile advertising and Velti seem to be doing rather well at the moment. Just last week the company confirmed it had snapped up ad tool-maker Media Cannon for an undisclosed sum to help it expand its customer base and offerings. Velti already works with 450 brands, advertising agencies, mobile operators and media companies, including 11 of the 20 largest mobile operators worldwide and boasts those customers used Velti’s platform to create 2,000 campaigns.
Velti’s annual revenues for the year ended Dec. 31 reached $90 million which is some 45% up from the previous year.
The new tools can be accessed on the new Velti Developer Portal.