Medialets

The display ad market in general, and rich media in particular, is fueled by creativity, innovation, data and, as Vic Gundotra, Google’s VP Engineering pointed out during his keynote at Google I/O today, collaboration. From the brand to the agency to the ad server to the publisher, there are a host of players involved in delivering brand ads, and it takes coordination to flawlessly execute a campaign. Mobile advertising is no different.

Our team has deep experience in the complexities of third-party integration in the display ad space, and has worked hard to ensure that Medialets ads work flawlessly across the myriad ad servers, networks and platforms publishers are using in mobile. As a result, our ad formats have become the standard for rich media mobile advertising, and we get amazing showcase opportunities like the one embedded here:

The Google team works with Medialets and our publishers to deliver our high-engagement, rich media ad formats into mobile applications using the tools they know and understand already: DoubleClick for Publishers and DoubleClick for Advertisers. This is a great example of how openness and the spirit of collaboration provide the publisher/developer and advertiser community with choice, and as Internet markets have consistently shown, choice leads to more innovation and scale.

Thanks, Google, in particular Vic, Paul, Alex and the whole mobile ads team, our partners at The Weather Channel and Fandango, and our clients Warner Brothers & MediaCom for the opportunity to share the stage at your event and to grow the open mobile ads ecosystem together.

Apple announced their iAd network today, the next step in Quattro Wireless’ evolution since its acquisition by Apple. And what they announced was just fantastic: an ad network that focuses on rich media interactions inside of iPhone apps. Apple is sending a loud message to the advertising community that mobile ads are different from online display – and even online rich media – and that they can be far more valuable to a brand. We couldn’t agree more.

We built the first rich media ads for mobile apps and now work with a large number of the top apps and publishers to help them monetize and sell their own inventory. We provide publishers the tools and the infrastructure they need to be successful selling ads. That’s very different from the iAd network, which like all ad networks sells ad inventory on a publisher’s behalf and takes a meaningful percentage of the revenue.

Not only are we the most widely deployed rich media platform for mobile, we’re also a cross-platform solution, meaning we work on iPhone and Android devices with other platforms to follow soon. That means that advertisers can create one set of interactive ads and run them across all of our publishers and ad network partners regardless of what kind of device they use, with a consistent set of metrics to measure their campaign’s performance. We are also a cross-network solution, and will shortly be announcing a number of ad network partnerships where advertisers will be able to buy Medialets rich media ads in addition to our direct, publisher partners.

Apple’s done more to move the needle in the brand community for mobile advertising than anyone else, and that was before they owned an ad network. Now that they’re promoting rich media units on a grand scale, we’re convinced that the flow of dollars into mobile ads - across all platforms - will only increase. That’s great for Medialets and for all of our partners.

This is an exciting day for mobile advertising.

Medialets serves thousands of publishers and advertisers as the mobile application market continues to grow exponentially

NEW YORK–Medialets, the leading analytics and ad technology platform for next-generation mobile applications, has today announced that they have closed a $4 million Series A financing round led by investor Foundry Group, with participation from DFJ Gotham and Bobby Yazdani, early investor in Google.

Founded in June 2008, Medialets is the most widely deployed rich media advertising and analytics platform for mobile applications built for iPhone and Android, with support for BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Symbian and Palm Pre devices coming this year. The company develops technologies that enable publishers to measure their audience and monetize their applications through advertising and allow brands to leverage all of the capabilities unique to these devices into advertisements in a completely measurable environment, whether a user is on- or offline.

“Medialets entered the market at the inception of the new generation of the mobile application space, and we are proud to have been able to help foster and grow the market by providing tools and support to the developer community. Over the past year, Medialets has become the trusted partner to over 1,000 leading developers. Through this investment, we’ll focus on significantly enhancing the platform they use to gain a competitive edge and continue to win market share,” said Eric Litman, Chairman and CEO of Medialets. “We’ve accomplished a great deal in a short period of time, and are thrilled to now bring in partners who are just as passionate about the business as we are.”

Medialets launched on July 11th, 2008, the same day as Apple’s App Store, has been installed over 60 million times across over 15 million unique devices to date, and measures usage in many of the top 20 highest downloaded applications on the iPhone platform based upon data released by Apple in April 2009. On the measurement side, Medialets primarily works with large developers and media publishers who look to the company’s analytics product, Medialytics, as a business intelligence tool to help them make informed decisions around improving app strategy and performance. Medialets does not collect any personally identifiable information from users. The data gathered from the analytics product is anonymized and applied to improve the advertising experience and targeting capabilities for advertisers.

The Medialets ad platform solves a core set of challenges successful publishers and developers face when deploying a mobile application. Medialets’ ad technology makes it possible to target and serve rich media ads to millions of smartphone users worldwide immediately, whether those ads are sold in-house or come from a third party. The company’s unique ad formats let brands and agencies create engaging ads that deliver the power of a branded application with the immediate distribution of an ad. Publishers add Medialets’ analytics code to their application and Medialets provides the infrastructure on the server side for aggregating and reporting on usage, as well as for reliably delivering ads into enabled applications. The rich media ads can include video, animation, sound and other advanced functionality.

“Although this is a very young sector, we believe that Medialets has the management team, experience and traction in the market to be the clear leader in the space,” said Seth Levine, partner at Foundry Group. “We look forward to working closely with Eric and his team to solidify Medialets’ lead in the market and continue to innovate and push the boundaries around what is possible in mobile advertising.”

For more information about Medialets, please visit www.medialets.com.

About Medialets

Medialets is a New York City-based rich media advertising and analytics platform for native applications on devices such as iPhone and Android. Medialets works with agencies and brands to define and deploy innovative ad campaigns that tap into all of the capabilities of the iPhone. Medialytics, Medialets’ free analytics and reporting solution, is the leading analytics and advertising solution for the world’s most downloaded iPhone applications. Medialets is a privately-held company with offices in New York, NY and San Francisco, CA. Email us at connect@medialets.com and follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/medialets.

About Foundry Group

Foundry Group is a venture capital firm focused on investing in early-stage information technology, Internet, and software startups. In addition to providing the necessary venture capital to get a company up and running, Foundry Group is committed to leveraging their experience in starting and growing companies, expertise in the technology industry, and network of relationships to help great entrepreneurs turn great ideas into great companies. Foundry Group is based in Boulder, Colorado, and invests in companies located across the United States. For more information, visit www.foundrygroup.com.

About DFJ Gotham

DFJ Gotham Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm based in New York City focused primarily on early-stage information technology companies on the East Coast. DFJ Gotham Ventures partners with extraordinary teams of entrepreneurs to build strong and successful businesses that make a huge impact in their industries. DFJ Gotham Ventures takes pride in being an active partner, leveraging its experience, knowledge and relationships to provide substantial value to its portfolio companies. DFJ Gotham Ventures is proud to have backed such category leaders as Massive (acquired by MSFT), XOsoft (acquired by CA), Q-Link (acquired by Adobe), Mimeo.com, ContextWeb, Worktopia and Drop.io, among many others. For more information, please visit www.dfjgotham.com.

About Bobby Yazdani

Bobby Yazdani is the founder and CEO of Saba. He founded Saba in 1997. Today, Saba, with over $100M in profitable revenue is headquartered in Redwood Shores, Calif., is the premier global provider of strategic human capital management. Saba’s people platform are used by more than 17 million people worldwide. Prior to founding Saba, Bobby held various senior R&D management positions at Oracle Corporation. He has successfully mentored and invested in many early stage start-ups including Clearspring, Dropbox, Google, HotPrints, Salesforce.com, Social Gaming Network, Webs.com and Masimo. Bobby has a BA in Applied Mathematics from the University of California at Berkeley.

Contact

Medialets
Rana Sobhany, 703-203-2508
VP Marketing
rana.sobhany@medialets.com

The past 10 months have been special to all of us here at Medialets. From our launch on July 11, 2008, through the first of several industry awards we’ve been fortunate enough to have received, to the recent, groundbreaking launch of Medialets’ ad platform, customers, industry analysts and the press have joined us in helping to reshape the world of mobile advertising and analytics. We’ve grown quickly to become the most widely deployed solution of our kind in mobile, and every day work with some of the most talented partners a company could hope to know.

This is just the beginning for us. Today we’re announcing that we’ve raised $4m from the stellar teams at Foundry Group and DFJ Gotham with participation from Bobby Yazdani, an early investor in Google and Salesforce.com. Together with a series of advisors and new team members we’ll announce soon, we’ll collectively work to solidify Medialets’ position in the market and establish us as the standard for highly measurable, rich media ads in mobile.

If you’re a publisher, application developer, advertiser, agency, or anyone else interested in learning more about the measurable impact Medialets’ platform can have on your business, drop us an email at connect@medialets.com and we’ll get right back to you. Or send a message to careers@medialets.com if you have the passion, talent and drive to help us to lead an industry.

Early this year our partner, OMD’s Ignition Factory, approached us for help in crafting a groundbreaking mobile experience for their client Levi’s Dockers. We took them through the capabilities of our rich media mobile advertising platform, brainstormed through a number of concepts, and together with creative agency Razorfish launched Pants Dance, the world’s first Shakable Ad™.

This ad was built by the Medialets team and served via our ad server into several top iPhone apps including iBowl, i.TV, SGN Golf and iBasketball. It is currently running – as of the date of this post – as a full screen interstitial, and includes stop motion video (a very cool effect done by our creative director Theo Skye), sound, and the ability to shake the ad to move between dance sequences.

Forbes, Mobile Marketer, Silicon Alley Insider, Advertising Age and a host of others have given their praise for this campaign. Special thanks to John Haber and Jamie Wells at OMD for their creative vision and support.

If you would like Medialets to help you with rich media ads on iPhone, Android or BlackBerry, drop us an email at connect@medialets.com and we’ll create a plan to shake up the market together.

Milestone indicates maturation of market and mass uptake of publisher tools and reporting by iPhone developers

NEW YORK, New York. – April 15th, 2009 – Medialets, the leading analytics and ad technology platform for next-generation mobile applications, has today announced reaching the milestone of processing one billion events through the company’s free analytics product, Medialytics.

Medialytics, launched on July 11th, 2008 – the same day as Apple’s App Store – has been installed over 60 million times across more than 13 million unique devices to date. Medialytics measures behaviors in many of the top 20 highest downloaded applications on the iPhone platform based upon data released by Apple last week. Medialets works with developers and media publishers who look to Medialytics as a business intelligence tool to help them make informed decisions around improving app strategy and performance.

“Knowing and tracking key metrics are an important part of any successful business’ operations. With Apple nearing a billion downloads, there’s now meaningful scale from which every developer on the platform can draw insights to drive their product and marketing decisions,” says Eric Litman, CEO of Medialets. “We give our customers the tools they need to collect the data and metrics that are important to advancing their business.”

The most powerful insights to come from 10 months of data relate to engagement time with content and functionality-rich applications.  Engagement time across all Medialets applications falls between 3.5 minutes and 7 minutes on average per session.  The company sees ad click-through rates range from 1% on the low end to 8% on the high end for both advertiser content as well as cross-application promotion.

“It is still a young market, but developers and publishers alike on the platform are quickly learning what to track and how to adapt to the data they see.” remarks Litman. “Analytics are a competitive tool. Knowing more about your audience than your competitors do in this exceptionally competitive space is an important part of staying ahead.”

About Medialets

Medialets is a New York City-based rich media advertising and analytics platform for native applications on devices such as iPhone and Android.  Medialets works with agencies and brands to define and deploy innovative ad campaigns that tap into all of the capabilities of the iPhone. Medialytics, Medialets’ free analytics and reporting solution, is the leading analytics and advertising solution for the world’s most downloaded iPhone applications. Medialets is a privately-held company with offices in New York, NY and San Francisco, CA. Email us at connect@medialets.com, visit us on the Web at www.medialets.com and follow us on Twitter www.twitter.com/medialets.

Press Contact:
Rana Sobhany
VP Marketing, Medialets
rana.sobhany@medialets.com
Phone: 703.203.2508

The team at Red Herring told us today that Medialets has been named a Red Herring Global 100 company for 2009. We’ve been working day and night since our launch six months ago in July to build the best platform for understanding and connecting with audiences in mobile and couldn’t be more pleased that Red Herring has taken notice.

Thanks to Red Herring, our customers and partners for a great start, and look to us to continue to drive the pace in mobile advertising in 2009.

Here at Medialets, we are believers in innovation and transformative thinking. Ingenuity, creativity and a desire to push the boundaries of what critics claim is possible drives us to revolutionize the way marketers think of mobile advertising. SMS and static banners are the beginning, but they won’t inspire and move you the way rich engagement and interaction can when 6 inches away from a consumer’s face. This type of passion for innovation extends to every industry, from manufacturing to sales to technology to entertainment, and we support everyone who wakes up every morning excited to build something great. 

One of the most interesting and forward-thinking musical artists of the past few years is Gregg Gillis aka Girl Talk, a former biomedical engineer turned DJ, who has established a cult following due to his masterful mashups of disparate artists, resulting in music that bridges the gap between genres and brings people together. He has recently devoted himself to making music full-time, and is one of the most in-demand artists of the year.

It is our pleasure to extend an invitation to two winners to join the Medialets team at Girl Talk’s show in NYC on Sunday, November 16th.  Instructions for entering the contest are on the image below, and the two winners will be picked at random at 4:00pm EST on 11/16/08.  You must be in NYC to be eligible to win.

To those who are cutting-edge and forward-thinking, we salute you, and here’s hoping that you will join us tomorrow at Terminal 5 to see Girl Talk work the crowd.

Good Luck!
Rana and the Medialets team

We would love to see you there! We’ve heard from our friends Matt Drance and Michael Jurewitz at Apple that the event in our hometown of New York is already at capacity, but you can sign up to be on the waitlist.  Here’s the complete list of their destinations: 

Be sure to sign up ASAP, and leave us a comment if you’re planning on attending!