Medialets

Funding enables firm to bring greater scale to mobile rich media ad offerings for agencies & advertisers

August 10, 2010: NEW YORK, NY – Medialets, the most widely deployed cross-platform rich media advertising provider for mobile, today announced the closing of a $6 million Series B financing round led by investor Foundry Group, with participation from DFJ Gotham, 500 Startups and Chris Saridakis. Medialets will use the funds to expand the capabilities of its mobile rich media ad platform and supporting tools in order to bring rich media ads to the broadest range of advertisers possible.

“Medialets was founded in 2008 on the understanding that mobile would unleash a powerful engagement opportunity for advertisers,” said Medialets CEO Eric Litman. “Since then, not only has Medialets enabled the industry’s most compelling mobile rich media for premier publishers, agencies and brands, we’ve also built out a one-of-a-kind cross-platform infrastructure that brings greater efficiency and scale to mobile rich media campaigns. This Series B funding allows us to continue to evolve the Medialets’ platform to meet the phenomenal demand for high-value mobile rich media.”

Since its inception in June 2008, Medialets has pioneered the creation, delivery and measurement of the most highly engaging rich media ad formats for mobile.  In 2009, Medialets created and served the world’s first rich media ad for mobile apps. Earlier this year Medialets followed up on the release of its Universal SDK for iPhone and iPad with the launch of Android advertising support, making Medialets the first provider of cross-platform rich media ads for mobile apps.  More recently, Medialets introduced Medialets Enrich™, a partner program that significantly reduces the complexity of mobile advertising for buyers by enabling them to deliver and measure the same creative campaign on different mobile platforms and across Medialets’ partner ad networks, mediators and ad servers.

“Medialets has set the standard for creative and technological innovation in mobile rich media,” said Seth Levine, Managing Director of Foundry Group, Medialets lead investor. “By providing a scalable platform that uniquely addresses the challenges of mobile for both publishers and brands, Medialets has staked out its position as market leader early in the game and will continue to be a driving force in the rapidly growing mobile advertising market.”

A world-class executive team, assembled within the past year, has spearheaded Medialets’ tremendous growth.  Keith Gelles, co-founder of PointRoll, joined Medialets as Chief Technology Officer in July 2009 and Aaron Mittman, a former executive at Panther Express and DoubleClick, joined the team in September 2009 as Vice President, Global Sales.  More recently, Andrew Eisele, formerly of TargetSpot, joined Medialets as the company’s first Chief Financial Officer.  The executive team is supported by an advisory board that includes Greg Tagaris, former CIO DoubleClick, Andy Ellenthal, CEO Peer39, Ari Paparo, Executive VP Product Leadership at Nielsen and former Group Director of Advertiser Products at Google, Shervin Pishevar, Chairman SGN, and Colin Crawford, former CEO MacWorld/PC World.

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

About Medialets

Medialets is the most widely deployed rich media advertising solution for mobile. Medialets brings unprecedented scale to mobile rich media campaigns by enabling the delivery and measurement of the industry’s highest-impact rich media across the broadest array of top tier iPhone, iPad and Android apps. NPR, The New York Times, Variety and The Washington Post are just some of the top publishers that have enabled Medialets’ cross-platform rich media. Medialets’ high-value formats are also available via leading ad networks, ad mediators and ad servers through a preferred partner program, Medialets Enrich™. Based in New York City, Medialets is a privately held company with marquee investors and a world-class team. Visit www.medialets.com, email connect@medialets.com, and follow Medialets on Twitter @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.

Medialets enables ADTECH publishers with rich media mobile ad formats through the Medialets Enrich program

NEW YORK, NY – July 21, 2010: Medialets, the most widely deployed cross-platform rich media ad solution for mobile apps, has today announced that ADTECH, the international provider of ad serving solutions and part of AOL Advertising has selected Medialets’ mobile in-app rich media ad platform. ADTECH will integrate Medialets’ Universal SDK for iPhone, iPad and Android into their mobile platform, giving ADTECH’s clients access to Medialets’ high-impact, cross-platform mobile rich media ad formats.

“Partnering with ADTECH is another step in our effort to make mobile rich media more widely available to the brands and agencies that are increasingly seeking the most effective means of reaching mobile consumers,” says Medialets CEO Eric Litman. “ADTECH serves a broad audience of more 150 billion ads and 800 million unique users, and gives advertisers greater access to our highly engaging mobile rich media formats.”

As the leading cross-platform, cross ad network rich media solution built explicitly for mobile, Medialets enables brands and agencies to create ads that take advantage of all of the features and hardware capabilities built into today’s generation of smartphones. Medialets’ high-impact rich media ad formats empower publisher partners to sell more ad inventory at higher CPMs. The Medialets Enrich™ preferred partner program enables leading ad networks, ad mediators and ad servers to sell and support Medialets’ unique cross-platform rich media units. Advertisers benefit from the ability to run a single set of ad creatives across an exceptionally broad range of mobile properties and access a unified set of reports from which to measure campaign success.

“Medialets’ formats enable our clients to build deeper connections with consumers, generating significantly higher engagement rates than static banner ads while delivering maximum return for their advertisers’ media spend,” said ADTECH CEO Dirk Freytag. “Plus, integration of their Universal SDK was a simple process; it allowed us to begin offering our clients Medialets’ highly engaging formats very quickly.”

ADTECH’s integrated ad server solution enables web publishers, ad networks, agencies and advertisers to manage, serve and evaluate virtually any kind of online advertising campaign including display, video and mobile formats. In addition to serving as AOL’s global ad serving solution provider, Gannett, Fox Networks, The Weather Network and a host of other international ad networks and publishers use ADTECH’s digital ad server solution.

About Medialets
Medialets is the most widely deployed rich media advertising solution for mobile apps. Medialets brings unprecedented scale to mobile rich media campaigns by enabling the delivery and measurement of the industry’s highest-impact rich media across the broadest array of top tier iPhone, iPad and Android apps. NPR, The New York Times, Variety, The Washington Post are just some of the top publishers that have enabled Medialets’ cross-platform rich media. Medialets’ high-value formats are also available via leading ad networks, ad mediators and ad servers through a preferred partner program, Medialets Enrich™. Based in New York City, Medialets is a privately held company with marquee investors and a world-class team. Visit www.medialets.com, email connect@medialets.com, and follow Medialets on Twitter @medialets.

About ADTECH
ADTECH is an international supplier of digital marketing solutions and is AOL Advertising’s ad serving platform. The company’s flagship product is an integrated ad server solution that enables web publishers, ad networks, agencies and advertisers to manage, serve and evaluate virtually any kind of online advertising campaign including display, video and mobile formats. ADTECH’s solution differentiates itself from the competition through its scalable, enterprise-class infrastructure and user-friendly tools, providing users with increased efficiency, reliability and ROI for their online advertising business. ADTECH customers include major players like BSkyB, Hi-media, Gannett and Fox Networks. ADTECH AG is a wholly-owned subsidiary of AOL Inc.

About AOL
AOL Inc. (NYSE: AOL) is a leading global Web services company with an extensive suite of brands and offerings and a substantial worldwide audience. AOL’s business spans online content, products and services that the company offers to consumers, publishers and advertisers. AOL is focused on attracting and engaging consumers and providing valuable online advertising services on both AOL’s owned and operated properties and third-party websites. In addition, AOL operates one of the largest Internet subscription access services in the United States, which serves as a valuable distribution channel for AOL’s consumer offerings.

Google recently announced that over 100,000 Android devices are activated each day. As Android continues to build its share of mobile subscribers, we at Medialets have been creating and fine-tuning our Universal SDK for Android, which we’re happy to announce is out of beta!

Using our Universal SDK for Android, publishers can serve and measure Medialets’ fully engaging rich media ads within their Android apps.

The release of our new Universal SDK for Android, in combination with our Universal SDK for iPhone and iPad, means publishers can now create and deliver the richest and most engaging mobile ads across Android and iPhone/iPad devices. This, combined with the ability to view and compare a common set of metrics for both Android and iPhone/iPad campaigns, significantly streamlines the buying, serving and measuring process for brands in mobile.

The release of our Universal SDK for Android is the culmination of a very exciting few weeks in the development of our Android capabilities. On May 20th, during the day 2 keynote at Google I/O, a demonstration of a Medialets rich media enabled ad for Android was featured.

Also recently, New York Magazine launched their new Android app featuring a campaign for Starbucks, enabled by our Universal SDK for Android. Other leading publishers are in the process of integrating our Universal SDK for Android into their Android apps.

Our Universal SDK for Android supports Android OS 1.5 and higher and is ready to support future devices using the soon to be released Android 2.2 (Froyo). With so many different Android devices on the market and more on the way, the biggest problem in creating an Android app is the varying screen resolutions of all these Android devices. Our tech team solved the screen resolution problem with our new Universal SDK for Android so publishers can run a single creative that works intelligently across all resolutions on various Android phones.

To learn more about Medialets’ cross platform rich media advertising solutions or to get the Universal SDK for Android integrated into your Android app, send an email to connect@medialets.com.

Every Medialets mobile rich media ad campaign is crafted to deliver meaningful consumer ad experiences within mobile apps.  Our latest campaign for Chanel on the NY Times iPad app is no exception, demonstrating how Medialets can achieve that emotional and meaningful experience for a luxury brand.

As reported late last week on PaidContent.org, Chanel has just launched a digital campaign for the new Chanel J 12 Marine watch series within The New York Times’ Editor’s Choice iPad App.  The New York Times introduced us to Chanel who tasked us to transform the broader concept for mobile.

The Medialets team developed three unique mobile experiences that take advantage of the iPad’s unique capabilities to showcase Chanel’s distinctive watches. Medialets used HTML5 to create immersive experiences that are further enhanced when the user tilts the iPad or touches the in-app creative. Medialets also integrated video content produced by Chanel into the mobile rich media creative.

The innovative in-app rich media campaign is now running on The New York Times’ Editor’s Choice iPad App.   Here is a video of one creative in action:

The ad will run through July 2, 2010.

This is the second campaign we’ve launched on The New York Times’ iPad app as back in April, The New York Times chose Medialets to create and serve rich media ads within their Editor’s Choice iPad app.

Mobile ad network joins Medialets Enrich™; Gives publishers and advertisers access to Medialets engaging, cross-platform in-app formats

NEW YORK, NY – May 26, 2010: Medialets, the most widely deployed cross-platform rich media ad and analytics provider for mobile apps, today announced a partnership with Mojiva to deliver Medialets’ highly engaging in-app rich media ad formats to Mojiva’s network clients. As a Medialets Enrich™ preferred partner, Mojiva can now leverage Medialets’ mobile rich media for campaigns that run across their ad network or through the mOcean Mobile platform.

“Our partnership with Mojiva brings greater scale to the mobile app ad campaigns we enable,” says Medialets CEO Eric Litman. “Together we’re accelerating the growth of mobile rich media by giving advertisers more buyer power and greater access to the most engaging ad formats in mobile today.”

The recently launched Medialets Enrich™ preferred partner program enables leading mobile ad networks, ad mediators and ad servers to sell and support Medialets’ unique cross-platform rich media units.  Medialets Enrich™ enables advertisers to run a single set of ad creatives without changes across an exceptionally broad range of mobile properties and provides a unified set of reports from which to measure campaign success.

“We’ve seen great demand from our clients for in-app rich media ads that not only generate higher CPMs, but allow advertisers to build stronger connections with consumers and see maximum return for their media spend,” said Mojiva CEO David Gwozdz. “We are pleased to work with Medialets. Their scale and flexibility help make them a leader in delivering rich media solutions for mobile apps.”

mOcean Mobile is the leading independent mobile ad serving and analytics platform, currently managing billions of ads for mobile websites, ad networks and applications including The Rubicon Project, Polar Mobile, The Star Tribune and News Over Wireless.

Medialets enables brands and agencies to create high-impact ads that take advantage of all of the features and hardware capabilities of iPhone, iPad and Android devices while empowering publishers and ad networks to sell more ad inventory at higher CPMs. Medialets’ unique cross-platform solution enables advertisers to run a single set of ad creatives across an exceptionally broad range of mobile properties and consistently measure performance through a unified set of reports.

To learn more about Medialets, visit http://www.Medialets.com.

About Medialets:

Medialets, the most widely-deployed rich media advertising and analytics platform for mobile, enables publishers, developers and advertisers to deliver highly engaging and exceptionally measurable ads into iPhone, iPad and Android applications. Medialets’ one-of-a-kind ‘asynchronous’ ad delivery technology enables delivery of the most compelling, measurable rich media even when the user is offline, while its Universal SDK™ offers the most flexible ad monetization platform for publishers. Clients include The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, Variety, and Pandora along with many other leading publishers and brands. Based in New York City, Medialets is a privately held company with marquee investors and a world-class team. Visit www.medialets.com, email connect@medialets.com, and follow Medialets on Twitter @medialets.

About Mojiva:

Mojiva (www.Mojiva.com) is a mobile advertising company that owns and operates the fastest growing mobile advertising network, currently reaching more than 41 million unique users monthly through mobile web and app display advertising. The Mojiva network gives brand marketers and publishers everything they need to efficiently run targeted mobile display advertising campaigns within premium mobile content on any mobile device, including iPhones, iPads and other tablet devices. Founded in May 2008 and based in New York City, Mojiva has grown faster than any other advertising platform, and currently helps advertisers reach their target mobile audiences in 190 countries.

It’s a happy time at Medialets’ Galactic HQ as we are celebrating the 1st anniversary of the release of the first-ever rich media ad on an iPhone app.

This revolutionary ad, created by the team here at Medialets, was the World’s First Shakeable Adad for “Dockers” that won the OMMA Mobile “Mobile Marketing” Advertising Creativity award in 2009.

The Dockers ad saw an average engagement time of 42 seconds and an average engagement rate of 33%.

This ad marked the first of many groundbreaking rich media campaigns on mobile apps that have been created and served by the Medialets team over the past year.

Head on over to our YouTube page to see more great ads, including another cool “shakeable” ad for Vampire Weekend and the ad we created for STRIDE GUM featuring an unruly ostrich.

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.

A great morning here at Medialets and its not just because of the weather and donuts!

We’re excited because our good friends at The New York Times officially launched their iPad app today and they have chosen Medialets to develop and serve rich media ad units for the app. More details in their press release here and even more over at TechCrunch.

And while we’re on the topic of rich media ads in iPad apps, take a look at the video below which features a mock of what a Transparent Page Takeover ad might look like on an iPad app…

To learn more about our iPad ad formats, send an email to connect@medialets.com

You probably already know that Medialets’ SDK is distinguished by its ability to enable the industry’s most compelling rich media and deepest ad and app analytics. These capabilities, combined with our unparalleled support in developing high-value rich media creative, attract a broad range of top tier publisher and advertisers to our platform.

And, as demand increases, we’re finding that needs are evolving. Publishers want Medialets’ rich media because it brings the most value to their app inventory, but they’re also looking for a solution that easily integrates into their current and future sales and advertising operations.

That’s why we’re excited to announce the availability of Medialets’ Universal SDK for iPhone and iPad. This Universal SDK is designed to support Medialets unique high-value rich media, while also giving publishers the flexibility and control they need for the most effective inventory sales and ad operations – all from one SDK.

Medialets’ Universal SDK makes it easier for publishers to manage and grow their app advertising revenue in a few ways:

1. By enabling rich media, display advertising and analytics, all from one SDK
2. By easily integrating with ad networks and mediators to supplement inventory sales, all from one SDK
3. By allowing the publisher to benefit from Medialets’ high-value rich media while also using their established first-party ad servers (like DoubleClick’s DFP, AOL’s AdTech or Ringleader), all from one SDK

Medialets’ Universal SDK also gives publishers server-side control of their app advertising. In other words, you can make changes to ad tags without updating your app, saving time and money.

The Universal SDK was featured this morning on TechCrunch.  If you’d like more information about how Medialets’ Universal SDK brings  more value, flexibility and control to your app advertising, send us an email.

Another great campaign created and powered by Medialets recently hit NPR and CNN’s iPhone apps for the critically acclaimed AMC show “Breaking Bad.”

Taking full advantage of the unique capabilities of the iPhone, the ad begins with a banner in the news sections of each app. The user is urged to click on the banner. Once clicked, it expands to take over the entire iPhone screen and displays a “Bad Chemistry” quiz where the user is asked to tap the elements displayed on the screen to learn more about each chemical element. When you tap three elements, the user is then prompted to “shake” their phone, thereby mixing the chemicals chosen and creating a bad reaction. This bad reaction “blows up” on the screen via a full-screen take over. The user is then shown a page offering them the option of watching the series trailer, re-playing the “Bad Chemistry” game, or going to iTunes to purchase episodes of the highly acclaimed series. Here’s a video of the ad in action on an iPhone….

This campaign was recently featured on AllThingsD in a post by Peter Kafka.