Ideas|Products|Startups|VCs

StratosHear, a leading mobile media company, yesterday announced the launch of MobiAdz, its premium mobile advertisingnetwork. With MobiAdz, StratosHear has expanded its mobile advertising offerings from rich audio advertising to include mobile Internet ad formats—such as banner, video and text—and has emerged as the one-stop solution for all advertisers embracing the mobile medium.

StratosHear has deep experience working with leading telecom operators to ad-enable their subscriber base through its multi-channel, telco-grade ad platform. StratosHear has worked with top global and national brands to deliver excellent brand campaign results with its AdRBT product that delivers radio-style ad placement on caller tunes.

The company has leveraged this experience in designing MobiAdz from the ground up. Furthermore, they have incorporated artificial intelligence—or self-learning—into the proprietary algorithms that power MobiAdz and that are used to ensure optimal ad targeting and strong campaign results. As such, the MobiAdz engine goes beyond the traditional ad networkapproach to deliver advanced campaign optimization techniques for its publisher and advertiser partners.

MobiAdz has received an incredible reception from the marketplace. Over 100 publishers across various verticals have registered with MobiAdz, which is now serving tens of millions of ad impressions per month across 200 countries.

MobiAdz uniquely positioned to offer the broadest set of mobile advertising solutions that can reach the breadth of mobile consumers, from the entry level handset to the highest end smart phone user, and from a rural village in India to anywhere in the world.”

Publishers too will benefit from StratosHear’s launch of MobiAdz. The company’s approach of having a strong media sales team in-house to reach the broadest set of advertisers for both brand and performance campaigns, will help publishers to more effectively monetize their inventory.

The idea of most consumers having their mobile device with them at all times coupled with the emerging technologies being built into today’s devices, bring a wealth of opportunity to marketers. With MobiAdz, advertisers are able to fine-tune their campaigns based on their needs and to measure performance based on metrics and real-time reporting. The ultimate result? More effective campaigns and a stronger return on investment.

Direct Competitors - AdMob (bought by Google) and Inmobi (backed by Sherpalo ventures and KPCB)

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

Truly old is gold, this old saying comes alive when i came to know of Lycos acquisition. I was totally unaware of the fact that Lycos existed, very emotional connect with Lycos since I created my very first email id on it.

Ybrant Digital, the end-to-end provider of digital marketing solutions, on Monday  to acquire Lycos Inc for $36M, the leading brand of search based internet properties and services, from Daum Communications of Korea.

Lycos consistently averages 12-15 million monthly unique visitors in the US, and is a top 25 Internet destination worldwide, reaching nearly 60 million unique visitors globally.

“Brand Lycos needs no introduction, we are excited to bring in the Lycos properties into our fold,” Chairman and CEO, Ybrant Digital, Suresh Reddy said.

“The quality of content and tools offered by Lycos has always attracted the best of the consumers across the world. Our goal is to combine the benefits of Ybrant’s global network with what Lycos has to offer in creating a compelling global destination for our advertising clients worldwide. Coupled with our offerings for advertisers, we do present new products to our local users worldwide,” he said.

“As a result of the sale of Lycos, Daum will be able to devote its energy and corporate resources to core domestic businesses including search, mobile services and map,” William Chao, CEO of Daum Communications Corp, said.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

Inmobi has raised $8m venture capital from existing VCs - KPCB and Sherpalo Ventures. Inmobi is a bangalore based mobile Ad network which serves nearly 17billion ad impression per month globally.

InMobi offers advertisers, developers, and publishers a dependable global mobile advertising platform other InMobi has invested in building a highly scalable, mobile customer discovery ad network leveraging its unique analytics engine AdROItTM to optimize ad serving in real time.

Interestingly there was a strong buzz in the market that Yahoo and Apple had shown interest in acquiring inmobi but it didnt materialize.

Inmobi was founded in 2007 by Naveen Tiwari, Amit Gupta and Abhay Singhal

Last year they had rebranded itself to inmobi from mKhoj, check out here.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

Have you realized what store behind the Like button in facebook, when u click on Like button in your friend status or a pic. There is a strong buzz that Facebook’s new Like Button is going to power a behavioral Ad Network.

The new Facebook like button that was rumored to be launched at this year’s f8 will power a new enhanced behavioral ad network. Data from these interactions would be used to target them with related adverts once they return to Facebook.com.

While this form of advertising targeting is used by a number of large ad networks, for Facebook to use this advanced form of targeting will start putting the company in a interesting privacy position. It also sounds as though this could be tied to the new privacy policy that was rolled out recently.

Facebook has demonstrated a willingness to push the boundaries of user privacy in the past, especially with the launch of Beacon, and it sounds like they may be pushing the boundaries once again. Whatever is being announced, we won’t have to wait long to find out the full details. It’s also important to understand that this information will be based on users clicking on Facebook “Like” buttons, so it requires user action.

Do you care what type of information Facebook collects about you? Do you want more targeted advertisements?

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

July Systems bangalore based Mobile platform company raised $7M led by Intel Capital and existing investors Footprint Ventures and Sequoia Capital also participated to maintain their equity in the company.

July Systems’ Mi™ Platform offers end to end solutions that enable brands publish, distribute, monetize inventory and personalize services for consumers on the mobile internet. The Mi™ Platform is the industry`s first next generation Mobile 3.0 publishing platform that offers innovative features such as Cross - platform publishing and distribution, Freemium model based monetization, Personalized push based customer relationship management.

Rajesh Reddy, Founder & CEO of July systems said funds will be utilized in expanding technology and operations team. Rajesh Reddy is a serial entrepreneur and has founded Unimobile which was acquired by Verisign. July systems has offices in Bangalore, New York and Los Angeles.

Unimobile Prominent Clients includes NDTV, ibnlive, moneycontrol.com, NBA, National Geographic, Fox Entertainment group.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

Vdopia, he largest Video Ad Network and Video Ad Platform that targets Indians across the world has raise $4m USD from Nexus Venture partners. Vdopia is founded by Stanford and IIT graduates with extensive experience in Industry leading Silicon Valley companies. The company currently has sales and development offices at San Jose, CA, Gurgaon and Mumbai, India.

Vdopia is the creator of the iVdopia advertising platform that offers a broad range of integrated advertising formats, including Pre-App video on iPhone. iVdopia’s brand-focused iPhone advertising network and platform is used by major brands and advertisers to deliver premium advertising campaigns.

The company’s proprietary BrandConnect Ad technology combines the advantages of TV and Internet and provides unprecedented value to large brand advertisers and publishers, allowing Vdopia to deliver industry leading CPMs.

-Hitesh, vcbytes.com

Leading mobile Ad network mKhoj rebrands itself as InMobi, This rebranding exercise has been primarily done to attract and target the European, US, Australian and South African market. mKhoj has significant market share in Asian and African countries and with this new name they aim to become a leading global player in this space.

mKhoj which is a Hindi version of mobile search was relatively tough to pronounce and adapt in the western countries and with InMobi without any doubt sounds very cool and happening. Interestingly mKhoj has come a long way, initially it started as local deal search engine and later transformed itself into an Ad network.

mKhoj founded by Naveen Tewari, a Harvand graduate and few Andale veterans have raised capital totalling $8mn from Angel investors and from esteemed VC’s - KPCB & Sherpalo ventures.

At present they cater close to 2billion/month mobile Ad impression. InMobi has offices in US, Singapore and Engineering Center in India.

Good luck to this Indian start up which is head on with global Ad networks.

- Hitesh, vcBytes.com