We’re proud to announce that we’ve just been chosen by AlwaysOn as one of the OnMobile Top 100 winners! Here’s an excerpt from the press release:

“Inclusion in the OnMobile 100 signifies leadership amongst its peers and game-changing approaches and technologies that are likely to disrupt existing markets and entrenched players. GoldSpot Media was specially selected by the AlwaysOn editorial team and industry experts…The OnMobile 100 winners were selected from among hundreds of other technology companies nominated by investors, bankers, journalists, and industry insiders. The AlwaysOn editorial team conducted a rigorous three-month selection process to finalize the 2011 list.”

Thanks to everyone at AlwaysOn and OnMobile for the honor. We’ll be present at the 2-day ceremony taking place at AlwaysOn’s OnMobile event on June 15th, 2011 in Redwood City. Hope to see you there!

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Today, we announced our Series-B round of financing of $12.05M from Exa Ventures and Berg Enterprises. I’m truly indebted to our shareholders for their trust in the company and will do everything to repay it back, big time.

What are we going to do with this money? Well, it is pretty simple–to scale the mobile rich media market in a big way. There are many reasons why we have taken our time getting to this point:

• Investing in IP (24+ patents and counting), self-serve infrastructure that can repurpose online rich media ads in minutes
• Cool rich media ad innovations that would increase the ad engagement rates for advertisers
• Help publishers sell digital–monetize their mobile inventory through their own ad sales force
• Lead rich media standardization efforts in IAB, MMA, ORMMA, and others

We have created an open ecosystem that has no barriers, where publishers can use our platform to monetize rich media ads from any vendor, while advertisers can assemble, manage, distribute, and track rich media ad stories from multiple creative shops. Our dream is to scale this infrastructure in a way that innovations from any company can be plugged into this ecosystem seamlessly, for the benefit of every partner. This is the true essence of “DoubleClick for Mobile”. And we are not far away from realizing that dream.

Please stay tuned as we unleash our rich mobile ad innovations for our advertiser customers. GoldSpot’s approach to mobile advertising will be a game changer in rich media advertising, and will be an eye opener for bigger players who have built concrete walls around their offerings.

Game on, from here on.

I’m Srini Dharmaji – Chief, Cook & Bottle Washer at GoldSpot Media, a 360 mobile media solutions provider for publishers, ad networks and advertisers. Subscribe to our blog here. Join our communities on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr!

One of the best things about our technology is the fact that videos are delivered in the highest quality possible, regardless of network bandwidth or connectivity limitations. It uses Wi-Fi to download and deliver to mobile apps and mobile web in multiple full-screen and floating placements.

In the case of this mobile campaign for Brother, the full screen video ad plays smoothly while the App is loading (see top row). The bottom row shows the ad in a floating partial screen.

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Yes! Here it is! The HP Campaign that everyone is talking about.

To advertise its new HP OJPRO printer, HP teamed up with TAPTAP Networks and GoldSpot Media to develop a media campaign that combined traditional formats with clickable video. Targeting the-savvy men and women aged 18-45, the campaign ran on native applications on the iPhone between December 2010 and January 2011. In this time, the campaign generated more than 400,000 total impressions with user engagement averaging just over 10 seconds.

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A big thank you to MediaPost for such a great experience! We had a blast at OMMA Global, and thoroughly enjoyed the discussions, panels, and presentations.

Some event highlights:

• Congratulations to our iPad winner: Shelby Jones from Hoffman | Lewis in San Francisco!
• Our CEO, Srini Dharmaji, participated in 2 panels: Mobility, Video’s Next Big Thing, and Engagement to Go: Finding Value in Mobile Video. Lots of great discussions and insight about mobile, particularly in the context of video advertising. Great to hear all the different perspectives on mobile video, from the creative viewpoint, from agencies, and from publishers. See our live tweets of the event from @goldspotmedia!
• GoldSpot hosted a workshop and announced our case studies with Toyota, Toshiba, and HP for the first time. Check out what the media has been saying.
• The GoldSpot Media team all thoroughly enjoyed the event, from deepening our own areas of interest to learning about others. One of our engineers attended a couple of social media sessions and loved them!
• We have photos! Take a look below, or flip through our online album!

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We’re giving away an iPad to one lucky visitor of our booth this year at OMMA Global San Francisco 2011. All you have to do to qualify for the drawing is visit our booth #300 in the Mobile Lounge, scan your conference badge or drop your business card, and like our Facebook page! All the more incentive to come say hi! The lucky winner will be announced on March 2nd, 2011 here on our blog and also on our Twitter and Facebook pages. Here’s a copy of the complete Rules and Regulations.

Come say hi to the GoldSpot Media team:

Srini Dharmaji, CEO
Twitter: @SriniD_GSM

Dave Roberts, VP of Engineering and Operations
Twitter: @DaveRoberts_GSM

Carla Yashiro, Corporate Marketing Manager
Twitter: @CarlaY_GSM

Wendy Tai, Marketing Associate
Twitter: @WendyTai_GSM

Sia Nejad, Art Director
LinkedIn

Alex Eng, Software Engineer
LinkedIn

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In December 2010, Toshiba launched a rich media mobile advertising campaign by partnering with Spain’s premiere advertising network, TAPTAP Networks, powered by GoldSpot Media’s unique mobile advertising technology. The campaign ran until January 2011, garnering  a high click-through-rate (CTR) of over 8%.

The highly successful campaign uses innovative ad placements such as Video Banners and Video Interstitials, and boasts an average user engagement time of 9.64 seconds. Toshiba’s campaign was run in various iPhone Premium Native Apps, including Tu Experto and Movilizona.

We are preparing a lot of exciting things for OMMA Global San Francisco!

Here is what you can expect to see from us. Looking forward to seeing you there!

Our Workshop: Mobile Video Beyond Pre-roll – the Marriage of Non-Video Content and Video Advertising on February 28 at 3:30PM

Location: Nob Hill A

Consumers attention span is undivided when they are on the go, with few distractions from their smart phone screens. Mobile Video Advertising has entered a completely new world, a different paradigm – that of opportunistic brand engagement. In a mobile world that is increasingly becoming consumer centric, context is no longer as relevant as location, latency or behavior. Ad spots on mobile are morphing from traditional pre-roll ads to app-loading, page-loading and interstitial opportunities, and in a variety of placements, full-screen, partial screen and inline with the content.

GoldSpot Media is leading this new wave in “beyond pre-roll” rich media and video advertising solutions behind many of today’s successful mobile campaigns from major brands such as Toyota, Audi, Toshiba and HP. Learn what some of these successful video campaigns unravel and how brands leverage video and rich media to engage consumers in compelling new ways.

Mobile Track Session: Mobility: Video’s Next Big Thing? on February 28 at 4:45PM

Location: Yerba Buena Salon 3

Many video watchers believe that mobility is video’s next frontier; that smartphone and tablet penetration in the U.S. reaching critical mass will be as significant an event as the advent of broadband was in taking video use mainstream. Growth is rampant: according to Nielsen, by the end of this year, smartphones in America will already have a greater market share than feature phones. Meanwhile, the carriers are preparing to rollout their speedier 4G networks, which will only make mobile video faster and more pleasing for consumers. However, questions abound about consumers’ appetite for watching video on their phones—the infrastructure may soon be in place, but will the demand be there? What kinds of opportunities and challenges does mobile video face in 2011?

Moderator
Scott Swanson, CEO, Mobile Theory

Panelists
Srini Dharmaji, CEO & Founder, GoldSpot Media
Jay Hinman, Senior Director of Marketing, MobiTV
Joy Marcus, General Manager, US, Dailymotion
Amelia Milo, Director, Media and Integration, Ansible Mobile
Diaz Nesamoney, CEO and Founder, Jivox

Mobile Track Session:  Engagement to Go: Finding Value in Mobile Video on March 1 at 4:30PM

Location: Yerba Buena Salon 13

We already know that over-air and online video are among the most engaging media formats for brands yet invented. But what is the value of a video clip on mobile, to the publisher and to any advertiser partners? How do users interact with video on the go differently from the way they do on the couch or on the desktop? Are attention spans longer or shorter? What makes them stick and what makes them bail? Do they share? Is the mobile platform really just an extension and mirror of Web video publishing and marketing strategies, or does this screen demand yet another re-think of what streaming media does best?

Panelists
Srini Dharmaji, CEO & Founder, GoldSpot Media
Ujjal Kohli, CEO, Rhythm NewMedia
Frank Sinton, CEO, MeFeedia
Daniel Tibbets, SVP & Studio Shief, GoTV

Visit our Booth# 300 at the Mobile Lounge!

Also, be sure to come meet the GoldSpot Media team, preview our state-of-the-art Ad Creation Tool, miSpot, and participate in our surprise give away.

More on that pretty soon! Stay tuned!

I am Carla Ivette Yashiro, GoldSpot Media’s Corporate Marketing Manager.  I oversee both traditional and non-traditional marketing campaigns that target publishers, advertisers and ad agencies in support of the company’s mobile app and ad campaign creation tools. Subscribe to our blog here. Join our communities on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr!

It wasn’t long ago that mobile gaming was limited to a small audience of the truly enthusiastic—people who purchased mobile devices (the Nintendo Gameboy, its subsequent spawns, and PlayStation’s PSP, to name a few) specifically to play games on the go.

Photo courtesy of Johan Larsson

Fast forward to today, where with the help of app stores and open mobile platforms, mobile gaming has gained enough traction to pique the interest of advertisers. eMarketer estimates that in 2010, 64 million people played mobile games at least monthly, and that in 2014, that number will rise to 94.9 million. With numbers like these, mobile gaming seems to be the place to deliver creative, timely, and hyper-targeted ads to already-engaged mobile gamers.

However, that’s not to say just any ad unit will do the trick. Your average in-app banner can’t compete with gameplay—users engrossed in toppling buildings or winning races unfortunately won’t be interested in a three-color bottom banner, no matter how compelling your copy. Ad units must be as compelling as the games in which they’re viewed and clicked. To capture true clicks and true interest in your brand, serve timely, visually captivating content that both delivers brand messaging as well as adds to the gaming experience, perhaps providing some kind of in-game reward or redeemable currency. To aid in that effort, we offer in-app video and rich media ad units that enable visually compelling advertising and provide innovative ad placements to help your brand receive the most attention from users as possible.

At GoldSpot Media, we are all about video and rich media ads. Users who are mobile gamers are naturally attracted to innovative, rich media experiences, and advertisers should continue down the same vein of visual language to appeal to and engage with these users.

And let’s talk metrics. Never before have we been able to collect data this deep—a result of both in-game tracking and the analytics insight that tools like miSpot offer. By leveraging this with the deep measurement and analytics tools available through miSpot, advertisers and publishers will be able to accurately gauge interaction statistics, draw informed conclusions about ad effectiveness, and better plan for future campaigns.

Keep your finger on the pulse of mobile gaming—it’s bound to be an explosive area in the coming years.

Hi! My name is Dave Roberts. I’m the Director of Technology and Operations at GoldSpot Media. I spend a lot of time talking to customers and driving the execution of our product roadmaps. Subscribe to our blog here and join our communities on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr!

By popular demand we’ll start posting samples of some of the best video and rich media campaigns powered by GoldSpot Media.

Here is KIA Motors Mobile Campaign, currently running in Spain through TAPTAP Networks, which shows a video ad in a partial screen shortly after launching the news app “20 minutos“. The video ad has a few calls-to-action features that allow users to navigate to KIA’s mobile web or to a slide show of their featured vehicle.

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