A pioneer Mobile Advertising technology company
Smarter Mobile Advertising since 2005
Press Releases 2009
Please find here current press releases of Smaato Inc.
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Smaato Closes $4.5M Financing Round
Leading Mobile Ad Optimizer for Mobile Web & Mobile Applications
Redwood Shores, CA – December 3, 2009 – Smaato, the leading mobile ad optimizer and mobile advertising company, today announced the closing of its second institutional round of funding (Series B). Aeris CAPITAL led the $4.5 million round, with an undisclosed partner and existing shareholders also participating. The capital will be used to grow the company\’s leadership position as the largest mobile advertising optimizer, and to grow its global presence.
“Our mission is to give mobile publishers a dependable mobile advertising solution for their worldwide inventory to maximize mobile revenues,” said Ragnar Kruse, CEO and Co-Founder of Smaato. “We provide an innovative mobile advertising optimization and mediation platform that can deliver ads in 215+ countries for mobile web and apps. This new round of funding will help us further expand our network of now 33 ad networks globally and continue to provide the best possible choice and service to our customers. We have recently opened our Singapore presence and as a result of the funding we will continue to strengthen our position in other regions.”
[...] “The mobile advertising market is growing rapidly and it has proved to be a profitable business even in recessionary periods. In fact, we have seen mobile advertising increase dramatically over the past 12 months. We see enormous potential to grow the business and our geographical offering,” continued Mr. Kruse.
Smaato Names Madvertise as 33rd Ad Network Partner
Redwood Shores, CA / Berlin, Germany – November 23, 2009 – During Mobile Monday Berlin today, Smaato Inc., the leading global mobile ad optimizer and mobile advertising company, announced that Madvertise, the leading regional ad network, has joined the Smaato network as its 33rd ad network partner. This cements Smaato’s leading global position by having the largest network of advertising partners in the industry.
“We see this new partnership with Madvertise to be a great added value to our secret sauce in being able to deliver the most far reaching services globally – with relevant, local mobile advertising for our publishers,” stated Ragnar Kruse, CEO & Co-Founder of Smaato.
Carsten Frien, CEO of Madvertise stated: “We are glad to partner with Smaato. This partnership extends our reach in our core markets and enables us to run global advertising campaigns on the Smaato network.”
Madvertise is the leading regional ad network in Germany, Austria and Switzerland with a strong mobile website and mobile application publisher network.
Smaato Mobile Advertising Award 2009: Winners Announced
Mobile 2.0, San Francisco, CA – October 16, 2009 – Smaato Inc., the leading mobile ad optimizer and mobile advertising company, is delighted to announce the winners of the Smaato Mobile Advertising Awards 2009.
• Overall iPhone category winner: Waze
• Overall Mobile web category winner: Flirtomatic
• Overall Apps category winner: Aloqa
• Microsoft Phone category winner: SPB TV
• Motorola Android category winner: Aloqa
Winners of the different categories were announced at the awards ceremony, which took place on October 15 in San Francisco, to recognize excellence in the world of mobile apps and the mobile web. The awards ceremony in San Francisco attracted more than 200 of the world’s leading mobile developers, entrepreneurs, venture capital professionals and Investors.
Smaato awarded the overall winners free travel to Barcelona and booth space at the Mobile World Congress 2010 as well as various opportunities for publicity. In addition, the winners of the Microsoft Phone Category and the Motorola Android Category will receive prizes by sponsors Microsoft and Motorola. All 15 Finalists received deviceatlas licenses sponsored by dot.Mobi. As a special prize, a free booth at M-DAYS 2010 was awarded to Flirtomatic and Yoose.
Check all Smaato Mobile Advertising Award 2009 Winners here.
Smaato Mobile Advertising Award: Nominees shortlist 2009 announced
CTIA, San Diego, CA – October 8, 2009 – Smaato Inc., the leading mobile ad optimizer and mobile advertising company, is delighted to announce the Nominees for the Smaato Mobile Advertising Award 2009. Publishers have until the closing of CTIA San Diego, Friday October 9, to add their cool app or website to the growing list.
Ragnar Kruse, CEO & Co-Founder of Smaato said: “The variety of the nominees to the forthcoming Smaato Awards shows the impressive innovation happening with mobile apps and websites across the globe. It’s going to be a really difficult job for the judges to decide on a winner from the forthcoming finalists with such a great selection of companies.”
Check all Smaato Mobile Advertising Award 2009 nominees here.
Winner of Smaato Award 2008 Lands Carrier Deal
CTIA San Diego / San Francisco – October 07, 2009 – DialPlus, the winner of Smaato’s Mobile Advertising Award in 2008 – a competition to search for the most innovative ad-enabled mobile content and applications – has released their first commercial DialPlus application, which is now available via T-Mobile USA’s web2go service on a variety of Windows Mobile and Blackberry Smartphones. A free downloadable version of their application can also be downloaded from the DialPlus website starting next week.
DialPlus enriches the standard phone call experience by automati¬cally and simultaneously providing dynamic, contextually relevant visual information about the called or calling party before the call is answered, during the call and after the call is over.
Ragnar Kruse, CEO & Co-Founder of Smaato Inc., said: “Congratulations DialPlus. We are proud that the winner of the first Smaato Award has been so successful with T-Mobile and that it is the first Smaato ad-enabled application to be rolled-out on deck with a major US carrier. The idea of this competition is to give young mobile start-ups global recognition and visibility with VC’s and the media as well as providing introductions to key influencers in the industry – it clearly helped last year and we hope that this year’s winner will be equally as successful as DialPlus.”
Lisa LeVasseur, CEO of DialPlus, said: “We were honored to be selected by the judges as the winner of the Smaato Mobile Advertising Award 2008. This was a strong validation of the DialPlus product vision that incorporated mobile advertising and winning the competition opened many doors for funding and business opportunities”
Smaato Mobile Advertising Award 2009: VC Partners Announced
San Francisco, CA – September 28, 2009 – Smaato Inc., a leading mobile ad optimizer and mobile advertising company announced today the distinguished VC partners for the Smaato Mobile Advertising Award 2009. Smaato is delighted to have Tim Draper (Draper Fisher Jurvetson), Frédéric Veyssière (Innovacom Venture Capital) and Niall Davis (aeris CAPITAL) supporting the award for a second year and being introduced to the winning companies. We are also thrilled to a have the following VCs participating this year:
- Mark Kvamme (Sequoia Capital)
- Rich Wong (Accel)
- Jörg Sievert (SAP Ventures)
Ragnar Kruse, CEO & Co-Founder of Smaato stated: “We are pleased to announce a fantastic line-up of VCs for the forthcoming Smaato Award. It’s an honor to have the support of so many distinguished individuals for making this competition come to life. For the award winners it’s a great opportunity to meet top tier VCs from around the world and to have a real shot of getting funding.”
Smaato Mobile Advertising Award open for global entries
Berlin, GERMANY / San Francisco, CA – September 09, 2009 – Smaato Inc., a leading mobile ad optimizer, announces the Smaato Mobile Advertising Award 2009. After the success of last year’s competition, Smaato is opening entries to find the coolest ad-enabled mobile content on the planet. This year, the competition will be broken into three categories: iPhone, mobile website and applications and games running on all other platforms. Participation is for free! More information is provided at: www.smaato.com/award
Smaato will invite the winners of each category to participate at Mobile World Congress, taking place in Barcelona, Spain in February 2010. The event is the world\’s largest mobile conference and exhibition and gives the winning companies the chance to strut their stuff in front of the entire mobile community. If that wasn’t enough, Smaato will also make a number of introductions for winners to VC\’s at partner level.
Additional prizes are: a booth at M-Days in Munich, Germany in January 2010, free tickets for Mobile World Congress, and many more.
“The Smaato Mobile Advertising Award 2008 was an instant success. With more than 100 entrants in its first year we could not ask for more positive feedback. We think this is a clear indicator that there is a lot of creativity and positive energy in the mobile ecosystem. The best is yet to come!” comments Harald Neidhardt, CMO & Co-Founder of Smaato the competition last year.
Smaato hires new Team members to support Global Expansion
Redwood Shores, CA, June 18, 2009 – With some key hires the leading mobile ad optimizer Smaato is growing stronger to support their partners globally. This spring Smaato could welcome its 30th team member.
Marc Theermann is new Vice President Business Development at Smaato. Marc will be the driving force for the development of the mobile advertising business. He is located in Boston to be closer to Smaato’s key partners like ad networks and publishers along the East-Coast. Smaato also hired Oliver Reiss as new Vice President Finance.
“We are pleased to win these greatly experienced new team members. As a leading innovator in mobile advertising it is important for us to offer our partners the best service and support. With “Smaaties” working in Redwood Shores, Boston and Hamburg, we are now online more than 18 hours per day”, comments Ragnar Kruse, CEO of Smaato Inc. the appointment of Marc Theermann and Oliver Reiss.
Smaato releases new white paper on Mobile Advertising Optimization
New York, June 1, 2009 – Smaato, the leading global mobile Ad Optimizer, released today its new white paper on Mobile Advertising: “Higher revenues with mobile Ad Optimization & global Ad Network aggregation.” The white paper can be downloaded here.
The white paper describes the opportunities mobile publishers and developers have to monetize their inventory world wide. It explores how different mobile fill rates can be expected from mobile ad networks and what types of pricing tiers are out there for mobile inventory. It also explains how ad revenue optimization works, and helps to realize the true potential of mobile inventory.
“Publishers of mobile websites & developers of cool mobile apps face the growing challenge of matching their expanding global popularity with the daunting task of filling their ad inventory associated with those very services. Smaato identified this issue many moons ago, and is capitalizing on the provision of global mobile ad optimization using its SOMA platform. Smaato has come from nowhere and gained significant experience and footprint in this section of mobile advertising and marketing in a very short, yet incredibly successful, period” states Nick Lane, chief researcher / writer, mobileSQUARED.
The information featured in the white paper is based on the experience of Smaato’s ad ops and engineering teams over the last years in order to boost mobile ad revenues and give mobile publishers the opportunity to maximize their Ad ARPU.
“The buzz in the mobile advertising space is around delivering the right ad to the right person – even better if this occurs in the right context. But the real issue publishers face is how to identify – in real-time – the right ad network to deliver the right results,” added Peggy Anne Salz, Chief Analyst at MSearchGroove (MSG). “Smaato, a global company whose own evolution shows its grasp of the key issues impacting the mobile advertising business ecosystem at all levels, has gained significant traction through its ability to dynamically identify the ad networks that monetize publishers\’ inventory best. This innovation is core to Smaato\’s competitive advantage and pivotal in moving the mobile advertising industry to the next level.”
Smaato nominated as a FiReStarter
The FiRe (Future in Review) conference in San Diego brings together world experts and leading technology-driven companies and venture capitalists for intellectually challenging, financially rewarding, and fun. The conference takes place in the Hotel del Coronado in San Diego, CA, May 19-22.
This year, Smaato is selected to be a FiReStarter. In this program, Strategic News Service (SNS) is selecting 12 businesses – top startups or businesses with new startup technology – for world promotion, based on nominations by trusted strategic investment SNS Members.
“We are proud being selected as a FiReStarter”, comments Ragnar Kruse, CEO & Co-Founder of Smaato Inc. “The nomination is a sign that mobile has arrived in the digital arena. We are happy to get the chance to present our SOMA platform – the leading optimizer for mobile advertising – to such a top class audience.”
Meet Smaato at the FiRe conference: Ragnar Kruse will be part of the panel “Fire Starters II” taking place May 21, from 2:30-03:05pm. He is looking forward to meet you there!
The conference will also be livestreamed to an International audience in different places in Europe. Smaato hosts FiRe-Mirror Hamburg together with Deutsche Telekom.
Smaato & MocoSpace announce mobile advertising partnership
MWC Barcelona, Spain / Redwood Shores, CA, February 10, 2009 – Today MocoSpace and Smaato, the leading global aggregator for mobile advertising networks, announced a new strategic partnership for mobile advertising.
MocoSpace (www.MocoSpace.com) has more than 5 million registered users and 2 billion monthly page views. The US-focused mobile social site was recently ranked No. 1 in mobile entertainment by Hitwise (www.hitwise.com), an independent market research firm. MocoSpace successfully integrated SOMA (Smaato’s Open Mobile Advertising platform) in late 2008 and first results show already improvements on its mobile ad revenue and ROI.
Smaato welcomes 1 million qeep users to mobile advertising platform SOMA
Redwood Shores, CA / Hamburg, Germany, February 3rd 2009 – Today qeep, a fast-growing mobile social community application, and Smaato, leading global ad network aggregator for mobile media, announced a new international partnership for mobile advertising.
Qeep has now more than 1 million people in their mobile social community and is growing by 5,000 users every day. Qeepers are very active and produce more than 160 million page impressions per month. Unique features include: live online games, QMS-chat, unlimited photo blogging and sound attacks.
Qeep has integrated SOMA (Smaato’s Open Mobile Advertising platform) and is serving targeted ads to their user base. In order to make the mobile ads more relevant to the user, anonymous profile criteria like age, region and gender may be used. Qeep is now able to maximize its mobile ad revenue and ROI globally.
Smaato Named AlwaysOn OnMedia 100 Winner
Company Selected as Technology Innovator in Mobile Advertising for 2009
Redwood Shores, CA, January 22, 2009 – Smaato today announced that it has been selected to the 2009 OnMedia 100 List. The OnMedia 100 Award is given to private, emerging technology companies in the advertising, publishing, marketing, branding and public relations spaces. Smaato was selected by the AlwaysOn editorial team based on demonstration of growth, market opportunity, quality of innovation and customer traction.
“We are proud to receive the Always OnMedia 100 award for the second time. The recognition by Always On – industry leader in the VC, tech and media community – encourages Smaato to continue to innovate and offer a unique mobile advertising platform worldwide”, stated Ragnar Kruse, CEO & Co-Founder of Smaato Inc. “We salute our fellow award winners and are humbled to stand out within a small group of leading mobile advertising companies worldwide.”
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