Mobile search and advertising startup Jumptap has raised more than $26 million in a series D round led by AllianceBernstein. Existing investors General Catalyst Partners, Summerhill Venture Partners, Redpoint Ventures, Valhalla Partners, and WPP also participated. That brings the total capital raised to $73 million.
Jumptap us going to need all the gunpowder it can get. Mobile search is the next big frontier in search as more and more Web-capable phones hit the market. Witness Google’s recent deal to power Verizon’s mobile search. Nevertheless, only 7 percent of mobile subscribers in the U.S. use search. Going up against Google, even in a nascent market, is a tough proposition. But Jumptap thinks it has an edge. CEO Dan Olschwang says:
We have a little different approach. We present a more usable result on the mobile phone than incumbent search engines. We are not trying to take Web results and shrink them onto a small screen. If you are standing on a street and looking for Tylenol for your baby, you are not interested in the recent press release. You are interested in the closest open drug store.
Jumptap’s search algorithm tries to rank actionable results higher than others, and it tries to deliver results appropriate to the device from which the search is being conducted. It also delivers targeted search ads along with the results. Of course, Google understands these principles as well. Jumptap has one more thing going for it in its quest to sign up mobile search deals with phone carriers: it is not Google.
The wireless carriers are wary of Google. But Google can pay them to overcome that fear, as it did with Verizon. Google can afford to pay Verizon more than Verizon could ever hope to make on its own from mobile search, at least in the short term. That may be an attractive short-term business proposition (Verizon can always take over default search when the contract with Googel expires and it ios a bigger business), but it risks ceding the mobile search business in the future.
Olschwang warns mobile carriers:
You give away your monetization ability, your understanding of the customer, and you transition your understanding of the customer to the other party,. In three to five years, Google won’t care about your traffic. It will train the customer to go directly to Google.
That message is resonating with some carriers. For instance, AT&T, which is a Jumptap partner, is about answer the Google-Verizon deal with a new deal with Jumptap. When I asked Olschwang about this, he couldn’t confirm any details other than to say: “We are broadening our relationship with AT&T.”
The mobile market will become very strong and this is a great move however Google knows about it’s power and will not let someone come in and try to control the market … hence the reason for the gPhone !!!
Darin
ya Great Post thanks
says Olschwang
Yeah, so Jumptap will give all personal usage data to ATT in an effort to replace google?
If
Jumptap = carrier love, and
people = carrier hate, and
google = people love, then
Jumptap = people hate
Carriers will have:
location data
friend data
commercial interest data
what else???
I sense Jumptap will fail by following yahoo’s footsteps and shoving flashy, agency produced ads in your face b/c they pay the best. Instead of what people want.
jumptap will make it if they invest in a internet startup that has been specializing in strategic keyphrase multichannel location based search long before they came along.
people are being google trained by the willing, unwilling and unwitting. all will change when will the googolian sheep demand payment for there eyeballs.
I get payment in time savings.
“keyphrase multichannel” blah blah blah
You better get a job or be on disability or something.
when f-rank gets something we can see (substance) instead of talking out his backside may than we can take him seriously. talk is cheap, makes him worthless. get some substance myfriend. my job is walkin on clowns like you. easy prey.
is it possible to shake google’s foundation in the mobile market, or does it not really matter to google?
does not matter, billionaires never lose.
Google is a machine that has openly said they want to control the worlds information. Not sure why the Carrier’s and now indirectly JTAP get put on the side of being against consumers. Monopolies are outlawed for a reason…to protect you and me. JTAP has bee powering mobile search globally for years. They know the space and will offer a better solution than the be all, control all Google machine.
“Google is a machine that has openly said they want to control the worlds information.”
Actually, dipshit, they said they want the world’s info to be accessible Big difference. Has google been making it hard for you to get info?
The carriers have screwed with consumers forever:
1) charg(ed) for ringtones
2) SMS at $0.5-0.25 per
3) crippled bluetooth so as to be mostly useless for data synch
4) made voicemail so stupid you could only access it by calling in and using the IVR, which sucked and ate up minutes (VisualVmail is on the way, thanks to apple)
5) Make two year contracts the only reasonable decision (this is called LOCK-IN!)
Need I go on?
If “JTAP” is aligned so closely with the carriers, then they condone this type of behavior.
Google IS NOT A MONOPOLY in its consumer focused business, you can search from any other search engine you want any time. I don’t use their site to search.
“Google is a machine that has openly said they want to control the worlds information.”
Actually, Google has said they want the world’s info to be accessible Big difference. Has google been making it hard for you to get info?
The carriers have screwed with consumers forever:
1) charg(ed) for ringtones
2) SMS at $0.5-0.25 per
3) crippled bluetooth so as to be mostly useless for data synch
4) made voicemail so stupid you could only access it by calling in and using the IVR, which sucked and ate up minutes (VisualVmail is on the way, thanks to apple)
5) Make two year contracts the only reasonable decision (this is called LOCK-IN!)
Need I go on?
If “JTAP” is aligned so closely with the carriers, then they condone this type of behavior.
Google IS NOT A MONOPOLY in its consumer focused business, you can search from any other search engine you want any time. I don’t use their site to search.
“Google is a machine that has openly said they want to control the worlds information.”
Actually, Google has said they want the world’s info to be accessible Big difference. Has google been making it hard for you to get info?
The carriers have screwed with consumers forever:
1) charg(ed) for ringtones
2) SMS at $0.5-0.25 per
3) crippled bluetooth so as to be mostly useless for data synch
4) made voicemail so stupid you could only access it by calling in and using the IVR, which sucked and ate up minutes (VisualVmail is on the way, thanks to apple)
5) Make two year contracts the only reasonable decision (this is called LOCK-IN!)
Need I go on?
If “JTAP” is aligned so closely with the carriers, then they condone this type of behavior.
Google IS NOT A MONOPOLY in its consumer focused business, you can search from any other search engine you want any time. I don’t use their site to search.
“Google is a machine that has openly said they want to control the worlds information.”
Are you sure they said “control”, I think they said accessible. Actually, I know that was/is the company mission.
Google IS NOT A MONOPOLY in its consumer focused business, you can search from any other search engine you want any time. I don’t use their site to search.
The carriers have screwed with consumers forever:
1) charg(ed) for ringtones
2) SMS at $0.05-0.25 per
3) crippled bluetooth so as to be mostly useless for data synch
4) made voicemail so stupid you could only access it by calling in and using the IVR, which sucked and ate up minutes (VisualVmail is on the way, thanks to apple)
5) Make two year contracts the only reasonable decision (this is called LOCK-IN!)
Need I go on?
If “JTAP” is aligned so closely with the carriers, then they condone this type of behavior.
hey frankie, I think we get the point, figure out how to post before you rant…
Out of the three medias – desktop, tv and mobile. Google has already dominated the desktop, has already entered the lucrative TV ad market by teaming up with ComCast to provide TV ads to households and now entering the mobile market with gPhone…
I think they have a much wider picture of what they want than what we think
Why not stack the 26 million in a pile and set it on fire? There’s nothing to stop Google from doing what they do and there’s no reason why the carriers should trust Jumptap to not act like Google if they’re successful.
The only path for a new search company, IMHO, is to do something truly new that changes the way we use the web, not an iteration of someone else’s model.
I thought these VCs were supposed to be smarter about their investments…
“If you are standing on a street and looking for Tylenol for your baby, you are not interested in the recent press release. You are interested in the closest open drug store.”
That’s when I’d use Google Maps Mobile with GPS. Why try to make mobile search try to answer that question? They’re different tools with different purposes, and trying to combine them is going to make you lose what’s useful in one or the other.
I think everyone is missing the point. Has anyone actually *TRIED* a google search of a jumptap search experience?
1) Google Search – returns the stuff I’d expect on the internet. SO i would never search for ‘tylenol’ i’d search for ‘drug store’ on google maps (hat tip to niraj)
2) jumptap search – returns first the ads that have been bought (there’s no side bar on mobile), so first i’m clicking through ads from BS ringtone companies and dodgy subscription scams. Then i’m sorting through results that are ‘on deck’ at the phone companies home page. Yah the phone company’s home page sure has lots about tylenol. Then MAYBE after 10 pages i’m looking at what? google results?
This is ridiculous. These guys have raised so much money. THey should aim for another target. Maybe build an electric car with all that cash!
google > jumptap
schoolshift.com
Jumptap is a software that walks very well