Mobile game advertising network Greystripe secured $5.5 million in Series C funding led by Incubic Venture Capital, Steamboat Ventures and Monitor Ventures. The company previously received a total of $10.1 million in Series A and B funding, with the same investors participating. Greystripe develops “advergames,” mobile ads that have game-like characteristics designed to increase the chances of consumers clicking on them. Greystripe has delivered 180 million ad-supported game and app downloads to date.
Greystripe has capitalized on strong growth in its mobile content distribution and monetization business, particularly with the iPhone. Greystripe is now trying to integrate mobile-centric ad campaigns with industry-accepted online media buying software. This unified integration allows for ad agencies to easily add mobile ads with one click and also allows for Flash advertisementsto appear on the iPhone (a technology that Greystripe developed). Ads can be used for both online and mobile purposes.
Greystripe is trying to integrate mobile ad campaigns into online ad budgets. Greystripe says its recent mobile ad campaign with Unilever Axe (which came out of Axe’s online ad budget) saw a 15% brand lift. The company says that despite growth in the mobile ad market, many brands are still hesitant to reach out to mobile advertising. They hope that the integration of mobile and online advertising for both monetary purposes and in implementation will boost mobile ad sales.
Other mobile ad networks that have iPhone specific applications, like AdMob, have received a vote of confidence through VC funding recently. AdMob has seen similar success in iPhone mobile ads, with the company serving 250 million ads last year.
Here’s a screenshot of a Greystripe advertisement but you can find a sample here:
In game ads are annoying why would investors throw more money at a bad idea?
Because sometimes annoying sells. Well, to be honest, annoying seems to work really well.
A direct link to the site from the front page would be much appreciated.
First off I would like to congratulate GreyStripe on the funding round. It is always great seeing people push the technology especially on the mobile phone. I would however like to see what revenue came of the 180 milion downloads. They don’t have enough ads in stock to put on all the games downloaded, so they lose money on some of these downloads as developers has to get paid.
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so as greystripe says they developed the technology to convert flash to the iphone – all they did is use javascript to recreate these ads – this is not knew technology or revolutionary at all.
in addition i used to run greystripe ads on my java games – the ad inventory was very flaky…CPMs were sometimes as low as 3 cents.
good luck with the 5 million – you’ll probably need 500 million more…