Mobile ad network Greystripe recently partnered with ad placement service Tribal Fusion to allow online ads to run on iPhones, diminishing the need for mobile specific ad formats. The partnership allows online ads to run on iPhones, eliminating additional mobile campaign creative production and dealing with an additional mobile advertising vendor. And of course, online ad budgets tend to be higher than mobile ad budgets, so Greystripe says this saves companies money.
Greystripe, which extended the ads to over five hundred online to mobile campaigns, says that advertisers are seeing 10-20 times higher performance with the mobile-online ad compared to the same online campaigns with average click through rates above one percent.
The mobile ad network maintains that its rich media, Flash full-screen ads generate higher click through rates and are able to generate better revenue to its publishers. With the Tribal Fusion program, Greystripe takes online Flash ads and transcodes them to make them fit on iPhones. Although Greystripe claims its rates are higher, we’ve heard they are on par with AdMob’s rates. That being said, the program does make it easier for ads to travel seamlessly from web-based to mobile platforms.
It’s important to note that one of the leaders in the ad network space, AdMob, was recently acquired by Google, leaving many of its competitors scrambling to compete with one of the largest companies in the world. Greystripe has been actively working to innovate its offerings over the past year; and has even received an $2 million infusion from NBC Universal.