The mobile advertising industry will shift to full-screen ad formats, pushed by demand from advertisers that want to standardize online ad formats, predicts Greystripe CEO Michael Chang.
It just so happens that if that occurs, others will be following in Greystripe’s footsteps. Greystripe’s full-screen ad format already has attracted clients such as Axe, Burger King, Walmart, Best Buy and Yahoo!, among others.
A key part of Greystripe’s offering is the ability to offer a Flash-like experience on the iPhone. The iPhone doesn’t come with Flash, but Greystripe can take an Adobe Flash ad built for the desktop and convert it into something that plays on the iPhone.
The company now is aggregating inventory for about 100 iPhone games delivered through the Apple App Store. When users download free games, they see ads served by Greystripe.
Beyond the iPhone, Chang see the next big opportunity in terms of app stores in Nokia’s Ovi. The launch of the Android Marketplace has been disappointing, mainly because there are not enough G1 phones in the market. Research In Motion’s App World makes it challenging for the end-user to get and download apps; it’s not as easy as it is through Apple, he says.
While it’s not yet known what the user experience will be like, the opportunities with Nokia’s Ovi are exciting because of Nokia’s penetration in the worldwide handset space, he says.
Greystripe recently won a CTIA E-Tech award in the mobile advertising category for its GS.Rich Media ad formats.