By Ben Popper 11/09/11 8:31am

Make Mine Mobile

Eric Litman - image via BI

Medialets Raises $8.4 Million as Mobile Ad Market Surges

With smartphones and tablets breaking away from the pack as the next phase of personal computing, advertising on these devices  is poised to become big business. New York’s Medialets, a mobile rich media advertising firms, has been beating Apple on their home turf and capturing dollars from some big brands and publishers. They have now raised a fresh $8.4 million, bringing their total to $18 million.

Peter Kafka broke the news based on an SEC filing. He found previous backers DFJ Gotham and Foundry Group had reinvested, and Medialets CEO Eric Litman confirmed that there were some new investors as well. In that interview he confirmed most of the companies business still revolves around in-app advertising, but Medialets has recently created a self-serve advertising platform and moved into advertising on the mobile web. Read More

By Ben Popper 9/15/11 4:51pm

Wither the Web?

A Medialets streaming ad inside the NY Times app.

Medialets Goes Beyond the App With Rich Media Ads on the Mobile Web

When Betabeat last wrote about Medialets, we highlighted the fact that they offered rich media solutions through HTML5, meaning advertisers didn’t have to worry about tweaking their campaign for Apple versus Android versus RIM. This had helped Medialets to score clients like The New York Times and The Daily, which despite being in bed with Apple during its creation, chose Medialets over iAd for their rich media needs.

Today Medialets announced it would begin offering the same services for the mobile web. “We didn’t go into mobile web first, even though there was audience, because the browser wasn’t ready,” Eric Litman, CEO of Medialets, told Betabeat by phone this morning. “But Apple and Google have been doing a ton of work on this, to the point where the mobile browser can support things like location or an accelerometer.” Read More