Millennial Media, Action Engine partner on downloadable app ads

By Mickey Alam Khan

July 9, 2008

Crossing the Ts

Mobile ad network Millennial Media Inc. has struck a deal with Action Engine to integrate mobile advertising into downloadable applications.

Millennial Media will incorporate Action Engine's in-application Mobile Advertising Engine technology into its MBrand network, per the deal.

"What it really provides to Millennial Media and our agency clients is additional consumer reach -- a larger audience -- [and] great brand content publishers and the opportunity for richer advertising," said Eric Eller, senior vice president of product and marketing at Millennial Media, Baltimore, MD.

The deal will let Millennial Media continue to support mobile ads in BREW, BlackBerry, Java and Windows Mobile applications through a package for inserting, rotating and tracking ads across a plethora of downloadable mobile applications.

Action Engine's mobile ad technology allows wireless carriers and content publishers to run mobile ads in offline pages found within downloadable mobile applications.

SIgn of the times

The Action Engine Mobile Advertising Engine offers users a database system for caching ads in offline mobile device screens and rotating them on a scheduled basis.

That technology also tracks impressions when no network connection is available, according to Action Engine.

The ability to handle offline ad insertion and reporting is a roadblock removed in in-application and on-device advertising -- a key attraction for Millennial Media.

A deal worth the paper

Action Engine, Bellevue, WA, has deployed its software for AOL, The Wall Street Journal, MarketWatch.com, Barrons.com, MSNBC.com, Golf.com, Sprint, Verizon Wireless, TiVo and Sports Illustrated.

"We're big believers in the 360 concept of advertising programs and typically that might involve the Web and mobile and traditional advertising and even within the mobile, this might involve the mobile Web, mobile messaging, mobile applications and there's something really interesting happening with voice and getting celebrity calls," Mr. Eller said.

"The other key component to this deal is that Action Engine works with Tier 1 publishers and we believe that content publishers will figure out ways of getting richer, more dynamic content out to users," he said. "The iPhone makes that easier because of its full-featured browser."

The news comes less than a month after Millennial Media said it had recorded more than 2.5 billion impressions in May.

The United States alone accounted for 1.94 billion monthly ad impressions, according to the company.

Combined, Millennial Media's publishers attracted more than 18 million unique mobile users in May. This is almost 50 percent of the U.S. mobile Web audience.

Millennial Media claims more than 1,200 sites in its ad networks. The networks comprise mobile services from online and mobile media content providers.

Publishers and media brands in the Millennial Media networks include Fox, CBS and ABC properties, as well as WeatherBug, Major League Baseball and Lexico, owner of Dictionary.com and Thesaurus.com.

The company places ads on behalf of advertiser clients such as Ford Motor, Texas Tourism, TV Guide, The Washington Times, Goal.com, The Boston Herald, American Airlines, GoTV's video service and the U.S. Army on publisher sites in its networks.

The ad placements appear on-deck as well as off-deck via major wireless carriers.

Millennial Media has several products for its network clients.

Millennial Motion offers rich media options and the MBrand network provides targeted audiences across premium content. Decktrade was designed for performance-based mobile ad campaigns.

The deal with Action Engine addresses a key challenge for Millennial Media, especially as more rich content is available on mobile phones.

"The risk that we run [if it didn't do a deal such as Action Engine's] is not being in a position to leverage this kind of content when it proliferates," Mr. Eller said.

"Action Engine is in a space that's got a lot of activity and I would expect that on-device portal providers, of which they're one, are going to have a lot of exciting news over the next six to 12 months," he said.