Mobile advertising network Jumptap was awarded Patent No. 7,660,581 by the United States Patent Office on Feb. 10. Does this, its fourth patent in eight months, make Jumptap more valuable to a potential suitor?

Jumptap claims to be the first company to recognize that information access and content consumption through mobile devices would one day eclipse all other devices, causing a major disruption throughout the entire advertising industry, including both traditional and digital media.

?This is our fourth mobile search and advertising patent in the last eight months, and at that pace, we?ll double that number before Thanksgiving,? said Jorey Ramer, founder and vice president of corporate development at Jumptap, Cambridge, MA. ?These patents are a direct illustration of our innovations in the mobile sector?more users will be accessing the Web via handsets than via PCs by 2013, according to Gartner and Pew.

?Jumptap patents demonstrate that we were first to market and have a longer investment in the most sophisticated technologies in the sector,? he said. ?These technology solutions are critical for capturing marketshare because advertisers, publishers and application developers seek the highest-performing partners.?

Jumptap operates an independent mobile ad network of mobile Web sites and applications in North America and Europe, claiming a penetration of approximately 44 million unique visits a month in the U.S. alone.

Patents no longer pending
When asked ?Do these patents make Jumptap more valuable to a potential suitor?? Jumptap played its cards close to its vest.

?Jumptap is focused on building a market-leading, long-term sustainable business in mobile advertising,? Mr. Ramer said. ?No company can achieve this objective without building a strong patent portfolio.

?This not only manifests itself in patents, which should over time be a significant source of value, but also in growing revenues, number of advertisers, reach, and all of the other metrics commonly indicative of a company that is not only growing with the market, but is taking market-share from our competitors,? he said.

The patent relates to a computer-implemented method for targeted distribution of a sponsored content item of a first or second sponsor to a plurality of mobile communication facilities whose respective users have a common usage history characteristic statistically modeled as a profile associated with the respective users, wherein the profile is identified as a category, wherein advertising of the sponsored content item relates to the category.

Jumptap?s method comprises the steps of:

(a) presenting a category to the first sponsor and the second sponsor;

(b) receiving a bid from the first sponsor, wherein the bid includes: (i) a selection of the category; an (ii) a financial consideration offered for distribution of the sponsored content item of the first sponsor to the users associated with the selected category;

(c) receiving a bid from the second sponsor, wherein the bid includes: (i) a selection of the same category as the first sponsor; and (ii) a financial consideration offered for distribution of the sponsored content item of the first sponsor to the users associated with the selected category;

(d) attributing a priority to the distribution of the sponsored content item of the first sponsor over the distribution of the sponsored content item of the second sponsor to the users associated with the selected category based upon a determination that the financial consideration of the first sponsor is greater than the financial consideration of the second sponsor; and

(e) distributing the respective sponsored content item to the plurality of mobile communication facilities whose respective users are identified by the selected category.

The patent is one of four issued in less than eight months.

Since June 16, 2009, Jumptap has been issued three other patents, Numbers 7548915, 7577665, and 7603360.

The company currently has more than 70 published patent applications and anticipates receiving additional patents over the coming quarters.

Jumptap works with the GTC Law Group, Webb Law Firm and Strategic Patents P.C. in conjunction with its patent applications.

Mobile ad network consolidation
In the wake of Google?s acquisition of AdMob and Apple?s acquisition of Quattro Wireless, where does that leave the independent mobile ad networks such as Jumptap?

?Certainly the $1 billion of market consolidation have been great validation of the value of mobile advertising,? Mr. Ramer said. ?The risk of this consolidation is reintroducing fragmentation: different standards and platforms by handset manufacturers and operators that has historically created barriers to mobile advertising adoption in the past.

?Publishers, application developers and advertisers want simplicity when embedding and purchasing mobile advertising,? he said. ?Independent platforms like Jumptap?s that work across platforms will be at a distinct advantage, especially as more companies migrate from PC to mobile to follow users.?