We last covered mobile advertising network Jumptap in August 2008, when the Massachusetts-based company raised $26 million to penetrate the rapidly growing mobile web market. Although another ad startup emerged as the winner in that race, Jumptap today calls itself “the largest independent mobile ad network in North America and Europe”.
And now Jumptap has set its sight on the Japanese market, through a deal it just inked with Tokyo-based cyber communications (cci). The Japanese media company is a subsidiary of Dentsu (the country’s biggest advertising agency). It will integrate Jumptap’s technology into its existing mobile ad solutions.
The goal for cci is to boost the targeting capability of mobile ads in the Japanese market, especially in those delivered through smartphones and tablets. (cci is the same company that teamed up with Apple to bring the iAd mobile advertising network to the Japanese market in early 2011.)
While smartphone penetration is still relatively low in Japan, the world’s most sophisticated mobile market is worth several billion dollars and is poised to see more and more smartphones made by local makers in the near future.
cci seems to be so convinced by Jumptap’s targeted ad technology that it also announced a strategic investment (for an undisclosed sum) in the American company. So far, Jumptap raised a total of $69 million from investors like investors General Catalyst Partners, Summerhill Venture Partners, Redpoint Ventures, Valhalla Partners, and WPP.