ADOTAS

Spongecell creates display ads with interactive functions, including video and social feeds, and like a lot of similar firms, it’s particularly gung-ho about video at the moment. Though it was reportedly struggling financially just a few years ago, CEO Ben Kartzman has cited revenue growth in 2011 of more than twice its 2010 revenue (which was $3.8 million, and Kartzman hasn’t given a specific figure to the 2011 total).

The funding will, according to Kartzman, go towards expanding existing product lines and adding new ones, while building up Spongecell’s staff

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) protection services company Prolexic Technologies announced it’s raised $8 million in funding. Camden Partners led this round. This comes after two funding rounds in 2011, both led by Kennet Partners, netted the company $15.9 million. Camden Partners principal Jason Tagler also joins Prolexic’s board.

DDoS protection ties into a business’ continuity and disaster recovery plan, and Prolexic is rising in that niche. In a statement, CEO Scott Hammack cited 55 percent growth in the last quarter alone, and he pointed out that since the company was profitable in 2011, it didn’t technically need the funding.

According to Prolexic, the new funding will go towards building up its staff, network and services.

ADOTAS

These changes put AdMob in a more competitive position among other ad marketplaces (TapJoy announced $0.10 minimum bid last week) and allows even more new advertisers to jump on board the platform.

Nothing is scheduled to change for campaigns that are not CPC.

ADOTAS

To HootSuite, Coca Cola came out on top. Watson pointed out that having the iconic Coca Cola polar bears commenting on the game on Coke’s Facebook page (not to mention the ease with which web users were directed to the Facebook page) led to a social campaign that users responded to and was inventive at the same time. It was the kind of campaign, Watson said, where “you just leave [the browser] open — you don’t just open it and close it a few times.” Also way up near the top of the list was H&M’s campaign, for which David Beckham proved extremely popular. “Beckham’s crushing it,” Watson said, “scoring millions in terms of impression counts, We’re not even talking about Tweet counts. He was in three trending topics on Twitter.” Intense public interest over time was important to the study, Watson pointed out — the Chrysler ad featuring Clint Eastwood generated a flurry of interest, but it petered out quickly. Other campaigns were marked down for poor behavior. “Are you begging? Are you spamming users?” Watson asked. He mentioned how one brand was “called out” by sending direct messages to Twitter users, which those users saw as invasive (the DM box is seen by many Tweeters as a particularly personal forum). And Sketchers’ ad featured greyhound racing, and viewers “petitioned within 15 minutes to take it down.” That’s a demerit, obviously. The study played out over a 24-hour period, so HootSuite was able to look at both the lead-up to and the aftermath of the Super Bowl itself.

Watson explained the study required a lot of human interpretation to make sense of the kinds of messages present. “It’s still a hamster-driven exercise,” he said. “We’re actually reading the content” while running analytics, “weighting types of engagement, thinking about sentiment. I’d be very wary of a 100 percent automated system.”

Here’s that infographic (click to enlarge):

Facebook’s IPO filing last week claimed no “meaningful revenue from the use of Facebook mobile products.” Mobile ads would conveniently address that issue, at least for the time being.

ADOTAS

Being an ad network reaching 485 million unique users around the world, InMobi was in a good position to conduct a survey through mobile devices about mobile usage as the events the survey asked about unfolded. “The fact that people are answering a survey on their mobile devices proves that they’re on their devices, right?” InMobi vice president and managing director Anne Frisbie said with a laugh in a phone conversation this afternoon. And in terms of advertisers reaching audiences, mobile’s potential goes beyond its personal nature and its convenience, she said — there’s a psychological angle, too. When you flip open a laptop at home over the weekend, Frisbie explained, “you emotionally switch to a work-driven mentality,” but when you have your mobile in hand, “you can stay in your entertainment mindset and [the mobile content] adds to it.” She pointed out the technology still warrants a closer look from brands — while there have been studies about the amount of time it takes for a website to load online, Frisbie wonders, “How long does it take your mobile site to load? There are no stats around this.”

In the survey, InMobi asked about the ways in which people were interacting with ads via mobile — they could’ve discussed the commercials, looked up more information on a product on their devices or re-watched an ad. The survey started during the second quarter of the game, and as it turned out, that was in the middle of the period when mobile advertisers had the most potential reach –the number of users who said they were engaged with their devices during the first half was nearly double the number for the second half. “And that’s when they’re more sober!,” Frisbie said, laughing. And 30 percent of those surveyed said they were using their mobiles more during the commercials than during play.

Answers to questions about specific commercials showed the Coca Cola ad was “best received,” said Frisbie. Meanwhile, there’s also some commentary on the survey on the InMobi blog.

ADOTAS

In a recent Skpe chat, Jet Patel said that the new technology came about, on the publisher’s side, after “six months of development work. We’ve invested a lot of time.” As companies in the space catch up to Sponsormob’s earlier leads and focus on new ways to utilize the opportunities presented by mobile devices, Patel said, “We want to differentiate ourselves.” The capacity for RTB gives Sponsormob that edge — other companies, he said, “can’t really optimize on the go.” Sponsormob’s algorithm, he said, “yields greater results” through data optimization, and he pointed out that when working with a new client, his company conducts extensive testing, looking at the mobile carrier, the handset and tens of thousands of clicks in order to deliver the right ad to the right user at the right time.

There’s been a lot of discussion lately about how mobile devices — as wide-ranging and nuanced as the term “mobile” may be — present challenges and opportunities for advertisers, because of their portable nature and the highly personal relationship can users have to them. But Patel underlined the need for transparency. The user’s choosing to opt in to ads can lead to eye-popping click-through rates, and Patel acknowledged, “I think that’s the most important thing, that people opt in.” He pointed out the importance that “everything has legal liens — users are aware of what they’re downloading.”

When it’s transparent, though, methods of advertising via mobile can be both effective and creative. Patel cited Sponsormob’s Click-to-Call service. He said the insurance industry is one channel where it’s worked very well. The way it works is, a user clicks on an ad and is led directly to a call center. That process, he said, is “considered an elite. We’ve transferred it to mobile.”

Patel said he sees companies working with mobile technology approaching a point when they can target ads with the level of sophistication that the web has. “Come 2012, it’s catching up with a lot of things,” he said. “There are unique ways you can access users and engage with them.” He pointed to “apps focused on geolocation targeting” as key in the process, especially as inventory in mobile apps expands. Meanwhile, for Sponsormob specifically, he said that while up to now, “we’ve been focusing on direct advertisers, we’re looking at a solution where we can go to publishers” with more opportunities for branding and revenue. The company’s been focused on Germany and the U.S., he said, and it’ll give some more attention to the U.K. and France in the future. “The biggest difference [is] — well, the time difference!,” Patel said. “Things need to get done very quickly.”

DM CONFIDENTIAL

Seventy-five percent of Americans with mobile phones have used their phones in the bathroom, according to 11mark. The gender split is nearly identical, with 74 percent of men and 76 percent of women saying they’ve used their mobile phones in the bathroom.

Meanwhile, 30 percent of men vs. 20 percent of women said they don’t go to the bathroom without their mobile phone, according to the report.

11mark goes even deeper into the details to find that:

• 20 percent of men and 13 percent of women participated in work-related calls in the bathroom
• 26 percent of men and 15 percent of women sent/read work-related email in the bathroom
• 41 percent of men and 36 percent of women browsed the web in the bathroom
• 13 percent of men and 7 percent of women made a purchase while in the bathroom

Android users are the most likely to use their mobile phone in the bathroom, with 87 percent of Android users saying so, followed by 84 percent of BlackBerry users and 77 percent of iPhone users.

BlackBerry users are the most likely to answer a call while in the bathroom (75 percent) and initiate a call while in the bathroom (48 percent). Meanwhile, iPhone users are the most likely to use social networking sites while in the bathroom (53 percent) and use an app while in the bathroom (67 percent).

According to 11mark, 91 percent of Gen Y mobile phone owners use their phones in the bathroom, while 80 percent of Gen X mobile phone owners, 65 percent of boomers and 47 percent of the silent generation do the same.

The report also highlighted that 16 percent of Gen Y mobile phone owners made a purchase while in the bathroom, while 10 percent of Gen X, 6 percent of boomers and 2 percent of the silent generation have done the same.

“Based on the trend, bathroom buying is poised for growth,” according to 11mark.

Getting down into the health aspects of this trend, 11mark found that 92 percent of respondents said they always wash their hands after using the restroom, while 14 percent said they always wash their phone after using the bathroom.

A separate report from Google and Ipsos MediaCT Germany found that more consumers use mobile phones than laptop/desktop computers in all five studied regions of the world (U.S., U.K., France, Germany and Japan).

ADOTAS

• Steve Sincavage has been named chief financial officer of mobile ad/marketing messaging provider Mobile Posse. Previously, he’d been CFO of Rivermine Software.

• Advertising media software provider Telmar has named Corey Panno president of Telmar Group. He had been the company’s president for North America.

• Lucy Jacobs is now chief operating officer of Facebook Ads API developer Spruce Media. This is a newly created position. She had previously been adBrite’s vice president of sales, marketing and business development.

• Ad agency Brunner has promoted former vice president and director of public relations Shari Boyle to senior vice president and director of public relations.

• Digital communications agency Horn Group promoted former New York City office principal Ben Billingsley to the role of partner.

• Matthew Kirk was named chief scientist for enterprise social media management provider SocialVolt. He comes to SocialVolt from Wetpaint, where he’d held a software engineering position.

• Online ad campaign performance optimization company Maxifier has appointed Xiaoming Shao to the role of managing director for Asia Pacific. Shao had previously been managing director for Asia Pacific with AudienceScience.

• Nancy Marzouk is now chief revenue officer of tag management and attribution company TagMan. Previously, she served as vice president of sales at IgnitionOne.

• Eric Rosenthal has been named general manager of digital advertising technology provider OpenX Technologies‘ enterprise business. This is a newly created position. Rosenthal comes to the company from AOL, where he’d been vice president of national sales.

• Cloud-based telecom customer experience company Globys has appointed Chek Lim senior vice president of engineering. Lim had previously held the same position at Motricity.

• Diana DiGuido is now a senior director for client services with digital marketing company PM Digital. She had been an account director with Zeta Interactive.

• Ad tech company AudienceScience has named Stuart Colman vice president, international. He’ll simultaneously continue to serve his prior role as managing director for Europe.

• SaaS email/mobile/social marketing company Emailvision hired Andrew Bonar, naming him worldwide director of deliverability. He’d earlier spent several years as an independent consultant for a number of companies internationally.

ADOTAS

The IAB’s survey found that 56 percent of smartphone users and 46 percent of tablet users expected to use their devices during the game, while Velti’s found that 60 percent of mobile users expected to look at or use their devices. (Use, I can see, but look at is another thing — I’ve seen football games, and they last for hours, and I’ve seen what people do when their phones vibrate, and with those odds, 60 percent seems like a lowball estimate — but I digress.) Velti’s survey found 30 percent of users under the age of 45 would watch the game with device “in hand” (which raises the question of how that experience differs from “in pocket”), and 47 percent of users ages 18 and up (that’s everyone in the survey, for the record) said they’d check or use their devices more than 10 times during the game. The IAB’s study found 74 percent of 18- to-34-year-olds said their phones would be part of the Super Bowl experience for them, and 51 percent of that demographic said they’d be texting, emailing or instant messaging during the game.

Advertisers naturally want viewers to watch those all-important ads, but they have competition this year: According to Velti’s survey, 26 percent of mobile users who said they’d be watching the game also said they’d be likely to look at their mobile devices during commercial breaks. That’s twice as many as the number that said they’d be likely to check their mobiles during game play. But the IAB has edifying numbers, stepping back from just mobile usage: 41 percent of the Super Bowl viewers they asked said they would use a computer of some sort to learn something about Super Bowl ads, and 18 percent said they planned to watch those new commercials on a computer before or just after the game. Only 8 percent said they planned to watch highlights or replays, to put that in perspective.

Oh, and who’s more immersed in mobile, Giants or Pats fans? The IAB picked Patriots fans. Even though Giants fans use their mobile devices to access more sports content, Pats fans watch more video on their mobiles. Hey, they threw in a chart:

ADOTAS

Facebook reported revenues of over $3.71 billion in 2011, and it claims 845 million users. Today’s announcement is significant for reasons we probably don’t need to explain to you, and it also poses challenges for Facebook’s future that we probably don’t need to explain either. Incidentally, this Saturday, Feb. 4, marks the eighth anniversary of the network’s launch.