Back in 2008, few with media jobs in the fledg­ling mobile adver­tis­ing indus­try would have even thought about deploy­ing videos; but fast for­ward to the present, and it’s clear that both con­sti­tute gigan­tic mar­ket oppor­tu­ni­ties and the time for a fusion is ripe – a fusion that start­up mobile adver­tis­ing firm AdColony is already work­ing with.

Load­ing time? What load­ing time?

What a dif­fer­ence five years can make; in 2008, the chief rea­son why mobile adver­tis­ing agen­cies steered clear of video was because the load­ing time was just too frus­trat­ing for users; in 2013, that’s no longer the case. AdColony, which launched in 2011 and now has offices in New York, Seat­tle, Los Ange­les and San Fran­cis­co, aims to keep users in the apps it adver­tis­es on with a triple‑A con­tent expe­ri­ence. And thanks to its pro­pri­etary Instant­Play video tech­nol­o­gy, it’s suc­ceed­ing. Its high-res­o­lu­tion videos have zero load­ing time.

AdColony has an auda­cious vision: it aims to pro­vide noth­ing less than the best qual­i­ty mobile adver­tis­ing expe­ri­ence in the world with video, simul­ta­ne­ous­ly serv­ing adver­tis­ers, pub­lish­ers and con­sumers. And it’s doing so by deliv­er­ing high­ly engag­ing video expe­ri­ences that keep view­ers hooked on the content.

Short, sharp and savvy

AdColony’s ads gen­er­al­ly don’t exceed a run­ning time of 15 sec­onds – just long enough to evoke and hold view­er inter­est but not long enough to annoy or bore them. And its glit­ter­ing ros­ter of clients sug­gests they work: com­pa­nies include Uni­ver­sal Pic­tures, Sony Pic­tures, Dis­ney, McDon­alds, Kraft, Microsoft, Fox News radio, ABC News, Super­cell, Flixster, and A&E Net­works and that’s by no means all of them).

The startup’s founder and Pres­i­dent, Jonathan Zweig, said that AdColony had had its fin­ger on the pulse of the mobile space from the out­set (as a com­put­er sci­ence stu­dent at UCLA, he received angel fund­ing to set a up AdColony’s app-build­ing fore­run­ner, Jir­bo).  He went on:

“Mobile video is see­ing tremen­dous growth, and it has been so excit­ing to see our L.A.-based start­up grow to become a glob­al com­pa­ny that is play­ing a big role in Sil­i­con Val­ley, on Madi­son Avenue, and of course here in L.A. I think we knew we hit a sweet spot with mobile video ear­ly on, and as con­sumer media behav­ior con­tin­ues to shift to mobile, those notions have been val­i­dat­ed in a huge way.”