AdColony, the mobile adver­tis­ing start­up that promis­es to deliv­er the best and sharpest mobile video ads on the plan­et, has hit a major mile­stone, which any­one with expe­ri­ence of media jobs in mobile Adland will agree is worth cel­e­brat­ing: its gross rev­enue run rate has now reached the $100 mil­lion mark.

What’s so spec­tac­u­lar about AdColony’s progress is not sim­ply that it was only found­ed in 2011, but that its rev­enue for 2013 was a wal­lop­ing four times that achieved in 2012. Those razor-sharp, instant-play videos with zero load­ing times are clear­ly catch­ing on.

Unique tech­nol­o­gy

OK, this is gross rev­enue, which means that part­ners and pub­lish­ers have yet to take their cut but most peo­ple famil­iar with the world of mobile adver­tis­ing agen­cies will still con­cede that it’s a pret­ty impres­sive per­for­mance even so.

The startup’s pro­pri­etary ‘Instant­Play’ tech­nol­o­gy reli­ably zaps those infu­ri­at­ing load-up delays that bedev­iled mobile videos of yore, and the high-qual­i­ty images it pro­duces are devoid of chop­pi­ness and unwant­ed freeze-frames. The ads it cre­ates include “cards” which appear after tai­lor-made calls to action, such as Face­book “Like” requests and ‘click-to-buy’ buttons.

The AdColony net­work now reach­es in excess of 150 mil­lion unique vis­i­tors across the world (pub­lish­ers involved include ABC News, A&E Net­works, Super­cell and Flixster). No won­der it’s been able to open offices in New York, San Fran­cis­co, Los Ange­les and Seat­tle. This plat­form is going places, espe­cial­ly as more and more con­sumers take to view­ing their ads on mobile devices.

Future plans

TechCrunch jour­nal­ist Antho­ny Ha recent­ly spoke with AdColony’s CEO, Will Kas­soy, and asked about the company’s future direc­tions in the light of its impres­sive growth. Kas­soy told him that the com­pa­ny is already focus­ing on a few big trends, amongst them the grow­ing inter­est in syn­chro­niz­ing mobile and TV ads. To this end, AdColony is using data show­ing the degree of over­lap between the two audi­ences and by using the ris­ing phe­nom­e­non of co-view­ing/­so­cial TV apps.

But as adver­tis­ers become savvi­er about the impor­tance of attri­bu­tion, AdColony is also offer­ing data designed to assist them “take advan­tage of all the streams in media”, Kas­soy said. The oth­er big area AdColony is con­cen­trat­ing on, he added, is assist­ing social app devel­op­ers to bring top-qual­i­ty video ads into their news feeds.