Amobee Media Systems, which specialises in advertising solutions for mobile operators, has revealed that Telefonica has made a strategic minority investment in the company. Telefonica joins Sequoia Capital, Accel Partners, Globespan and Vodafone in funding Amobees next stage of development.
Amobee Media Systems was founded in May 2005, with the objective of enabling all players in the mobile content and data value chain to generate new revenues from advertising. Its software solution supports digital ad delivery to all mobile content and communication types, including WAP and mobile web, mobile games, mobile video, and mobile messaging.
The Amobee management team, made up of executives with a combination of wireless, advertising, and interactive media experience, have produced what the company describes as a best-of-breed solution, tailor-made for mobile operators.  The advertising impressions from the Amobee platform occur in a relevant, contextual and non-intrusive manner, thus giving the users control over the engagement.
We have evaluated a large number of competing platforms for serving ads in the mobile environment, says Russ Shaw, Director of Innovation at Telefonica. We have chosen to invest in, and partner with, Amobee because we have concluded that it offers the best solution to ad-fund our growing number of mobile data services, while ensuring that our customers get better value, as well as a richer mobile experience. We also believe that Amobees carrier centric model will generate the highest quality mobile advertising inventory, thus ensuring that advertisers are given a compelling proposition.”
Zohar Levkovitz, CEO and Co- Founder of Amobee Media Systems adds:
Amobee is quickly becoming a standard for operators to serve contextual, dynamic and relevant ads to their customers. In less than a year, we have made significant advances and have now generated mobile advertising revenues for Tier One operators in several major markets around the world. With Telefonicas investment, Amobee is set to strengthen its position as the worlds premier provider of mobile ad-serving solutions.
According to Pyramid Research, by 2010, 1 billion new mobile subscribers will join the current base of 2.8 billion. And according to Informa, worldwide mobile ad revenues will rise to $11.35 billion (5.48 billion) by 2011.