Thursday, May 23, 2013

UberMedia Recasts Itself In Mobile Advertising

UberMedia, the Idealab-backed startup best known for its Twitter client software, has recast itself as a mobile advertising firm, saying yesterday that it has launched a new mobile advertising product called UberAds. According to UberMedia, its new UberAds product analyzes social media signals to figure out consumer intent, and combines that with geo-location and dynamic ads to increase ad performance.

The new move towards mobile ads comes represents a rebirth, of sorts, for UberMedia, which has been uncharacteristically quiet over the last year, as it has sorted out its strategy after a long running battle with Twitter over its third party, Twitter client applications. UberMedia had been aggressively developing a rich set of third party apps which tied into Twitter, until those moves were shut down by the popular social messaging service.

UberMedia's social messaging and Twitter clients still exist--albeit, tucked away behind the company's new mobile ad focus--and the firm still lists UberSocial, Echofon, Plume, and a few other apps in its product list--but clearly, the mobile ads are the future for the company. UberMedia said that so far, brands such as Nike, Universal, and Lancome, among others, are using the firm's mobile ad products.

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