Smaato Mobile Advertising Award Open for Global Entries

Awarding the innovation of mobile developers and publishers for the second year

BERLIN & SAN FRANCISCO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Smaato Inc., a leading mobile ad optimizer, announces the Smaato Mobile Advertising Award 2009. After the success of last year’s competition, Smaato is opening entries to find the coolest ad-enabled mobile content on the planet. This year, the competition will be broken into three categories: iPhone, mobile website and applications and games running on all other platforms. Participation is for free! More information is provided at www.smaato.com/award.

Smaato will invite the winners of each category to participate at Mobile World Congress, taking place in Barcelona, Spain in February 2010. The event is the world's largest mobile conference and exhibition and gives the winning companies the chance to strut their stuff in front of the entire mobile community. If that wasn’t enough, Smaato will also make a number of introductions for winners to VC's at partner level.

Additional prizes are: a booth at M-Days in Munich, Germany in January 2010, free tickets for Mobile World Congress, and many more.

“The Smaato Mobile Advertising Award 2008 was an instant success. With more than 100 entrants in its first year we could not ask for more positive feedback. We think this is a clear indicator that there is a lot of creativity and positive energy in the mobile ecosystem. The best is yet to come!” comments Harald Neidhardt, CMO & Co-Founder of Smaato the competition last year.

The Smaato Award 2009 features a world-class jury of leading influencers in the mobile community: Bambi Francisco (vator.tv), Bena Roberts (GoMoNews), Caroline Lewko (WIP), Giselle Tsirulnik (Mobile Marketer), James Cameron (Camerjam), Jim Cook (MobiAdNews), Kei Shimada (Infinita), Lubna Dajani (Mobile Monday, NYC), Mark Wächter (Mobile Monday, Germany & BVDW), Matthäus Krzykowski (VentureBeat), Matthew Snyder (ADObjects), Michelle Sklar (bnetTV), Peggy Anne Salz (MSearchGroove), Ragnar Kruse (Smaato Inc.), Rudy De Waele (dotOpen/mTrends), Timothy Chang (Norwest Venture Partners), Tim Green (Mobile Entertainment UK), Tomi Ahonen (Author), Trey Harvin (mobiThinking). The jury will look at: unique approach, traction in the market, idea, originality, company positioning and branding to name a few.

Deadline for submissions is October 9^th, 2009. The winner will be announced at the Mobile 2.0 conference in San Francisco, October 15^th, 2009.

About Smaato Inc.

Smaato is a pioneering mobile advertising company that operates the leading mobile ad optimization platform called SOMA (Smaato Open Mobile Advertising) and partners with mobile publishers, developers, ad networks and operators.

SOMA’s unique feature is the aggregation of multiple leading ad networks globally to maximize mobile advertising ARPU. SOMA can be easily integrated with ad networks, ad inventory owners (publishers, developers and operators) and 3rd party ad technology providers.

Smaato is an active member of the Mobile Marketing Association, the dot.mobi Advisory Group and the German Digital Media Association BVDW. Smaato received a Top 100 Private Company Award by AlwaysOn Media (2009 & 2007) and was an Andrew Seybold Choice Awards finalist at CTIA 2008 for best Newcomer, among other awards.

Smaato Inc. is based in Redwood Shores, California. The privately held company was founded in 2005 by an experienced International management team. The European headquarters are in Hamburg, Germany.