Amobee Media Systems Closes Investment Transaction with Telefonica and Announces Strategic Relationship for Mobile Advertising

SAN FRANCISCO & LONDON & MADRID--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Amobee Media Systems, the world leader in advertising solutions for mobile operators, today announced that Telefonica has made a strategic minority investment in Amobee. Telefonica joins Sequoia Capital, Accel Partners, Globespan and Vodafone in funding Amobee’s next stage of development.

Amobee Media Systems was founded in May of 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, comprised of a strong core of executives with a combination of wireless, advertising, and interactive media experience, have produced 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. 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,” stated Russ Shaw, Director of Innovation at Telefonica. “We also believe that Amobee’s carrier centric model will generate the highest quality mobile advertising inventory, thus ensuring that advertisers are given a compelling proposition.”

"Amobee is quickly becoming a standard for operators to serve contextual, dynamic and relevant ads to their customers,” said Zohar Levkovitz, CEO and Co-Founder of Amobee Media Systems. “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 Telefonica’s investment, Amobee is set to strengthen its position as the world's premier provider of mobile ad-serving solutions.”

Mobile advertising represents an unprecedented potential to increase reach for advertisers. According to Pyramid Research, by 2010 one billion new mobile subscribers will join the current base of 2.8 billion. Further, according to Informa, worldwide mobile advertising revenues will rise to $11.35 billion by 2011.

About Amobee Media Systems:

Amobee Media Systems has built and designed the first and only telco-grade adserving solution dedicated to mobile operators, allowing them to dynamically insert advertising impressions in all forms of mobile communication and content: WAP Browsing, Video & Music, SMS, MMS, and Games etc... Amobee’s complete ad serving solution is designed to facilitate the launch of advertising campaigns for brand building, direct response and lead generation campaigns helping mobile operators and their subscribers “get more for less”. The company has also engaged advertisers and media buying agencies to directly purchase ad inventory as part of Amobee’s growing advertising network.

Amobee’s media system is capable of supporting everything from in-game and invideo to in-wap and in-message mobile impression insertions. The insertions occur with full user consent and are made in a relevant, contextual and nonintrusive manner thus increasing the media value while giving users control over the engagement.

Headquartered in the San Francisco, the company enjoys financial backing from some of the biggest names in venture capital: Accel Partners (www.accel.com), Sequoia Capital (www.sequoiacap.com), and Globespan (www.globespancapital.com). The company has also enjoyed the backing of the world's 2 leading operators: Vodafone and Telefonica. Amobee has commercial offices in London and San Francisco, with R&D in Herzliya, Israel.