iVdopia says it has a solution for advertisers that don’t want to pay $1 million for an iAd campaign. They can use Future5, iVdopia’s HTML5 ad-authoring solution for the iPhone and iPad.
iVdopia has been using HTML5 for at least eight months now to create ad content, well before Apple CEO Steve Jobs publicly spelled out his strong support for HTML5 over Flash. A lot of advertisers that have been using Flash for years for online ads don’t have the in-house expertise or coding background to develop ads using HTML5, so iVdopia is offering its technology to outside parties. “This is the future of HTML5,” says Saurabh Bhatia, chief business officer and a co-founder of iVdopia, referring to the product’s name.
iVdopia says Future5 is an affordable alternative that allows advertisers to choose from a variety of ad format templates to create specialized, unique effects in HTML5 that can be customized and combined with the advertiser’s image, video or audio clip. The interactive ad units allow users to not just watch the video ad, but also visit the product’s website, watch additional clips, play games, share across Twitter and Facebook or download content, among other options. Future5 also is available for Android.
iVdopia is one of those companies that developed mobile ad solutions well before Apple touted its platform. With its launch in March 2009, iVdopia says it introduced the first mobile ads that let users stay within the application, a feature that Jobs touted in the unveiling of iAds, which debuts July 1.
As the war between Google/AdMob and Apple heats up, advertisers and developers are among those that are getting hit in the crossfire because they can’t afford the fees that Apple commands, Bhatia says. “There are a lot of advertisers who would like to use mobile as an upcoming medium,” he says. “Small and medium advertisers or agencies are at a disadvantage” when they don’t have budgets to support $1 million campaigns.
What it amounts to, Bhatia says, is something akin to the war of the colas where a duopoly eventually surfaced in the form of Coke and Pepsi. By keeping the fight between the top two brands, smaller players get lost in the noise.
“This [mobile ad] market needs not one or two but 10 companies for the next three to five years to compete,” he says. “The war they [Google and Apple] are fighting is not for today, it’s for five years down the line. This industry is going to be a multibillion dollar industry.”
