iVdopia brings video ads to Android

Mobile advertising network iVdopia joined the Android ad fray today, releasing an Android software development kit (SDK) to enable developers on Google’s (NASDAQ:GOOG) operating system to incorporate video ads into their applications.

Owned by premium ad-technology company Vdopia, the leading Indian company got its start in the US on the iPhone last March, running campaigns for Coke Zero, Warner Brothers, Miller Lite and others. The start-up has evolved its ad platform to include social features, sponsorships through persistent logo placements and instant-play videos that start when an app is fired up. On the iPhone, Vdopia’s video ads last five to 10 seconds with the option to interact further on the touchscreen. With Android, iVdopia will also open it up to the Android community to propose new video ad formats to incorporate.

Srikanth Kakani, co-founder of iVdopia, said the company’s goal is to target any smartphone with an OS “that matters,” which he defines as one that is open, used and endorsed by a lot of developers and on smartphones that are technically usable. This is the first year that other mobile phones are getting close to the iPhone’s capabilities and this definition, he said.

“Advertisers have a lot of say in what we are going to do,” Kakani said. “They are paying for this. They really feel now that there is unified value for iPhone and Android, but the more important part is they are the ones that brought it up for us to think about. We were asked about Android as it was the first operating system moving in that direction. Before Android, there wasn’t much traction.”

Kakani said that Android is also attracting a different, younger audience than the iPhone, a demographic that brands are interested in reaching. Going forward, iVdopi believes that social advertising is going to be popular with this demographic as well and will become a more significant part of the whole advertising arena, he said. To address this, iVdopia also recently introduced Talk2Me, a social video ad that lets users interact, respond to and share ads via Twitter or Facebook.

iVdopia had 500% year-on-year growth in revenue last year, the company said, and its pre-app video ads on the iPhone generated as much as 300% higher click-through rates than the average for online video.

iVdopia’s Android news comes amongst a handful of mobile ad announcements at this week’s Mobile World Congress show, as well as shared fear that Google’s mobile ad powers are getting too great. Mobile operator Orange announced it would expand its interactive SMS and MMS mobile ad campaign, Orange Shots, to customers across Europe who opt in to the service. Spain will be the first country to get the capability beginning this month. Music app Shazam also introduced its SARA program that enables advertisers to create campaigns that encourage mobile phone users to engage with a promotion through the audio-recognition app.

Also on the Android front, Opera Software subsidiary AdMarvel introduced a toolkit for developers to deliver rich media ads through their mobile apps. Android has seen its ad click-through rates surpass the iPhone in January, according to Smaato, which introduced both an iPhone and Android SDK for its ad network at MWC. AdMob also recently reported that ad requests from Android doubled in just two months, making it the mobile ad platform to contend with.