Jumptap looks to cash in on ad battle between Google, Apple

In the war between clashing giants Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) and Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), Jumptap smells an opportunity to lure developers to its mobile advertising network. Jumptap is offering a promotion that will allow developers to cash in on 100% of ad revenues for the rest of the year if they sidestep the fight between Apple and Google over platform control and opt for Jumptap’s network.

When Apple launched its in-app iAd network, it imposed restrictions on rival hardware and operating system vendors from running their own ad networks on the iPhone platform, effectively cutting Google out of its primary business on one of the industry’s most successful smartphone platforms. Regardless of whether Google and Apple resolve their differences, there is now a lot of uncertainty among developers who want to take advantage of the revenue opportunities in mobile apps, said Paran Johar, chief marketing officer for Jumptap. But as an independent ad network, Johar said, Jumptap doesn’t fall under any of Apple’s restrictions, allowing it to continue to serve up display and text advertising from its media partners across any platform, including the iPhone.

And just in case developers need a little additional incentive, Jumptap today launched its Passport to Freedom program. Anyone who downloads the software development kit and begins embedding Jumptap apps will keep 100% of ad revenues up to $4 million or until the end of the year. Afterward, the standard split of 60% to the developer and 40% to the iAd will go into effect, Johar said. Jumptap will also allow developers to reinvest those earnings back into the network in the form of their own ads and will get credit for double the ad budget. Basically if a developer earns $100,000 from ad impressions, it can use it to push $200,000 worth of its own advertising across the network.

Jumptap isn’t exactly hurting for customers. It has thousands of advertisers on its network, including some of the biggest media names, and its customers produce 8 billion impressions a month from 63 million unique visitors. But Johar said there is a huge new opportunity in application-based advertising that Jumptap wants to establish itself in. Still, Johar isn’t discounting its traditional revenue of browser-based advertising, which will become much more sophisticated with the introduction of HTML 5.

“To say applications are just the hot thing of the moment is a bit simplistic,” Johar said. “There is a big opportunity to there, but I view applications as providing a stopgap as connection speeds and the browser experience over the smartphone gets better.”