There are many things in life about which people say, “The waiting was the worst part.”
Of course, consumers today have very short attention spans, but waiting for mobile video to fully load and/or play is an irritation.
It’s a situation French startup Vidcoin wants to remedy. The mobile advertising technology firm is focused on video ads for smartphones. It hopes to make watching video ads less painful by developing an SDK to buffer videos in advance so that they instantly play.
“Mobile video continues to be a challenge for one simple reason: mobile connectivity can be spotty so the type of streaming videos [companies like Teads] sell is tough to deliver on mobile,” explained co-founder and COO Grant Gudgel. “So we built a technology and a native mobile video ad format that get around the connectivity issues by detecting the user’s connection speed and pre-loading targeted video ads directly inside of apps on the user’s mobile device.”
“Vidcoin works directly with app developers to integrate its ad format,” noted TechCrunch. “In particular, the company targets freemium developers, such as game developers. In the ideal case, if you choose to play a Vidcoin ad, you can get more coins or unlock levels.”
Gudgel admitted the company is currently busy integrating for gaming apps, but said the Vidcoin SDK is sparking interest from messaging and other freemium apps.
The future looks promising for Vidcoin. New capital from a recent funding round will allow the company to open an office in New York. And the startup is already working with a host of advertising behemoths, including AOL, Unruly Media, and others.
