Uppsala based Freespee is going after a bigger target market thank just click-to-call advertising. They write in their latest email that they want to to one big thing: make display advertising as efficiently, if not better than search.
When we first came across Freespee it took my brain way too long to figure out what calls had to do with banner ads, but there are a few angles Freespee is going after. For instance, if you’re searching for a plumber in your hometown you might google around on your phone until you see an ad for a plumber that looks trustworthy. Instead of then driving the user to a website to then copy a phone number, it make sense to lead everyone straight to the end-game. While local search is a huge target market, big ticket items like real estate or boat sales also need to lead someone on the other end of the phone.
They’ve now built their own bidding tool available to their users in their premium plan. It bids on single impressions in real time, and takes into account the fact that many visitors may prefer to call you, rather than fill out a contact form.
They’ve now plugged into MoPub, which was recently acquired by Twitter, for their first Real Time Bidding inventory. Additionally they’ve added MADS, the boutique mobile SSP and multi-screen ad server, for european reach.
We don’t cover many advertising networks on ArcticStartup, but it’s interesting to see where the innovations are these days, especially as more and more search moves to mobile. Freespree has been supported by private angels, Inventure, and Sunstone capital, and has over 35,000 advertisers using their platform.
