Mobile ad start-up secures $2.7m funding; partnership with SPH

SINGAPORE - Adtile Technologies, creators of Motion Ads for smartphones and tablets, announced today a key partnership with Singapore Press Holdings (SPH), and an additional US$2 million (S$2.68 million) extension round of its Series A funding from private investors. Adtile also secured approval from the US Patent Office for its multiple panel touch user interface navigation.

Through the Adtile partnership, SPH will be able to offer its advertisers the ability to use Adtile's Motion Ads in its mobile ad campaigns. Adtile's Motion Ads deliver an average of 30 per cent engagement rates, 23-second participation time and a click-through rate average of 5 per cent - numbers typically unheard of in mobile advertising.

Over the last 12 months, Adtile has seen extraordinary growth and innovation. The company made tremendous strides in motion-sensing technology with the launch of Adtile VR in March 2015, an app that creates 3D environments on a mobile browser without extraneous headgear or accessories.

In November 2015, Adtile launched the Air Pencil, a technology that makes it possible to capture freeform motion in 3D with an iPhone. The US$2 million in additional funding will help the company continue to refine and expand its existing research and development work.

One of the biggest innovations for Adtile in 2015, and a major part of the Singapore Press Holdings partnership, is the adoption of Adtile's cloud-based creative platform, the Motion Store.

The Motion Store creates sensor enabled mobile experiences that are high quality and can be created quickly and deliver outstanding results. The Motion Store will automatically generate a responsive HTML5 build for iOS and Android that works on any mobile browser or screen size. Users can also request standard mobile web or MRAID (Mobile Rich Media Ads Interface Definitions) tags for any major ad server. It scales without the need of a large salesforce due to its simple on-boarding and fast learning curve.

"Motion-sensing technology is going to play a major part in the way we interact with our mobile devices and this funding extension will allow us to continue our research," said Nils Forsblom, founder of Adtile Technologies. "It is our innovation that has made us an ideal partner for SPH, as we continue to unlock the value of our proprietary motion technology for brands."

Tan Su-lin, Deputy Head of Digital Division at SPH said: "We are excited to offer our brand advertisers such a dynamic storytelling tool for their mobile ad campaigns. With Adtile's Motion Ads, our mobile readers will no longer be a trapped passive observer, but instead they will become part of the creative and device agnostic experience."

Innovation will continue to be a driving force for Adtile in 2016 as the company celebrates this significant patent approval for Multiple Panel Touch User Interface Navigation. For years, mobile app designers have been limited to the typical and standard five button interface navigation panel at the bottom of apps such as Instagram and Facebook.

Adtile's patent for multiple panel touch user interface navigation changes the standard five button to a swipe motion, allowing for more than five buttons to be available to users. This will allow app designers more flexibility in creating mobile apps, giving them more space and allowing for more information to be available to users.