Last fall, BrightRoll launched its mobile video advertising solution. Since then, we’ve seen good success running 15- and 30-second video campaigns within Smartphone applications, although the mobile infrastructure to deliver ads at scale has yet to be fully developed. I joined BrightRoll earlier this year to help the company make an even more concerted push into the space by capitalizing on our initial traction and building out the architecture needed to support mobile video at scale. As you’ll see from some of the figures below, mobile video is poised for explosive growth, and I’d love to take a step back and talk about what this change means for both publishers and advertisers.

First, let’s review some key stats. The Smartphone market (which includes the iPhone, Android, RIM, Nokia and Microsoft) is exploding, and for the first time, in 2011, smartphone sales will outpace feature phone sales. Today, smartphones comprise 26 percent of the market, but that percentage is increasing rapidly. At the same time, the usage of applications by iPhone and Android users has exploded. There have been 10 billion apps downloaded on the iPhone platform since July of 2008, and the app business is expected to generate $58 billion by 2014, according to Gartner. Partially as a result of this new app ecosystem, the mobile advertising market is expected to grow from $800 million in 2010 to $5 billion by 2015.

So what are the implications for publishers? Most importantly, publishers will be able to generate significant new revenue streams and achieve better CPMs than they are getting with banner ads today. BrightRoll offers publishers its client SDK, allowing them to easily monetize mobile applications with video ads. We plan to work with individual publishers to fit the ad to the user experience.   This includes publishers who use video ads as an incentive for virtual goods:  typically a publisher will present the user with an opportunity to watch an ad in order to receive virtual currency.  And because we work with advertisers who have already budgeted for these types of campaigns, this is a huge boon for the publishers in our network.

And what about advertisers? Anyone who has worked with BrightRoll in the past knows our track record of proven success in the online video advertising space, and we plan to leverage that expertise and experience in mobile video. Today, we see two important things missing in the mobile space: scalability and technical prowess. We feel that we can offer these along with the best reach of any company in the space.

The bottom line? We’re committed to building the mobile video business and continuing to be a great partner for the publishers and advertisers we work with.