Facebook is banking a lot on the future of HTML5 and the idea of people going web-first instead of native-apps for their mobile content fixes, and today mobile gaming company Cellufun taking one step in its strategy to position itself as a key player in that space, too: it’s announcing that it is rebranding itself as Tylted.

Tylted — a name chosen from 30,000 entries in a competition run by Cellufun (the unnamed winner got $10,000) — says that strategy also includes the launch of a new ad platform, the expansion of its virtual good business, and — as you might expect from a social gaming company doing a lot of work in HTML — plans to do a whole lot more on Facebook’s mobile platform this calendar year.

The company today also launched a new game to kick off that virtual goods/advertising push: CuBug, it says, is a “Tetris-style” tile matching game where captured bugs “hatch into virtual features like wall papers that can be gifted to other players in rainbow colors.” As for advertising, Tylted gives brands the option of integrating in different parts of the game from chat rooms, to score comparisons, customized virtual goods and so on.

Founded back in 2005 way before our smartphone world was changed by the iPhone, Tylted today attracts some 10 million monthly unique users, with half a billion monthly page views covering 33 different casual and social games, with the most popular of these currently Pocket Beanie Babies, Mobile Wars and Vampires Rising.

The big task ahead is to make sure that it changes with the times: can it remain attractive to a base of consumers that are wowed by brands like Angry Birds and Draw Something? This, says CEO Lon Otremba, was part of the logic for rebranding: “When we wanted to take the company to the next level, and we thought people might think ‘Cellufun’ looked backward.”

Tylted’s revenues are currently split 50 from advertising and 50 percent from virtual goods — both areas that the company want to grow in future. And for what it’s worth, Otremba has a background that seems to lend itself well to the tasks ahead for Tylted: among his past roles, he was EVP for AOL’s interactive marketing group, where he led the strategy and operations for AOL’s advertising and e-commerce business. And he also has background in helping legacy companies turn themselves around: another past role was as CEO of Muzak, where he took the company best known for cheesy instrumental versions of well-known songs, and helped it pivot into one of the world’s largest providers of commercial music services and custom music programming.

In virtual goods, Otremba says these need to be appealing to a “wider base of users.” That speaks to a problem other gaming companies have also found, with Kongregate noting last month that in its high-ARPU games, typically two percent of users account for 40 percent of all in-game revenue, and 90 percent of revenues come from users who spend more than $100 in games.

For Tylted, that will mean focusing on virtual goods that it has seen already gain traction with more than just hardcore gamers: these areas include anonymous personal avatars, in-game chat, and the ability to share virtual currency with other users. Otremba also says the company is looking to sell more virtual items, the kinds of things a “more casual user might buy without taking away from the interest in virtual currency for more avid users.”

On Facebook, Otremba admits that for now the company has not “done much yet” but that it is “substantially increasing our involvement with Facebook” this calendar year. “Facebook’s overall strategy of embracing the mobile web is absolutely in line with us,” he says. That move may be about the launch of new games and “new ideas that could be more appropriate” to the social network, he says. Advertising, he says, is an “explosive” area that has been relatively untouched so far by his company.

It is in the process of building up a new ad sales force, including hiring some of his ex-colleagues from AOL. He says that Tylted’s unique selling point for Madison Avenue is that it has the scale that “would matter” to them. “To establish a direct relationship with those companies is a huge opportunity,” he says. While companies like Zynga and Rovio already offer advertising alongside their games,  what is perhaps notable here is that Tylted may be willing to go much further than bigger players in bending its own branding in favor of that of advertisers.

One of those areas where you can see advertisers potentially calling the shots more is in the area of apps. That’s an area that so far Tylted has steered away from — something Otremba notes as an advantage: “We have been somewhat immune from the discovery problem that has presented itself to app developers,” he says. “Our site is one of the busiest on the mobile web and is a destination in its own right.”

But he also says: “I don’t rule anything out on apps. I’m happy to say that we are looking. We are very opportunistic, and certain partners have asked us to do something different from what we’ve traditionally done.”

Tylted has had just under $8 million of backing to date and was profitable last year, but to accelerate growth the company has gone back into the red. “We could be immensely profitable right now if we chose not to invest in the future,” says Otremba. That may take the company into looking for more funding towards the end of this year.

The games are available via wap.aol.com and are provided on a free, ad supported basis, and no downloads are necessary. Advertising inventory will be sold by AOL’s Platform-A’s Third Screen media.

AOL will offer games including Cellufun’s Call of the Pharoah, a game that relies on a social networking “pyramid scheme” to finish it.

New York based Cellufun was founded in 2005 by two former Wall Street security experts Arthur Goikhman and Steven Dacek and has attracted 5 million unique visitors to their games in the past year and 500,000 registered users.

The idea isn’t completely new; boxing games featuring presidential candidates first surfaced in 2004, but the new game claims to take the genre to the next level by weighing the chance of success of each contender based on polling numbers, and also through the results of people playing the game. For example Hillary Clinton leading in the polls over Barack Obama, and knocking out other presidential candidates in the game would give Clinton a higher success rate in the game itself. It’s also claimed to be the first game of this type for mobile phones.

Users can vote on other characters for inclusion in later releases such as “dark-horse candidates” (Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich aren’t included in the game currently), cable television pundits or currently elected White House officials.

New York based Cellufun was founded in 2005 by two former Wall Street security experts Arthur Goikhman and Steven Dacek and offers a variety of ad supported free mobile games in a fast growing market segment. See our previous coverage here.

“The Space Wars experience is far-reaching and long-lasting because it offers interactive features not normally seen in multiplayer battles,” says Cellufun CEO Arthur Goikhman. “We’ve seen our beta testers take unprecedented and creative approaches to the game, such as launching coordinated attacks in waves.”

The goal is to build an empire, while keeping your populace happy. Space Wars lets players forge alliances using “subspace” chat with other gamers, schedule future activities when not playing in real time.

The game is one of the first ad-supported MMMG, and is compatible with virtually all handsets. Let the universal domination begin.

Cellufun WAP

MobilePet myPhone allows users to care for, play with and feed a virtual pet. Users must keep the virtual pet from getting sick, from feeling neglected and must “avoid visits to the virtual computer store for repair”. MobilePet myPhone users are able to download music from Cellufun’s catalog of artists to entertain their pet. Additionally, users can earn points when their friends visit their pet on their own phones, as well as by successfully caring for their pet; scores are compared with other members in the same gaming community for a place on a scoreboard.

The game is WAP based and ad-supported, delivering a free service that requires no download.

The success of Tamagotchi’s and Nintendo’s Nintendogs would indicate that virtual pet games are wildly popular. Bringing the craze to the iPhone would seem like a logical step.