Adtile raises $2M to rethink mobile ads

Mobile ad startup Adtile is announcing that it has raised an additional $2 million in funding.

That’s an extension of the $4.5 million Series A that Adtile raised back in 2014, and it comes from undisclosed investors.

The San Diego-based startup focuses on a format it calls Motion Ads, allowing marketers to take advantage of smartphone capabilities like the GPS and accelerometer to create ads that you can shake, turn or interact with in other ways. Adtile says its Motion Ads have an average engagement rate of 30 percent, a participation time of 23 seconds and an average clickthrough rate of 5 percent.

The company has continued to expand its technology in the past year with support for virtual reality and something called the Air Pencil, a format where the consumer treats their phone as a device for drawing in the air.

In addition, Adtile is announcing that it has been given approval by the US Patent Office for its patent on “multiple panel touch user interface navigation,” and that it’s partnering with Singapore Press Holdings to offer Motion Ads as part of the Asian media company’s mobile campaigns.

“With Adtile’s Motion Ads, our mobile readers will no longer be a trapped passive observer, but instead become part of the creative and device agnostic experience,” said Tan Su-lin, deputy head of SPH’s digital division, in the funding release.