Adtile is using phone physics to reimagine mobile ads

Nils Forsblom and his team at Adtile Technologies are extracting the best components of airplane and submarine physics to totally reinvent the mobile ad experience.

“We all know that mobile advertising needs to be dramatically different from current industry standards. Static in-stream ads in vertically scrolling feeds are not the real answer,” the plucky Finland native told VentureBeat (with an endearing penchant for profanity).

Adtile’s founder and chief executive painted an exhaustive and fascinating vision for using micro sensors to help make mobile ads respond to, and even mimic, physical human behavior.

The HTML 5 ads the company creates use the smart­phone’s GPS, gyro­scope, motion coprocessor, accelero­meter, and compass to sense body motion.

“When you move, the ad moves too,” Forsblom says.

The mobile ads are fully interactive, somewhat like a video game. They dip, bend, and basically conform to the movements of your body while you’re walking or running.

For example, an Adtile ad might present you with the statement, “Walk 20 feet this way and earn a free coffee!” After the phone detects that you have moved the requisite distance, it delivers a coupon.

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With rich mobile ads that are actually fun to look at and interact with, a whole new set of mobile ad possibilities might open up for marketers.

“We want to set a new bar for mobile ad user experience and deliver something unique, where there’s not always a click required. That’s Adtile’s core mission. That’s why we exist,” Forsblom added.

To that end, Forsblon has 17 different patents either minted or pending for his mobile ad software platform.

Adtile’s tech is referred to as an HTML5 motion application creator system.

For now, Adtile’s team is small — just nine people including Forsblom. And, for now, that’s the way he wants it.

Adtile has raised $8 million in venture funding over the last year. Forsblom says his company has an active customer base, but non-disclosure agreements prevent him from naming names.

Word on the street is they’re big and disruptive, however. We note that one of the example ads on the Adtile website says Nike at the bottom.

The company announced earlier this month that it had raised $4.5 million in new funding from undisclosed investors. It also said it will launch a Member Center this fall — an “app store” for ad developers and designers.

Forsblom’s mobile ad software is beyond proprietary. His team spent more than two years honing it before unveiling it to his stealth clients.

Incredibly, Forsblom said it was very easy to build.

Easy to build? Yes, he says, and also very exciting. Everything else, he says, “is really fucking boring.”