Burstly lets developers manage their ads, even on the iPad (video)

As big players like Google and Apple move more seriously into mobile advertising, a startup previously called AppAds is hoping to make room for itself among the giants. It’s relaunching today as Burstly, and in addition to releasing tools for managing mobile ads, it’s taking advantage of the buzz around Saturday’s iPad launch.

Burstly offers a marketplace where developers can buy or sell advertising (and where the company takes a 10 percent cut), but co-founder and chief executive Evan Rifkin said he isn’t competing with the mobile ad networks. Instead, Burstly should help developers make the most money they can by picking-and-choosing from different advertising types.

If you’re a developer, Burstly helps you find the right mix between ads from networks like AdMob (which is being acquired by Google); ads hawking your own products, which might be paid services within the app or other apps you’ve created; and ads sold in Burstly’s marketplace. The company lets you see how much money you’re making from each ad type, so you can adjust as necessary.

“These app developers, they can make more money,” Rifkin said. “They just have to take control of their inventory.”

You can read more about Burstly’s advice on choosing the right ads in this blog post. The Santa Monica, Calif.-based company is also allowing developers to run video ads of any size on Apple’s new tablet device, the iPad. That probably won’t work with ads from mobile networks. But if you’re part of the early wave of iPad developers, you could include big, high-quality video ads for your own products within your app — Rifkin said that after a certain point, developers often make more money running their own house ads than ads from a network. Check out the sample in the video below. (In the real ads, when you click on the purchase button, you’ll be taken to the iPad App Store, not the Apple website, Rifkin said.)

Burstly also announced today it has raised $1.8 million in first round funding from GRP Partners and Rincon Venture Partners.

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=10569015&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=00ADEF&fullscreen=1

Burstly iPad SDK Interstitial Demo from Burstly on Vimeo.