Nokia launches ad network, several major publishers already on board

Nokia has announced the formation of the Nokia Media Network, which bundles mobile ads from more than 70 publishers. Initial publishers include AccuWeather, Discovery, Hearst, Reuters and Sprint.

There are plenty of start-ups in the field, such as AdMob (our coverage), and they’ll likely be battling the mobile manufacturing giant for ad dollars.

Nokia bought the mobile ad platform Enpocket last fall (our coverage) and now says it’s using Enpocket’s analytics technology to optimize campaigns, improve conversions and measure performance across the network.

The announcement took place at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. We’ve posted an OpEd piece by Richard Wong, a venture capitalist with Accel Partners, covering the first day of the conference. As Wong notes, mobile advertising is starting to take off — for example, AdMob reported a record 2.4 billion impressions in January — and plenty of big players have gotten involved.

Nokia is touting its network’s “wide reach of the most desirable mobile audiences” and says that in some areas, it can achieve a click-through rate of 10 percent. That’s an impressive number, although CenterNetworks wonders how many of those clicks are accidents.

The company also says it has expanded its account management and sales teams in Beijing, Boston, Chicago, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt, Helsinki, London, Los Angeles, Madrid, Milan, Minneappolis, Mumbai, Munich, New York, Paris, Singapore and Shanghai.