HasOffers makes big investment in MobileAds

The brash mobile-analytic firm HasOffers is at it again.

The Seattle-based company has wasted no time in expanding its reach since former ad partner Facebook showed them the door in February for violating data storage policies.

On Tuesday, HasOffers chief executive Peter Hamilton announced they were making a sizeable cash investment in MobileAds, a HTML5 mobile enterprise provider that enables companies to produce media-rich advertisements for the mobile space. MobileAds is based in Singapore and Japan.

“MobileAds will use the funds to expand their offering to the U.S. market and continue to scale the product to support growth, among other initiatives,” MobileAds chief executive Alvin Koay said.

Hamilton put the investment this way.

“They’re an actual ad creator. It’s hard to find a company that can build the technology to do it. The more people play with ads, the better the ads will get,” Hamilton said.

Hamilton declined to say how much they invested in MobileAds.

“Its at the seed level but more than the average angel,” he said.

The deal is somewhat of a stunner, since mobile-analytic firms are either being bought outright by the likes of Facebook and Google or merging with others. HasOffers investing in a smaller, complementary player is newsworthy.

In fact, the investment makes sense. MobileAds is removing the confusing aura of ad creation by empowering single users or mass market players with the capability to create their own advertisements, a kind of DIY approach that makes adverts available to those with paltry budgets or otherwise.

HasOffers is somewhat unconventional. When Facebook axed them and another analytic outfit, Hamilton showed up at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona shortly after where he released a self-produced “white paper” that attempted to illustrate that mobile players don’t need Facebook to make money.

That strategy worked. It garnered press, and Hamilton earned a reputation as someone not lacking verve by standing up to companies much bigger than his 160-member outfit that did $19 million in revenue last year.

At the time, Facebook said this about the HasOffers termination:

“After working with a third-party auditor to review the practices of all our mobile measurement partners, we discovered that some weren’t adhering to the terms they agreed to. As a result, we’ve removed a couple of our partners from the program. These partners can no longer work with marketers on Facebook. We have an audit system in place for this very reason. We take our contracts seriously, and will continue to act swiftly anytime we find out they are being violated.”

Hamilton scoffed at the assertion.

Then in May, Hamilton announced HasOffers was opening an office in Seoul, South Korea’s capital city and less than 30 miles from the tense DMZ. Being within artillery range is something that never occurred to the ambitious Hamilton. HasOffers has since lined up deals with many of South Koreas largest retailers.

Hamilton said the money for MobileAds is well spent.

“This will allow MobileAds to help kick things off to the next level.”