With the popularity of iPhone apps and now iPad apps, mobile advertising has become a very exciting growth market. To monetize that mobile traffic, apps are today relying on mobile ad networks such as Google’s adMob, mobclix and soon Apple’s iAds.

While eCPMs on the iPhone have been better than traditional online eCPMs, they never get near direct-sales ad rates (card-rates)Â since app owners are running their ads through ad networks. Â That is where Shiny Ads’ self-service advertising platform can help.

While most of our publishers operate large online web sites, our platform can also handle mobile advertising in apps and to showcase how you can accomplish this, I’ll give you an example of one of our publishers who also has an iphone app;

Dogbook released an iPhone app that has similar functionality to their famous Facebook app. Â They chose to monetize it with a 320×48 ad unit at the bottom of their application. Â This ad unit is being served by the same OpenX ad server that serves their online ads. Â This has the benefit of allowing Dogbook to change their ads in real-time and not have to release app updates whenever they change ad networks or paid campaigns. Â They are planning on an iPad version too and the only change that they will need to do, is to create a new ad unit with a size of 640×50.

Since this ad unit is being served up by a traditional ad server, they created a new ad zone in Shiny Ads that allows smaller advertisers to purchase the iPhone ad unit. Â These ad campaigns get served up instead of the ad network ads and monetize at a much higher revenue level. Â When a user clicks on the ad, a new Safari full-page window opens up with the destination URL.

If you don’t run your own ad server, you can still use Shiny Ads’ ad serving code in place of your traditional ad network code. Â Just point your mobile ad unit to our ad serving code and place your ad network’s ad serving code as the default ad in our publisher interface. Â That will ensure that when you receive an advertising order, it will be displayed instead of the ad network’s remnant banners.

Shiny ads is pleased to announce that Newschoolers.com, part of GrindNetworks.com, has starting selling online advertising directly to smaller advertisers using the Shiny Ads self-service advertising platform.

“Newschoolers.com has long been a place that is the breeding ground of whats next in the sport of skiing. Many tiny brands built themselves into legitimate companies through advertising on Newschoolers.com. However, as things grew and clients got bigger and bigger, it was hard to service the smaller companies who really just needed to get their first break.” said Doug Bishop, Newschoolers.com’s General Manager, “Shiny Ads allowed the Newschoolers team to service clients all the way down to the tiniest hat brand, and ensure that they too could have the opportunity to grow into staples of the ski industry”

Shiny Ads automates the entire ad purchase process for smaller advertisers, including directly interfacing with Newschoolers.com’s ad server DoubleClick DART DFP. Smaller advertisers can purchase online display advertising on Newschoolers at http://newschoolers.com/web/content/pagetemplate/name/advertise/