3D mobile advertising from InMobi & Cooliris

We’ve written about InMobi many times here on GoMo News; it’s a global ad network based around cutting edge serving technology and optimization. Today it has announced a deal with a company called Cooliris – which would probably describe itself as an experiential designer, or something. What it does (mostly) is make user-interfaces look really good on your desktop and mobile by judicious application of 3D.

What’s the story?

Cooliris has designed a couple of very cool interfaces for media browsing, live sharing of pictures, wikipedia searches and more. It’s all about presenting information in the most interesting, attractive way – but also making it practical and useable.

InMobi has applied this to the mobile advertising industry. Together, the companies have developed a 3D ad unit for mobile marketers. It allows them to do several things:

1) Make ads look more interesting. Even if you don’t have a big, interactive rich media ad unit, you can make it more attention grabbing by having live 3D effects in there – rather than just a flat looking banner.
2) True 3D objects. For Bang & Olufsen, this allows them to create mobile ads that feature some of their products – and the consumer can spin and rotate the object within the ad unit, getting a good look at it from all angles.

What we think?

This is a very cool little emplacement that could create some really attractive mobile ads – especially if it’s as processor-light as the two companies claim it is. The press release keeps using the word “immersive”, like the simple presence of some 3D effects will draw the consumer into a magical world of marketing where all things can be sold. You have to scan out words like that, but I don’t doubt that being able to zoom and pan on real 3D objects will work great on a big screen like an iPad – maybe not so much on little smartphone screens.