Press Release: RIM launches BlackBerry Advertising Service

RIM today launched their BlackBerry Advertising Service. The service for the BlackBerry platform allows developers to easily integrate advertising into new or existing applications. The advertising can be integrated into applications with just three lines of code, making it super easy to get things rolling. The ads will be relevant to the application as well as be able to tie into native BlackBerry applications like email, maps, calendar and more.

Press Release

RIM Launches BlackBerry Advertising Service

New service gives developers the ability to add advertisements from a large number of advertising networks in their applications, with only a few lines of code

San Francisco, CA - BlackBerry DEVCON 2010- September 27, 2010 - Research In Motion (RIM) (NASDAQ: RIMM; TSX: RIM) today launched its advertising service for the BlackBerry® Application Platform. The BlackBerry Advertising Service helps developers integrate advertising in their BlackBerry® smartphone applications quickly and easily, while also allowing advertisers, agencies and brands to work with a broad selection of advertising networks.

"The BlackBerry Application Platform is providing a truly powerful foundation for our developer community. The BlackBerry Advertising Service offers developers a quick and easy way to integrate advertising in their applications. The service reduces the commercial and technical complexity of enabling ads within an application and offers developers a new avenue of monetization," said Alan Brenner, Senior Vice President, BlackBerry Platform at Research In Motion.

"We are thrilled to see the market continue to evolve providing advertisers, agencies and brands with multiple options for meeting their mobile advertising platform needs," said Michael Becker, managing director of the Mobile Marketing Association for North America. "The MMA congratulates RIM on the BlackBerry Advertising Service and its efforts to ease marketer's abilities to integrate mobile into their advertising strategies."

With just a few lines of code, developers can include advertising in applications that are relevant to their users and tie into core BlackBerry smartphone features. RIM is enabling new monetization opportunities for BlackBerry developers by simplifying the integration of advertising both on the development side and on the commercial side. Through a single relationship with RIM, a developer has access to RIM's many advertising network partners and can select which networks will get their inventory. Agencies and advertisers will be able to work with the advertising networks they know, leveraging existing relationships, while maintaining control of their creative processes. Under the program, developers will receive an industry standard 60 percent of the advertising revenue. 

The BlackBerry Advertising Service includes three key components: a simple-to-integrate SDK, a mediation platform and a growing slate of advertising networks.

The SDK allows developers to support both standardized MMA advertisements and HTML-5 Rich Media, as well as ads that have one-click in-application access to core BlackBerry applications, such as Contacts, Calendar, the Media Player and BlackBerry App World^TM.

The mediation platform is a single console for developers to manage their ad allocations and access analytics, tracking and reporting features, which provide immediate feedback on ad metrics including fill rates, ad performance and earnings. The mediation platform and SDK is also open to many of the leading independent measurement and analytics solutions for both developers and advertisers.

At launch, the BlackBerry Advertising Service will offer developers and advertisers the opportunity to work with many advertising networks including Amobee, Jumptap, Lat49, Millennial Media and Mojiva. Advertising networks such as Buzzcity, NavTeq, Placecast, Sympatico, Transpera, Where and xAD, as well as rich media advertising platform Medialets, are expected to join the service in the coming months.

"This new Advertising Service not only brings new channels of revenue to our developer community, but also provides them with a single relationship through RIM to simplify the commercial and technical complexity of mobile advertising," Brenner said. "We also feel that it is important that agencies and brands have full control of the creative process and have worked to provide features in the SDK that will allow them to bring dynamic and relevant ads to BlackBerry smartphone users."

Several BlackBerry® Alliance members have already tested the BlackBerry Advertising Service as part of an early access program and are looking forward to the opportunities it brings.

"The BlackBerry Advertising Service is great for developers looking to monetize their applications with little effort. The ease of use, rich content and device integration makes the new ad SDK a perfect fit for many applications on the market today," said Margaret Glover- Campbell, Vice President, Marketing & Public Relations, Multiplied Media.

"The BlackBerry Advertising Service empowers us to offer free ad-enabled LiveScreens, increasing the reach of our personalization products for the brands we work with," said Michael Kosic, Partner at Octave Ventures. "Our customers want free, our brands want reach, we need returns -- all are coming together with this new service and SDK."

"Implementing the BlackBerry Advertising Service in our apps is going to allow our customers to unlock the marketing potential for their advertisers in reaching the prized BlackBerry audience," said Marlon Rodrigues, Director of Business Development at Polar Mobile. "This will put the ad supported model back into play in a big way as advertisers see what experiences are possible on BlackBerry smartphones."

The new BlackBerry Advertising Service SDK is available now at
www.blackberry.com/developers/advertisingservice

For more information about developing for the BlackBerry platform visit
www.blackberry.com/devzone or follow @blackberrydev on Twitter. .