Fitness & Health apps surge, FitAd launches vertical mobile ad platform
It looks like one of the biggest trends in the next couple of years may be a huge growth in the usage of mobile devices and wearables for fitness & health.
Hoping to capitalize on that growth, New York startup FitAd has launched a mobile ad platform that promises to deliver a “curated audience” to brands, and maximized ad revenues to specialty publishers.
FitAd is a “mobility ad network” that is targeted at publishers and brands interested in the fitness and health industry.
Recent research by Flurry has shown that consumer usage of fitness and health apps has been growing much faster than the general mobile app market. In the first 6 months of 2014 alone, usage of fitness and health apps grew 62% compared to 33% for the overall mobile app market.
Based on such enormous usage growth, FitAd believes there is a good opportunity to provide a vertically-targeted, mobile ad platform.
To be successful, any ad platform must offer advantages to both publishers as well as to the brands that advertise.
For Publishers:
For publishers, FitAd offers both an SDK for mobile apps as well as ad tags for mobile sites, and they state they support advertising on tablets, mobiles, and even wearable devices. (note: there was not much information available about FitAd advertising on wearables)
FitAd utilizes a direct sales team, as well as programmatic tools to maximize ad fill and revenue. A full suite of analytic tools is also offered.
For Brands:
For brands, FitAd says they give access to an audience of almost 50 million targeted users, who generate about 1 billion impressions per month. And because they only work with Fitness & Health publishers, the advertiser can be sure it is a highly targeted audience.
Even within this audience there is further targeting available, by parameters such as location, operator, device, demographics, frequency, as well as general sub-categories of Fitness & Health as shown below.
FitAd also says they can support all industry standard ad units, native advertising, rich media, as well as video.
According to FitAd founder Mort Greenberg, FitAd is creating the ad market for mobile’s next tidal wave – health, fitness, and wearable tech.
Greenberg further explains: “FitAd capitalizes on what we call ‘Moments.’ Moments mark the start, completion or achievement of an important milestone within a fitness and health app or website. At these Moments, it is appropriate to match advertising to the Moment so that brands can acknowledge, recognize, reward or challenge users. Examples of Moments include: beginning a run, descending a mountain, driving for your longest golf shot, or beating your best 5k time.”
FitAd is based on technology that is built and run by AdMarvel & Opera Mediaworks, two companies that have been around for awhile.
For more on FitAd, check out their website at FitAd.com.
For more on the boom in Fitness and health apps, check out this Flurry study.
