Thumbplay and mobileStorm win the AlwaysOn OnMedia competition

Congratulations to both Thumbplay and mobileStorm. Both companies won the AlwaysOn/Vator OnMedia "game-changers" competition. Recall that the competition sought the best new companies changing the marketing and advertising landscape. Interestingly enough, both Thumbplay and mobileStorm are not only changing the advertising landscape, but they're both in the mobile industry, suggesting that AlwaysOn judges and the Vator community believe the growth in marketing and advertising is going to come from the mobile platform.

As the winner of the AO competition, as chosen by the AO judges, Thumbplay (whose video pitch is posted here) won the opportunity to present at the AlwaysOn OnMedia competition in NYC this week.  Even though I didn't have a chance to meet with Are Traashdahl, Thumbplay's CEO and founder, he did get back to me via email. Here are a couple questions he answered via email.

Vator: How does Thumbplay change the advertising/marketing game for mobile?
Are: "Thumbplay is marketing mobile entertainment content directly to consumers and giving them access to a much broader and deeper catalog of content than what others in the industry are offering. But there's a whole lot more to what we're doing. We're also bringing the mobile content to the places where consumers are interested in discovering it, such as social networks, through our partnerships with iLike and Qloud, and large online portals, such as AOL and MSN. We are buying mobile advertising and enabling others to monetize the traffic to their mobile Web sites, as well as selling advertising on the phone and allowing our advertisers to better target their mobile ad campaigns."

Vator: What are your thoughts about the Vator/OnMedia competition?

MobilStorm was the clear favorite, as voted by the Vator community, with 107 votes, and a five-star rating out of 24 people who rated the company. Jared Reitzin had this to say about mobilStorm's impact on the marketing landscape: “In the U.S., mobile marketing has been around for 10 years, but for the small-to medium-sized businesses it’s basically a new concept. Mobile marketing has been an expensive proposition for the SMB, but mobileStorm has changed that. We provide a turn-key mobile marketing platform available to anyone who has a computer and ten minutes to spare. The same platform includes full email, voice, rss, video and fax marketing capabilities. In this web 2.0 world there are more ways to reach and sell to consumers than ever before, the Vator community realizes this and we thank them for their votes in pushing us to number one.”

Congratulations to both Thumplay and mobileStorm!

Note: If you're interested in other competitions, check out our competitions page.