AUSTIN — The $4 billion and growing mobile advertising market has been driven by app downloads and performance-based ads, but is likely to expand in 2013 to include more branded ad dollars, says Bryan Jones, CEO and Co-founder of Collider Media, a unit of advertising technology firm Videology, in an expansive discussion of mobile advertising. We interviewed him at a private forum about digital media hosted in Austin during SXSW.

Collider was founded three years ago with a focus on mobile advertising, and targeting in particular. “The question is how do you do [mobile advertising] effectively so it results in a lift in sales?” Jones asks. “We looked at how to bring that type of audience targeting [that exists in other media] into mobile so mobile is useful and scales.” With targeting technology in mobile, a marketer can fine-tune the potential reach. For example, a marketer might want to connect with men who are between 40 and 50, like sports, have kids and earn a certain income. “Then you can target them across the United States. Our goal is to make that type of audience targeting useful and commonplace and help publishers understand the value their audiences bring to them,” Jones explains.

Despite the $4 billion in ad spend, the money is still largely coming from app downloads, cost-per-installs, and other performance-based ads that drive users to download an app, for instance, he says. “Where things will accelerate is reaching the right audience for brand consumption. People are using their mobile devices to consume media whether TV or other types of content and as that shift continues to happen, the opportunity for brand advertisers to engage with their consumers increases.”

For more insight into mobile standards as well as the opportunities in location-based mobile advertising, check out this interview.

Daisy Whitney

Disclosure:  Videology and its Collider Media unit sponsored Beet.TV’s coverage of SXSW.