• by Tyler Loechner  @mp_tyler, March 3, 2015

Altitude Digital, a supply-side platform (SSP) for video, on Tuesday announced it has entered the mobile world with the launch of a new, mobile-focused video ad platform.

The company claims the mobile video platform will give marketers access to over 22 billion monthly mobile video ads, 20 billion of which are on the mobile Web and over 2 billion via in-app video units.

An Altitude Digital representative acknowledged that the company supported “limited mobile inventory” prior to the launch of its new platform, but asserted that its “full suite of advertisers” now have access. The company declined to disclose the names of specific buy-side partners, but claimed that “hundreds of direct advertisers, DSPs and trading desks” will now have access to mobile video ads programmatically through Altitude Digital.

“Previously we did some limited testing but had not experienced the success we are seeing today,” an Altitude Digital representative said. “Our core focus before was desktop, however, we now have a bundled offering for publishers bringing them both mobile and desktop advertisers.”

“Mobile devices are very clearly the future of online video advertising, but not all buyers are taking advantage of this highly engaging medium and fill rates are low through programmatic channels,” Frank Mattox, CRO of AppTrailers, said in an earlier statement.

It does seem, however, that the industry is taking notice.

A recent BrightRoll survey noted that most agencies (60%) expect mobile video to be the fastest-growing category in terms of digital media spend in 2015, followed by desktop video. Over three-fourths (79%) of agencies BrightRoll surveyed said they plan to devote a portion of video ad budgets to tablets in the year ahead, up from 68% and 52% the two previous years, respectively.

Perhaps serving as proof that agencies and media-buyers truly are increasing mobile video ad budgets, Beachfront Media, another video ad tech company, recently claimed that the number of mobile video ad requests it has seen on a direct-sold basis increased tenfold in the past year, from 100 million to 1 billion. The company also recently launched an RTB platform for mobile video that it claims has seen an exponential rise in available inventory -- from roughly 2 billion in November 2014 to 15 billion in January 2015.

Additionally, earlier in 2015, when rumors of a Verizon-AOL deal surfaced, Real-Time Dailynoted that if the deal were to materialize, programmatic mobile video would likely be at the epicenter.

“Mobile video is growing significantly, and both publishers and advertisers need solutions for delivering the best ad experience to consumers,” stated Jeremy Ostermiller, CEO of Altitude Digital.