PointRoll, a provider of rich-media advertising on the Apple iPhone, has expanded its list of distribution partners to include publishers USA Today and ESPN, as well as ad networks Millennial Media and AOL's Platform-A.

The new partners are all featuring PointRoll's interactive rich-media ads, creating more than half a billion impressions each month on the iPhone. PointRoll launched the first rich-media campaigns for the iPhone on USA Today last year, featuring video ads for the Ford Flex, the Focus Features film "Burn After Reading," oil giant BP and the Golf Channel.

"PointRoll specializes in rich media interactive display advertising technology, with data collection, send-to-a-friend and video capabilities, and we provide this for more than half of the Fortune 500 brands, through agencies and also client direct, and now we're expanding to the third screen," said Catherine Spurway, vice president of strategy and marketing for PointRoll, New York.

"We're partnering with the leading mobile portals and ad networks out there," she said. "It's all about reaching consumers where they are -- the mobile space.

"For folks like AOL and ESPN, people are accessing their content on mobile, and this will help provide additional reach to advertisers."

PointRoll is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Gannett Co. Inc. Its technology is based on HTML.

The company claims that the growth of its advertising footprint on the iPhone enables brands to create interactive and targeted messages that can be served on popular mobile sites.

"PointRoll is based on creating highly engaging video interactivity to connect brands and publishers with the right consumers, ultimately driving conversion for the advertisers," Ms. Spurway said. "At the end of the day, the goal is to reach people on their mobile phone and convert them."

The Ford Flex iPhone campaign launched on USA Today with videos of designers giving a tour of the car model, from its interior to its engine.

The Focus Features campaign featured a trailer for the Coen brothers' film "Burn After Reading," an interview with the cast and the directors, and behind -- the-scenes footage

In both cases, consumers could tap their iPhone to expand the ad and access the video content.

USA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Co.

The paper has the widest circulation of any newspaper in the U.S., averaging more than 2.25 million copies every weekday. It comes in second worldwide among English-language publications.

ESPN is one of the top-five Web sites accessed via mobile devices, according to the Nielsen Co.

Platform-A comprises more than 70 sites within Mediaglow, AOL's newly launched publishing business, along with thousands of publisher sites in Advertising.com's third-party networks.

Millennial Media's sites comprise the largest mobile ad audience in the United States, creating billions of impressions every month.

The combined reach of these Web pages -- including USA Today -- gives PointRoll the largest interactive advertising platform on the iPhone.

"PointRoll announced an expansion of their iPhone initiative today, and Millennial Media -- the largest audience on the U.S. mobile Web -- will add these ad units to our already deep set of rich media offerings," said Paul Palmieri, president/CEO of Millennial Media, New York.

"We deployed our first mobile rich-media solution on Java MIDP 2.0 handsets in April of 2007, and since then we have prided ourselves on being first to market with many new creative types," he said.

"This PointRoll announcement is significant because online media buyers know and trust the PointRoll experience, and therefore it'll make it easier for advertisers to buy."

PointRoll's technology permits advertisers to reach the end user with interactive content such as video, data collection, send to a friend, tap to call and more without the use of flash, which hasn't been integrated into advertising on the iPhone.

As the first mobile ad network to offer PointRoll technology, Millennial Media's advertising clients can now deliver additional rich mobile formats that are "creatively consistent" with their online counterparts.

The iPhone will also now be a showcase for the newly formed relationship between USA Today and Millennial Media.

Marketers are now able to utilize interactive rich media formats in the third screen, all without requiring the iPhone user to download any applications.

The advertisements have the same features as those that run on computers, showcasing expandable, multiple panel, video, click-to-call, coupon downloads, data collects, click-to-maps and links to the App Store and Google Maps.

PointRoll will continue to provide in-depth engagement metrics and analytics, letting marketers track interaction rates, brand time, and other key measures of activity.

Mobile advertising is growing incredibly quickly, according to PointRoll.

There are more than 17 million iPhones on the market, with the potential to reach these high-value, early-adopter customers.

PointRoll serves more than 85 billion rich-media impressions each year. It claims that its client list includes two-thirds of the Fortune 500 companies.

Platform-A, AOL's advertising business with a potential reach of more than 91 percent of the U.S. Internet audience, claims to be the industry's largest digital advertising platform.

Platform-A comprises AOL media properties such as AOL.com, AIM and MapQuest, as well as Advertising.com's third-party networks.

Platform-A also includes Tacoda's audience insights and behavioral targeting; Quigo, a site- and content-targeting solution; AdTech, an international digital ad serving business; Third Screen Media, a mobile ad serving network; and buy.at, an affiliate marketing solution.

Platform-A currently has operations in the United States; nine countries across Europe, including Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and Britain; and Japan, through a joint venture with Mitsui.

Millennial Media, a mobile media networks company, offers an end-to-end platform for mobile advertising.

Millennial Media's suite of services includes the MBrand network for targeted audiences across premium content and Decktrade for large-scale performance campaigns.

The company's mobile advertising clients include advertisers seeking to reach mobile consumers, publishers seeking to maximize ad revenue and carriers seeking to further monetize their networks.

"We want to be everywhere, and while it's a lot of work to integrate with mobile sites, we want to be able to serve our ads wherever consumers are," said Max Mead, vice president of business development and publisher strategy for PointRoll.

"The mobile space is not as cluttered as a lot of other marketing mediums, it's a very personal space and people carry their phone with them everywhere," he said. "The mobile space is not nearly as inundated with advertising as others mediums are, and the metrics we've seen have been phenomenal so far.

"There are a number of top-tier mobile publishers we're working with now, and expect to see a growing list of places we can serve and even more capabilities within the mobile environment."

PointRoll, as with many mobile advertising companies, stresses that brands need to adjust the criteria they use to judge the success of a mobile campaign. Mobile is fundamentally different from the Internet or traditional media, and should be treated as such.

"The potency of rich media advertising works and performs well on mobile," Mr. Mead said. "It enables a two-way conversation between consumers and marketers because of the interactivity of the ads, and it changes the dynamic of how success is measured and discussed.

"A lot of mobile advertising is not interactive at all, and the only metrics are impressions and CTR, which is not very telling and not really what marketers care about," he said. "When you have a broader set of metrics, your strategy planning out campaigns becomes more effective, because you know what you want the ad units to do and you can better measure the success of them.

"With rich media, you look at things like how many people engaged with the campaign, how much time people spent watching video and how many people shared with friends."