PageWoo Launches Mobile Ad Platform

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Santa Monica startup PageWoo, which graduated from accelerator StartEngine last year, has launched its first product.

On Wednesday the company rolled out NearWoo, a platform that lets small businesses advertise on mobile phones through location technology.

NearWoo helps small businesses create their own banner ads and landing pages. The company then charges $10 per month for each “neighborhood” – the equivalent of 1,000 mobile ad impressions for a specific location range – where the business wants its ads to appear. NearWoo works with advertising exchanges to broker the sale of those mobile ads.

For example, if a pizza joint wants to advertise, it could create and buy ads that appear anytime someone is within a five-minute walking distance.

Jason Crilly, PageWoo’s founder and chief executive, said the company is hoping to simplify the mobile advertising experience.

“We’re trying to make location and mobile advertising applicable to any advertiser,” he said.

The 12-person company has raised $850,000 to date to build out its technology. Institutional investors include Karlin Ventures and Pegasus Capital Group. Angel investors include Eytan Elbaz, co-founder of Applied Semantics, and Jeff Lapin, the former chief executive of Atari.