Venice mobile marketing startup inMarket has caught the attention of candy and snack food giant Mondelez International.
The food juggernaut, which spun off from Kraft Foods last fall, announced this week that it has selected inMarket and eight other technology startups to create mobile marketing campaigns for some of its products as part of a program called Mobile Futures.
InMarket will have 90 days to create a mobile marketing campaign for belVita Breakfast Biscuits, a brand that is new to the United States.
In addition to creating a market campaign for belVita, inMarket also has the opportunity to work with the brand to create mobile technology. At the end of the program, the startups will pitch their new technology to investors with the goal of creating at least two mobile technology companies.
Todd DiPaola, president and co-founder of inMarket, said the company is looking forward to learning from the marketing teams at belVita and Mondelez.
“One of the things we’re most excited about is helping people discover new brands and belVita is a new launch,” he said. “We’re pairing with the brand to look at new ideas in mobile.”
InMarket – which previously went by the name CheckPoints – has been playing in the mobile marketing space since DiPaola and his brother Mark started the company in 2010. The brothers previously founded and sold performance marketing company Vantage Media in the early 2000s.
InMarket’s first product was a shopping app called CheckPoints. People can use the app to scan barcodes of products while they are grocery shopping to redeem points for coupons and discounts.
The company expanded beyond CheckPoints last summer with the launch of a second app, called ListBliss. The app allows family members or roommates to create a combined shopping list on their mobile phones that both people can update as they shop or add items to the list.
InMarket also launched a deals app called Extra Extra Deals in September.
DiPaola would not say how many users the apps have, but said the number is in the “tens of millions.”
The company, which has 15 employees in its office off Abbot Kinney Boulevard, makes money off its apps by selling highly targeted advertising.
“We’re advertising to people as they’re in the store making purchase decisions,” DiPaola said. “This is the most critical time for consumers to make decisions.”
