Mobile game ad firm wins Disney funding

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Greystripe, a distributor of mobile games supported by advertising, said on Wednesday it has received $8.9 million in funding led by the venture capital arm of The Walt Disney Co. (DIS.N).

The investment in San Francisco-based Greystripe comes amid rising interest in advertising tied to video games, and as game publishers and advertisers seek to tap the growing demand for cell phones around the world.

Greystripe runs the Web site Gamejump.com, where some 800 games from publishers like Konami Corp. (9766.T) can be downloaded and played on a mobile phone. Short ads run at the start and end of a game, and Greystripe gets a slice of that revenue.

"We're at an interesting convergence of mobile, advertising and games," Greystripe Chief Executive Michael Chang said in an interview. "There is all this content that wants to get out there and all these consumers that want to get that content."

Greystripe plans to use the funding to push overseas, which already accounts for 85 percent of its users, Chang said.

Mobile phone sales are running at about 1 billion units a year, led by fast-growing markets such as India and China where they are often the main computing and entertainment devices of consumers.

In March, Google Inc. (GOOG.O) bought Adscape, which can present ads within a video game, following on the heels of Microsoft Corp. (MSFT.O), which last year bought in-game ad firm Massive Inc. for $200 million.