Mobile News: From Apperian to Zmags, Jumptap to Mitt Romney

Zmags, the Boston-based mobile and social commerce company, has raised $7 million from Square 1 Bank and existing investors OpenView Venture Partners and Northcap Partners.

Zmags makes a software platform to help brands and retailers design marketing and merchandising campaigns across mobile devices, tablets, and Web. The new money roughly doubles the amount Zmags has raised to date; the company expects to close an additional growth equity round this year. Last May, CEO Michael Schreck spoke with me about the firm’s transition from digital publishing to commerce, and about mobile marketing trends over the past decade.

—Jumptap, the Cambridge, MA-based mobile advertising firm, has been working with Mitt Romney to create and run targeted campaign ads (at the zipcode level) for the Iowa Caucus and New Hampshire primaries. The company says Romney is the first candidate to run mobile ads in both sites. We’ll be watching to see how mobile technologies influence the upcoming presidential election.

—Apperian, the Boston maker of a mobile-app platform for businesses, is powering AT&T’s new mobile application management product. The software helps companies and other organizations create, distribute, and manage secure mobile apps. Apperian has worked with AT&T for the past several years, but the newannouncement could be an important validation of where Apperian stands in the market.

Gregory T. Huang is Xconomy’s National IT Editor and the Editor of Xconomy Boston. You can e-mail him at [email protected], call him at 617-252-7323, or follow him on Twitter at @gthuang.