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C21Media are reporting that CBS Studio’s Entertainment Tonight and A&E Television Networks (AETN) are stepping up the amount of mobile entertainment content available around their properties following a tie-up with US specialist Thumbplay.

A range of ringtones, wallpaper, games and video clips for mobile phones are being added to the Entertainment Tonight website and those of AETN’s A&E, History and Biography channels.Both Entertainment Tonight and AETN have implemented new tools from Thumbplay aimed specifically at TV content creators, enabling them to roll out mobile entertainment storefronts on programme or channel websites.

The toolkit allows broadcasters to manage their own mobile entertainment stores while also creating new sponsorship inventory on their websites, according to Thumbplay.

“Thumbplay makes it simple for broadcast and cable television content creators to execute profitable mobile strategies with no up-front investment,” said company CEO Are Traasdahl.

“By partnering with Thumbplay, we’ve been able to quickly and easily create and sell relevant show and genre-based mobile content to the fans of our brands and programmes, so they can access our content on the go, wherever they are,” added AETN senior VP of digital media Paul Jelinek.

Thumbplay aggregates, promotes and delivers mobile content directly to members via Thumbplay.com. The site offers ringtones, wallpapers, games and text-based services through a membership-based, community experience. Thumbplay, headquartered in New York, was founded by CEO Are Traasdahl and Executive Vice President, Marketing Evan Schwartz.

Investors include SoftBank Capital, i-HatchVentures, Bain Capital Venture Partners, Silicon Valley Bank.

Tags: A&E Television Networks, Bain Capital Venture Partners, CBS, i-HatchVentures, Silicon Valley Bank, SoftBank Capital, Thumbplay

Some heavyweight investors are lining up behind AdReady, the Seattle startup that is attempting to make it easier to place display advertising on Web sites. Bain Capital, Khosla Ventures and existing investor Madrona Venture Group are pumping $10 million into the company, cash that it will use to increase marketing and hire new employees.

Founded last year by former Classmates.com executives, the 33-person company plans to end next year with 50 to 60 employees, said Chief Executive Aaron Finn.

Launched in October, AdReady has developed an online library of about 600 prefabricated display ads in categories such as real estate, education and travel. Customers choose an ad, customize it and then — with AdReady’s help — launch it into the ad networks from Google and Yahoo’s Right Media.

So far, about 1,000 companies — ranging from plumbers to painters to major airlines like Alaska Air — have signed up for the service. The ad-creation tools are free to use, with AdReady getting paid when a client decides to set a budget for the campaign. AdReady takes a 20 percent commission on the campaign.

www.adready.com

Tags: AdReady, Alaska Air, Bain Capital Venture Partners, Classmates.com, Khosla Ventures, Madrona Venture Group

Thumbplay, the largest and fastest growing mobile entertainment content destination in the U.S. (Nielsen Mobile, Q3 2007), today announced an exclusive relationship with iLike, a social music discovery service. Thumbplay’s ringtones are now contextually featured throughout iLike.com and the iLike application on Facebook Platform allowing users to discover, purchase and download ringtones to more than 2,000 supported and compatible mobile phones.

Across iLike, “Get ringtone” links to Thumbplay are now featured alongside links to Apple iTunes in every relevant song module on artist, album and song pages, as well as users’ shared playlists. Similar links are incorporated into the iLike Challenge, so users can discover and purchase ringtones of songs played in the game.

“With the addition of Thumbplay ringtone links, iLike has just expanded our music discovery features to include also a fantastic ringtone-discovery experience,” said Ali Partovi, CEO of iLike. “As the mobile entertainment content industry leader, Thumbplay delivers the broadest and deepest catalog of content to our 15 million registered users, so they can now take their music with them as ringtones regardless of which carrier or phone they’re using.“

“It is clear from iLike’s rapid growth that consumers love discovering and sharing new music with their friends,” said Are Traasdahl, Thumbplay’s CEO and founder. “By pairing with iLike, we’re enabling their consumers to extend the social music experience to their mobile phones.”

With more than 75,000 pieces of mobile entertainment content under license, including ringtones, wallpapers, games, videos, voice tones and text-based services, Thumbplay has built a strong consumer following and gained broad recognition as a leader in the direct-to-consumer mobile content space.

Thumbplay is backed by Bain Capital Ventures, SoftBank Capital, i-Hatch Ventures, Redwood Partners, New Enterprise Associates and Meritech.

www.thumbplay.com, www.ilike.com

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Tags: Apple, Bain Capital Venture Partners, Facebook, i-Hatch Ventures, iLike, Meritech, New Enterprise Associates, Redwood Partners, SoftBank Capital, Thumbplay