Audiomob

Every mobile gamer knows the moment. You are three moves from clearing a level when the screen goes dark and a full-page ad demands a tap. Christian Facey and Wilfrid Obeng knew it too. They had watched the advertising machine from the inside - Facey as a strategist at Google and a science partner at Facebook, Obeng as an engineer - and they were convinced the interruption was a design choice, not a law of nature.

In 2020 the two left Big Tech and built Audiomob around a single principle: there is a better way to advertise in games. Instead of hijacking the screen, Audiomob plays a short audio advertisement over gameplay. The player never stops playing. The developer still gets paid. The advertiser still gets heard - and, thanks to Audiomob's patented audibility technology, only pays when the ad is actually audible.

It is a small shift in format with an outsized effect on incentives. By refusing to interrupt, Audiomob keeps players in the game longer, which protects the retention numbers developers obsess over, which keeps ad inventory flowing back into the system. The company likes to say it "started the audio ad revolution." What it really did was notice that respect for the player and revenue for everyone else were not in conflict.

The problem Audiomob solves cuts three ways at once. Players are tired of interruptive ads. Developers need to monetise without driving players away. Advertisers want measurable attention in gaming, a channel with enormous reach and stubbornly few good ad formats. Audio, delivered without breaking the game, answers all three - which is why the audio industry itself keeps knocking. In late 2025 Bauer Media Audio and TuneIn both plugged into Audiomob's reach across Europe.

Audiomob runs a two-sided adtech marketplace. Advertisers pay to run audio campaigns, bought directly or programmatically. Developers earn a share of that spend for the inventory their games supply. Audiomob takes a margin on the ad spend flowing across the platform, priced on impressions and completed listens - and backed by audibility verification so buyers pay for attention that actually happened.

The in-game advertising category is crowded - Odeeo, AdInMo, Frameplay and Anzu all chase intrinsic or audio formats, while giants like AppLovin, Unity Ads and ironSource dominate the interruptive playbook. Audiomob's wedge is narrower and sharper: audio-first, non-intrusive, and measurable. Its patented audibility technology - which literally checks whether the phone's volume is up before charging an advertiser - is the kind of trust infrastructure that is hard to copy and easy to sell.

That measurement discipline is why Audiomob sits comfortably between two worlds. To game developers it is a monetisation partner. To the broader programmatic audio industry - the world of streaming, podcasts and digital radio - it is the bridge into gaming, a 300-million-listener channel that traditional audio buyers could never reach. Partnerships with Bauer Media Audio, TuneIn and Azerion show the audio establishment treating a game ad startup as core plumbing.

Audiomob has raised roughly $16 million to date. The headline round came in November 2021: a $14 million Series A led by Makers Fund and Lightspeed Venture Partners, with Google and the Sequoia Scout Program also participating, valuing the company at about $110 million. The founders put the money into engineering hires across London and Abu Dhabi rather than splashy growth marketing.