• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, February 16, 2012

Of interest to mobile marketers, Velti on Thursday plans to debut a new private exchange for premium publishers.

A publicly traded provider of mobile ad technology, Velti faces intense competition from Google’s Admeld, along with smaller players like Nexage. However, Krishna Subramanian, chief marketing officer at Velti, says the exchange stands apart from rivals for several reasons.

Subramanian says it is the only exchange built specifically for mobile that creates dynamic pricing models by setting floors and custom priorities. It also supports guaranteed buys.

More broadly, Subramanian claims the exchange “opens up a valuable strategic channel for premium publishers and platforms to increase their ad sales inventory." Velti’s hope is that marketers can bid on ad space at scale without losing confidence in the quality of the inventory they buy.

By using real-time bidding, marketers can also strategically advertise to specific audiences. Ad buys will be programmatically optimized across more than 20,000 publishers on the Velti mGage ad exchange. According to Velti, its mGage platform reaches more than 4.3 billion consumers, and serves nearly 20 billion impressions per month.

In late 2010, Velti acquired Mobclix, a mobile supply-side platform that Subramanian co-founded. While terms of the deal were not disclosed, the acquisition was rumored to be over $50 million. Even before its Mobclix buy, Velti acquired a number of companies, including mobile ad technology firms Media Cannon and AdInfuse.

Late last year, the U.S. Department of Justice approved Google's acquisition of Admeld, which now boasts an impressive client list, including USA Today, Conde Nast, NBCUniversal, Answers.com, Fox News, Discovery and The Weather Channel.