• by Tyler Loechner  @mp_tyler, April 9, 2014

Mobile ad platform TapSense on Wednesday announced it has created a fund to coax mobile publishers to use real-time bidding (RTB) to sell their inventory. TapSense is putting $10 million into the fund, and it will last until the end of the year or until the money is gone.

Mobile publishers can draw upon the $10 million money well to use some TapSense services for free while the funds last. Publishers who sell their inventory via RTB while the funds last will receive 100% of the revenue from ads sold, TapSense says. The company usually takes a 20% cut.

“With our RTB Fund, we’re providing even more incentive for mobile publishers to make their inventory available through programmatic selling,” stated Ash Kumar, CEO and founder of TapSense.

TapSense is essentially investing $10 million in itself. The company asserts there's no catch, that it's truly giving away $10 million here with the goal to not only get more publishers using RTB, but for them to sell higher quality inventory this way. TapSense operates a private marketplace to encourage the trading of more "premium" inventory.

“Over the past five years, RTB has been associated with low-value remnant inventory,” a company representative said. TapSense is looking to change that by putting its money where its mouth is.