Continuing its investments into the mobile ecosystem, Softbank's latest move has been into Korean ad start-up Buzzvil.
It's invested $3 million into the developer, which has two lockscreen advertising products in the market.
It's a channel that's proving to be popular in Asian markets as they allows users to earn money and rewards by interacting with ads or other promoted content.
On the screen to be
Set up by executives from gaming companies such as Com2uS and Neowiz, as well as Google and Naver, Buzzvil's Honeyscreen product launched a year ago in Korea, while its LockJoy product is #1 in Japan, and has over 500,000 registered users.
"Buzzvil has developed a technology that could turn into a new mobile ad platform with a revolutionary scale rather than just another incentivized download network," commented Softbank Ventures Korea senior associate Ian Suh.
"Tough competition awaits in the global market with multiple copycats. But we've really put a lot of thought regarding how we could turn user's lockscreens into something even more exciting in the 'smartphone capital' of the world, South Korea, as well as in the global markets," added Buzzvil CEO John Lee.