Few could accuse Rovio of being anything but bullish when it comes to shouting from the rooftops about its fortunes.

You have to wonder, therefore, how 'Mighty Eagle' and CMO Peter Vesterbacka managed to keep a lid on Angry Birds' advertising prowess during the months where Rovio's critics did little else but point out how the studio had failed to launch a follow-up franchise.

If statements by Vesterbacka during an interview with Business Insider are to be believed, there's little need for a new series when the one you've already launched is generating more ad impressions a month than Google.

Outgunning Google?

The figures themselves are yet to be verified – it's not clear whether Vesterbacka meant Google's exploits just within apps, or within mobile search as well – but Vesterbacka's statement that Angry Birds generates 10 billion impressions a month is undoubtedly impressive, regardless of who it tops.

Indeed, Vesterbacka believes such is the strength of Rovio's hand, that it's even able to compete outside the traditional confines of the games industry.

"TV will view us as a big competitor," he added.

"Not just TV programming — brands spend most of their money with TV ads. We know we can do much better than TV ads, like what we did with Angry Birds Rio. The most efficient promotional tool of that movie was our game.

"The people who went out see Rio, most of them heard about the movie not from TV or McDonald's promotions or whatever, they heard about the movie through our game."

Angry ad platform

When asked to categorise Angry Birds, the option that generated the most positive response – other than simply labelling it a game or a brand – was the notion that the series now acts specifically an advertising platform.

"Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely, absolutely, absolutely," he said.

"We serve 10 billion ad impressions every month already. We are the biggest mobile ad publisher on the planet already."

Things aren't perfect, however.

"Right now we're doing a pretty crap job just serving a bunch of banners, it doesn't really do much for our fans," Vesterbacka added.

"If you look at Angry Birds Rio, that's a great example of how to do it. That whole game is built around promoting the movie, and it's such a great game and experience that people are willing to pay for it. So it has value in itself."

Vesterbacka concluded by backing up previous claims the firm is looking to emulate Disney, stating its current valuation of $2.5 billion is far from where the company wants to be.

"Those are the right kind of numbers, but Disney is worth $60 billion, we're far form that," he added. "Over the next 5-10 years, we want to go there."

[source: Business Insider]