Jumptap took an evolutionary step today with the launch of its tapMatch mobile ad targeting platform. The company has traditionally provided a range of mobile products, including a white-label search platform for publishers and carriers like AT&T and Virgin Mobile. TapMatch extends its capability as an ad network.

The ad network side of its business has traditionally involved CPM-based mobile ads sold by a direct sales force to brand advertisers (Target, Coca-Cola, etc.). TapMatch by comparison is a self-service network that includes pay-per-click mobile search ads. This includes lots of ad creation features meant to lower the barrier for creating and targeting mobile ads.

What this could do is tap into a longer tail of mobile advertisers, positioning the company for growing mobile marketing demand among advertisers of all sizes. Google is moving in similar directions with AdSense for mobile and mobile targeting capabilities that are increasingly being baked into the AdWords work flow.

The difference with tapMatch, according to CMO Paran Johar, is that contextual targeting on mobile Web sites and mobile searches can be refined to include specific devices, carrier networks and lots of other metrics it has by virtue of carrier and publisher relationships. This has good targeting implications, not to mention it helps advertisers segment audiences among the fragmented universe of mobile devices and carriers.

Overall, tapMatch is a good extension of the publisher and carrier relationships Jumptap has in place — through which it reaches 170 million mobile subscribers.