Corona Labs hopes to make sophisticated interactive advertising easier to create and implement across multiple devices by making Corona SDK APIs embeddable.

Corona Labs, maker of a Lua-based mobile development framework called Corona SDK, on Thursday introduced a version of its software called CoronaCards which might be embedded within other development frameworks to offer a cross-platform graphics layer.

At first glance, the flexibility to embed CoronaCards within another mobile development framework comparable to Appcelerator, PhoneGap, Unity, or Xamarin seems to be redundant, like adding two slices of bread to an existing sandwich. Unity, the most popular the right way to create cross-platform games, already handles graphics quite well.

But other popular development frameworks like Appcelerator have evolved with a spotlight on business apps, and CoronaCards might be used to give Appcelerator developers with access to CoronaCards’ animation and physics APIs.

“We’re hearing from people using Appcelerator and PhoneGap [who] wish they may do richer things but can’t justify going to a different platform,” said David Rangel, COO of Corona Labs, in a phone interview.

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CoronaCards might represent competition with former colleagues, too: The co-founding father of Corona Labs, Carlos Icaza, left the corporate in 2012 to form Lanica, with funding from Appcelerator. Lanica makes a JavaScript-based mobile development framework called Platino that enhances the graphics capabilities of Appcelerator’s Titanium product.

But CoronaCards brings more to the table than rivalry. Its cross-platform graphics and animation capabilities can make sophisticated interactive advertising easier to create and implement across multiple devices.

Rangel suggests CoronaCards might be useful create mobile ads that function as miniature apps. This is done through HTML and JavaScript or through native code, but such rich ads could still run into problems that made them function differently (or by no means) on different mobile devices.

CoronaCards promises a standard foundation that functions on various devices and platforms without technical incompatibilities. That is what Adobe tried to supply with Flash, only to be thwarted by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs back in 2010 and by its inability to handle technical shortcomings. However the want to write something once and run it everywhere remains.

Corona Labs claims that ads powered by CoronaCards outperform traditional model ads in engagement and conversion rates. And that is how CoronaCards might be used: for mobile advertising. An ad network, let’s say, could use CoronaCards to create one SDK that works on iOS, Android, Windows Phone, and other platforms, instead of maintaining multiple platform-specific SDKs.

CoronaCards is now in closed beta testing, and pricing has not yet been announced.

On Friday, Corona Labs also previewed a future feature for Corona SDK: the facility to run code built with the SDK in a contemporary Web browser. Currently, Corona SDK allows developers to construct for Android and iOS. The facility to create Windows Phone builds ought to be available in some months.

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Thomas Claburn was writing about business and technology since 1996, for publications corresponding to New Architect, PC Computing, InformationWeek, Salon, Wired, and Ziff Davis Smart Business. Before that, he worked in film and tv, having earned a not particularly useful … View Full Bio

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