App Retention Bonus; Mobile Yield For The Masses

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.

App Retention Bonus

Appboy wants to be the “ExactTarget for Mobile Apps,” and has secured $7.6 million from IDG Ventures and Buddy Media CEO Mike Lazerow to get there. The money will help build out loyalty and retention efforts on behalf of developers. “The platform automatically generates robust user profiles and empowers app marketers to further engage their audience with a suite of marketing automation products.” Clients include Urban Outfitters, GSN, Bloomberg, Shape and PopSci. Press release.

Mobile Yield For The Masses

PubMatic’s mobile SDK is no longer for “premium” publishers only. A new self-serve version can be leveraged by anyone, potentially bringing new long-tail mobile supply to the PubMatic marketplace. Meanwhile small publishers will get exposure to more demand. “We are working to fulfill the promise of one platform solution by offering a self-service version of PubMatic’s premium platform to the next generation of publishers,” said President Kirk McDonald. Mobile publishers that bring 30 million-plus impressions are automatically upgraded to “full service.” Read the release.

Photosharing Contender

Israel-based Instagram competitor Mobli closed a $60 million round led by América Móvil, according to VentureBeat’s Tom Cheredar. Although it’s not the only company doing photo and video sharing, the company does have a lot of investor and celebrity backing. The company has raised $88 million in all. Read more.

Catalog-ic Converters

Convertro is adding support for catalog data to its attribution platform. The company said a big retailer is using the solution “to link its direct mail efforts (for example, catalog) with its online marketing initiatives (for example, email) at the user level.” Press release.

ReGlued

After an earlier deal to sell itself to Viggle fell apart, social TV startup GetGlue has found a new buyer in i.TV, Ad Age reports. Both companies are private so no financial information was disclosed, but GetGlue has about 1.2 million active monthly users. Although it’s a small group who are highly active on social media. i.TV founder Brad Pelo tells Simon Dumenco, “While we’re very interested in growing the GetGlue base, we also want to be true to what the base is intended to be, which is sort of a superfan community, and that isn’t everybody.” Read more.

Measuring Time

WebSpectator, an advertising exchange that measures the amount of time people spend viewing an ad in real time, launched its new “guaranteed to see” metric yesterday at ad:tech New York. By placing a line of code on webpages, the company claims it can measure the time spent viewing an ad down to the millisecond. “Finally, advertisers can buy what’s real and eliminate waste,” WebSpectator CEO Andre Parreira told AdExchanger. The company reached $12 million in revenue within six months and has about 500 customers, according to Parreira, who has set a goal to hit $100 million by the end of 2014. “This is a money-making machine,” he claimed. Read the press release.

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