Mobile app analytics company App Annie is beefing up its Usage Intelligence product with the acquisition of mobile measurement firm Mobidia.
Although terms of the deal, unveiled Wednesday, were not disclosed, App Annie CEO Bertrand Schmitt told AdExchanger it was a mixture of cash and equity.
Mobidia will help App Annie developer and publishers “build a more complete picture” of their audience, said Schmitt. The usage data App Annie brings on board from Mobidia will complement App Annie’s existing suite of products, acting as a sort of cherry on top of the company’s competitive app analysis and audience intelligence tools.
“We’re looking to provide a 360-degree view of the market,” Schmitt said. “Developers start with the download and they hope to make money, but how much is their app being used? How long and how often? We weren’t yet providing our clients with a product in the middle.”
And it’s something clients were asking for, he said.
“Usage data has been the No. 1 request from clients for quite some time now. It’s also a proxy for other metrics. If you have usage numbers, you can predict how much potential your app has in terms of retention and monetization,” Schmitt said. “Mobidia provides that from a sample of millions of users, including time spent, install penetration, frequency of use and in-app usage data.”
According to Mobidia client Telefonica, usage data helps the telecom get a handle on “what customer value most,” said Arizalet Tejero, Telefonica’s global pricing director. “Our business is not only about selling [gigabytes], it’s also about maximizing the customer engagement in terms of how they use that data.”
Mobidia, whose other clients include Verizon, AT&T, Netflix, Skype, Twitter, King, Kik and Microsoft, tracks usage data across more than 200,000 iOS and Android apps in 60 countries.
The company’s global footprint was a major part of what attracted App Annie, which pledged to spend a large portion of its recent $55 million Series D funding round on international expansion. Asia is a particular focus.
As a former App Annie exec told AdExchanger in January when the round was announced, “Countries like Japan, China, Korea, for example – there’s a lot of money there.”
Mobidia is embedded in countries across Asia – Japan, China and Korea, included – as well as Latin America, Western Europe and the Middle East.
“They’re an integral part of our international expansion,” Schmitt said. “It was also a way for us to grow fast. We’d been planning to support 10 new countries by the end of the year. Mobidia extends our coverage to 60.”
App Annie’s Usage Intelligence suite, which was initially released in beta in January, is now generally available. Although Schmitt declined to say how many clients have expressed interest in the product, he did note that several beta partners and existing customers have signed up for the service.
Vancouver-based Mobidia, which has raised $16.1 million in six rounds since it was founded in 2004, will become App Annie’s Canadian headquarters, and all 30 employees will come along with the acquisition, swelling App Annie’s overall headcount to 350.
Schmitt is planning to grow that number to more than 400 by the end of the year with more of App Annie’s Series D. The company will hire both engineers and salespeople, although there will be a greater investment in people on the product and engineering side.
