Musical.ly is mainly known as a lip-syncing and video sharing app popular with teens, but it’s starting to sing a different tune and expand its user base. “We’re probably that lip-syncing app you hear about from your niece or nephew,” said Kevin Ferguson, director of sales and business development at Musical.ly, which allows users to […]
Almost every game developer uses rewarded video to monetize because it’s lucrative – but there’s also a lot not to like about it. “A 30-second video ad just isn’t that engaging, and there’s no reason for users not to put their phone down when the video’s playing and just wait for it to end,” said Tayber […]
App publishers are constantly walking the line between user experience and making money. That’s the “main challenge” facing Baptiste Chardon, the man in charge of handling monetization for French game publisher Ubisoft’s more than 25 free-to-play mobile titles, which range from kid games to less casual offerings. An additional challenge lies in making sure that advertising […]
It’s not easy monetizing kids. Even the words “monetizing kids” are unfortunate. But the developers of kid-focused games still “need to eat,” said Yuri Shilin, owner of KidGames, an Israel-based game developer with a portfolio of dozens of apps for kids, with around 30 million downloads overall. “It’s for sure very hard to make money,” […]
Buenos Aires-based game studio Etermax is a rare creature in the app development world. “We don’t focus on user acquisition,” said CEO and founder Maximo Cavazzani. It’s quite a statement considering that Etermax is the developer responsible for quiz app Trivia Crack, which was the most downloaded app in the App Store in late 2014. […]
Apple’s stance on data collection: “We honestly just don’t want to know,” said Craig Federighi, Apple’s SVP of software engineering, to roughly 5,000 app developers at the tech giant’s Worldwide Developer Conference on Monday. “We don’t mine your email, your photos or your contacts in the cloud to learn things,” Federighi said. “All of this is done […]
App developers will inherit the Earth – and Google wants a piece of that. That’s why advertising was high on the agenda for the first time on day one of Google’s I/O developer conference in San Francisco on Thursday. Although Android’s market share is massive – according to IDC, Android has 78% of the market, versus Apple’s […]
Developing game apps is a hard knock life – because once the development is done, the monetization work begins. “Game developers have specific needs,” said Chung-Man Tam, chief product officer at mobile game discovery platform Chartboost, which launched a collection of tools on Thursday aimed at helping devs take better advantage of their first-party data. Two […]
IronSource is counting its cash. The Israeli ad distribution and app monetization company, which announced an $85 million round in September, said Wednesday that it’s brought in an additional $20 million from a group of unnamed investors led by Access Industries. These two funding events represent the first time ironSource, which works with Yahoo, Google, […]
Getting freemium users to become paid users is a nuanced process that varies from person to person. Users on the brink of turning their free trial into a paid subscription need only a little nudge. Others, admittedly a much smaller number of people, will quickly pay for subscriptions. But neither group is the ideal target. […]
The majority of TripAdvisor’s revenue came from advertising in Q4 2014. Of TripAdvisor’s reported $288 million in fourth-quarter revenue – up 35% from Q3 – $181 million came from click-based advertising (63% of total revenue) and $36 million from display (13% of total revenue). Display CPMs were up for more than 2,000 advertisers in TripAdvisor’s network, President […]
The name of AppLift’s game is lifetime user value. The Berlin-based mobile game marketing platform launched a tool called DataLift on Thursday aimed at helping mobile advertisers get a better grip on the overall lifetime value of their users. “Price is what you pay, but value is what you get,” said AppLift CEO Kaya Taner, […]
Monetizing an app is never child’s play, but it becomes even more difficult if the app in question is aimed at children. Clark Stacey, CEO of game publisher WildWorks, knows about those challenges firsthand. Wildworks, which recently rebranded from Smart Bomb Interactive, has been working in close collaboration with the National Geographic Society since 2010 […]
However one feels about the merits of FarmVille, it’s undeniable that the game’s creators know a thing or two about app monetization. To that end, Red Hot Labs – a game dev startup founded by the team that created back-in-the-day blockbusters FarmVille and CityVille – released Toro on Wednesday, a new tool aimed at helping […]
Marketers generally react to Yo, the one-touch messaging app, with bemused dismissal. Its sole function lets users ping each other with a single “Yo,” the simplicity of which has sparked no shortage of skepticism. But no one took Snapchat seriously when it surfaced, and the ephemeral photo messaging platform is now valued at a behemoth […]
It’s a bit of a three-way Catch-22: SnapChat needs to monetize, advertisers need to see solid engagement metrics and ROI and SnapChat users need to feel like they’re not being blasted by irrelevant advertising. Therein lies the rub for several of the agencies AdExchanger spoke with following The Wall Street Journal’s report on a new […]
No one would disagree that smartphone users are spending a ton of time in apps, and here are some more numbers to prove it. A report released Thursday by comScore found that apps now account for more than 50% of all digital media time spent, though it’s interesting to note that mobile growth isn’t vampirically […]
Fitness app RunKeeper is trying to monetize for the first time via a partnership with mobile rewards ad network Kiip to embark on a subtle version of advertising – but don’t call it advertising. Kiip founder and CEO Brian Wong doesn’t really like the word, mainly because for many people mobile advertising is synonymous with […]
Movies have trailers, so why shouldn’t apps? That’s the thinking behind the playable ad unit from Voxel. But the app monetization startup, which works with King.com, Electronic Arts and GSN, takes it one step further. “It’s not just a trailer, it’s a completely interactive experience,” said Voxel CEO and co-founder David Zhao. “Whatever you can […]
App developers are on an increasingly complex journey to understand what the heck users are doing — and, ultimately, figure out how to get them to do it more…or less. Mobile exchange Nexage is hoping to help by making its premium monetization solution available to the app developer community, as of Wednesday. It’s a move […]
Are lock screens the next billboards? A growing number of vendors say yes. One such company is Canadian startup Adenda, which launched an SDK on Tuesday that allows developers to add rich media notifications, ads and animations to an Android phone’s lock screen. “We are providing (app developers) new opportunities for monetization and user engagement,” […]
