Flurry launches AppSpot mobile app ad platform

Mobile analytics firm Flurry announced a new mobile app advertising platform called Flurry AppSpot.

Peter Farago, vice president of marketing at Flurry, said the platform  combines Flurry’s analytics with a new ad platform aimed at unlocking the full potential of the mobile app advertising space. The platform is designed to make targeted campaigns and reaching high-value consumers easier for ad agencies, direct advertisers, and ad networks.

Flurry will provide services such as ad serving and network optimization based, and advertisers will pay Flurry only when they use premium targeting to earn additional revenue. These services are tied to Flurry’s analytics data, which tracks more than 30 billion user sessions a month across 160,000 apps on more than 500 million mobile devices.

San Francisco-based Flurry says that consumers are spending 23 percent of their time in apps (vs. TV, Online, Radio and Print) but only 1 percent of advertising dollars are allocated toward mobile today. The gap exists because it isn’t easy to target the entire app-using audience. But Flurry argues that its reach and depth of data can help publishers and advertisers bridge the gap.

For example, if Nike wants to reach 18-year-old to 24-year-old women for a new shoe, their ad agency would use Flurry to buy ads, target the audience, and reach people on multiple mobile platforms using the Flurry AppSpot ad platform. Flurry uses its demographic data to target the ads at the right people and then it reports back the results about whether the users clicked on the ads or otherwise engaged with it. Because the ads hit the right demographic, they are likely to be received more effectively.

In this case, app publishes supply the inventory into which ads are served. Ad campaigns fill that inventory with ads that are targeted at particular users. Flurry’s data enables better targeting, allowing relevant ads to be shown to the right users.

“Compared to online advertising, mobile app advertising can be simpler, better and more powerful,” said Simon Khalaf, president and chief executive officer of Flurry. “In online, there are simply too many moving parts between the advertiser and the publisher, including ad servers, ad exchanges, supply side platforms, demand side platforms and data management platforms. In the app advertising world, Flurry AppSpot delivers an optimal path between advertisers and publishers, adding in ground-breaking targeting and analytics.”

Flurry’s backers include Draper Fisher Jurvetson, InterWest Partners, Union Square Ventures, Menlo Ventures, and First Round Capital.