Fuse Powered launches AdRally tool to help mobile publishers deal with too many ad networks (exclusive)

Fuse Powered is launching a platform that helps mobile-game and app publishers deal with too many ad networks.

AdRally is a managed ad-mediation tool, which means it makes it easy to take 30 ad networks and integrate them with a game using a simple, automated process. That enables game makers to cast a wide net in getting new users, who are essential to keeping a pipeline of new players coming into a mobile game.

The ad tool is an extension of Fuseboxx, a mobile-publishing platform that provides actionable analytics. One feature is Custom App Experiences, which lets a developer segment its audience so that it can deliver different ads to different users depending on whether it’s appropriate to do so.

“We saw this as a confusing part of the market, especially for our publishers, and that’s how Ad Rally came to be,” said Jon Walsh, the chief executive of Fuse Powered. “Our mandate is to solve these problems for our customers.”

Toronto, Canada-based Fuse Powered positions itself as an unbiased referee for the ad networks. A publisher uses its AdRally software development kit and no longer has to put in the SDK for each ad network. Fuse Powered collects the money from the different ad networks, and it pays a single check to the publishers each month. Integration takes about an hour or so.

“We refer to ourselves as Switzerland,” said Walsh. “We’ll vet the new ad networks for them. No product automates that mediation layer like we do.”

“Delivering sustainable ad revenue is core to the long-term success of the Dumb Ways to Die app,” said Travis Rutherford, the president of Evolution USA, the brand management agency for Metro Trains Melbourne, the publisher of Dumb Ways to Die. “When we replaced the various independent ad networks with AdRally, revenue instantly increased by over 300 percent. It’s one simple, easy [way] to manage solution versus having to coordinate multiple ad SDKs and waterfalls.”

Fuse Powered could still use more ad networks, but Walsh said that his company has the cream of the crop now. And early tests are showing that AdRally can outperform the market with a simplified solution.

About 45 publishers are using the Fuseboxx publishing platform, and many of those companies are now using AdRally, which has been live for about three months. Rivals include Burstly and PlayHaven Kontagent.

Fuse Powered has 35 employees and has raised $8 million to date.