Mobile platform Tune (formerly HasOffers) sings right notes, lands $27M

Mobile marketing platforms are hot. And, in the latest indication of just how hot, Tune announced today it has landed $27 million in funding.

The company says that its platform, which helps marketers manage organic and paid channels on mobile devices, is used by 60 percent of the top-grossing apps in Apple’s App Store.

Tune’s platform helps marketers “run campaigns across dozens or hundreds of channels like search, social media, app store discovery, email marketing, retargeting, and any number of advertising partners,” CEO Peter Hamilton told VentureBeat via email.

Hamilton noted that the mobile ad and app scene has “overlapping providers,” ranging from mobile ad measurement firms like AppsFlyer and Kochava to app store analytics provider App Annie. “Tune unifies these marketing disciplines, providing one platform to the enterprise marketer,” he said.

Founded in 2009 by twin brothers Lucas and Lee Brown and managed by Hamilton, the company’s customers include Uber, Sephora, Trulia, Alaska Airlines, and EA. Tune has two main products, MobileAppTracking (MAT) and HasOffers.

MAT tracks app installs, in-app engagement, and purchases, so they can be attributed to advertisers.

Above: A reporting screen from Tune’s MobileAppTracking.

Image Credit: Tune

On its separate website, HasOffers describes itself as “a white-labeled affiliate tracking software that allows thousands of businesses around the world to track and manage their own affiliate programs.” HasOffers was Tune’s original moniker, until a name change last summer.

In August, Tune bought mobile marketing provider MobileDevHQ, which provided intelligence on how apps are doing in the App Store.

In February of last year, the company was dumped by Facebook because of issues relating to data retention. The social network charged that HasOffers kept user data too long, in violation of Facebook privacy policies.

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The Series B funding, which marks a kind of vindication in Tune’s bounceback from the Facebook episode, will go toward growing the engineering teams, Hamilton told us, “and perhaps some acquisitions along the way.”

He also promised “some really exciting products [will] come to market over the next two quarters, with the continued goal of unifying everything the marketer needs in one place.”

There will also be what he called a “doubling down on education and support for the ecosystem,” through new programs, webinars, and dedicated account management.

But $27 million is quite a haul. “We don’t plan to spend it all,” Hamilton told us.

The new funding was raised by Icon Ventures (formerly Jafco Ventures), along with Performance Equity Management and Accel Partners. A Series A round in 2013 scored $9.4 million. Tune is based in Seattle, but has offices around the world.