PlayHaven/Kontagent reboot as Upsight, offering a single platform for game analytics and monetization

Three months after their merger, mobile marketing firm PlayHaven and analytics company Kontagent are rebranding their company as Upsight, which will be dedicated to helping app developers track their user behavior and take immediate action to market or monetize them.

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San Francisco-based Upsight wants to be a one-stop shop for mobile developers, offering services such as providing analytics for tracking how users behave in a game or app and marketing virtual goods to them based on their activity. The merger could be the beginning of consolidation of the mobile middleman ecosystem, which is currently served by many different companies.

Andy Yang, the chief executive of Upsight and former CEO of PlayHaven, and Josh Williams, the chief technology officer of Upsight and former CEO of Kontagent, said in a joint interview with GamesBeat that in the past few months, the companies have grown to more than 650 million monthly active users, up 62.5 percent since the merger. They track more than 500 billion events per month, up 26 percent from before the merger. That growth reflects the rapid growth of Upsight’s 22,000 app customers.

“We are here to transform the world’s data into valuable action,” said Yang. “Our merger was a wake-up call for everybody in the industry.”

The company made the announcement in advance of the Game Developers Conference this week in San Francisco.

“Everything we have seen has reinforced our strategy, and we are happy about that,” Williams said. “There is so much fragmentation in this space. We are seeing consolidation across the board now. We made the right move at the right time.”

In three months, the two companies have integrated their platforms into a single dashboard and a single software development kit.

“Our vision is to become the one SDK that rules them all,” Yang said. “We are in a world where developers want fewer SDKs, not more. We are going to ruthlessly look at all of the things that our customers want and provide that to them.”

The company will offer analytics, trained marketers who can offer advice to mobile developers, self-serve marketing tools that enable companies to acquire high-quality users and retain existing users, and engagement campaigns that include promoting virtual goods and displaying ads. Upsight will serve as the primary distribution channel for ads from the PlayHaven ad network. Developers can generate revenue from ads inside their games, and advertisers can acquire new users.

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Now the enterprise-grade analytics are available for free. Previously, Kontagent charged for enterprise-grade analytics, but now that part of the platform is free. Upsight will offer more services for a fee. Developers can use push notifications to target messages toward particular segments of users, and they can mine the data to come up with customized insights.

Upsight has 130 people, down from 150 for the combined companies before the merger, as the company cut redundant jobs. But now it is hiring again.

Customers include Warner Bros., Coffee Meets Bagel, Thrillist, BeachMint, eHarmony, Tinder, Glu, Electronic Arts, Sega, Big Fish Games, and Backflip Studios.