TapReason uses A.I. to decide the magic moment to recommend an app

TapReason is coming out of stealth today with a unique twist on monetization. The company uses artificial intelligence to determine the “magic moment” to recommend an app or game to friends and colleagues.

The word-of-mouth recommendation platform from the Caesarea, Israel-based startup is a response to the problem of the growing ineffectiveness of advertising, either through saturation or ad blocking.

The A.I. has been tested over the last 18 months on more than 300 registered apps and 23 million devices. When the technology judges one of these right moments, TapReason sends an in-app message from a friend to another friend via messaging platforms, such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, Slack, LinkedIn, Skype, WeChat, Line, or one of 20 other services.

“With mobile-ad click-through rates spiraling downward as users adopt ad blockers to combat overly aggressive advertising, TapReason delivers an ad-free app growth solution based on advanced A.I., marketing automation, and the most trusted form of advertising — a recommendation from a trusted friend,” said Nimrod Elias, CEO and cofounder of TapReason, in a statement.

App developers can get insights into user behavior based on TapReason’s campaigns, which enable better user engagement and marketing. The A.I. has been optimized to increase app recommendations, reviews, ratings, and social-media presence in order to grow clients’ app usage and business.

“Though users are tired of more intrusive mobile ads, they welcome … recommendations from trusted friends and colleagues,” said Esther Barak Landes, CEO of Nielsen Innovate, a TapReason investor, in a statement. “TapReason has developed an automated word-of-mouth recommendation solution utilizing proprietary A.I. technology, which enables finding the right users via the right platforms/applications at the right time. In an era of ad blockers, TapReason is the future of digital marketing.”

TapReason creates what it calls natural recommendations from friends and colleagues. TapReason’s app-growth messaging is fully automated and fully customizable based on language needs, app triggers, and app look and feel. Because users have control regarding when, how, and to whom the automated app recommendations are sent, they can be more comfortable with the process.

TapReason app-growth campaigns also target users to rate apps in the app stores and provide feedback. And an improved ranking in an app store always results in more downloads for an app.

The company has studied usage and installation patterns for its clients’ campaigns over the last 18 months to understand which usage patterns, custom triggers, and other behavioral patterns indicate that a person has reached his or her “magic moment” to recommend an app.

Developers also gain insights into consumer behavior based on TapReason’s campaigns, which enable improving their user engagement and marketing efforts. For example, in a popular recipe app, the company’s A.I. technology was able to uncover the strong effect of two seemingly unrelated models when combined together.

The first model measured where users spent their time inside the app, and the second model measured whether people were walking, standing, or if the smartphone was completely still. When investigating the reasoning behind those dramatic results, TapReason’s data scientists found that the combination of these two models accurately described three popular behavioral patterns of how people used this app.

Consumers used it when walking in the supermarket buying ingredients for a recipe, preparing a recipe when the phone typically lied on the kitchen table, while sitting on the bed, or just browsing for ideas. These insights enabled optimizing the times to send app recommendations, resulting in improved app-user growth.

“TapReason is like having an entire growth team of developers, data scientists, [machine learning], UX/UI, and growth hackers,” said Ziv Lautman, chief marketing officer at app maker BreezoMeter, in a statement. “Almost a year after integration, TapReason keeps improving results, showing positive growth trends for our app’s viral sharing, recommendations, and rating.”

TapReason recommendation-based user acquisition solution can be integrated in minutes by simply adding five lines of code working in the background without requiring any additional permissions.

The company started in 2014, and it has 10 employees. Rivals include Optimizely, Yozio, Apptentive, Appboy, Mixpanel, and Flurry. But TapReason is trying to distinguish itself with its A.I. Investors that include Nielsen and Nielsen Innovate. The company has raised more than $700,000 to date.