Urban Airship partners with analytics service to cut down annoying in-game messaging

A mistimed in-game message can really hurt the flow of gameplay and turn-off easily distracted users. Urban Airship has plans to eradicate (or at least reduce) such annoyances by using the player-behavior data collected by its new partner, GamingAnalytics.

Urban Airship, which has provided over 20 billion push notifications across iOS and Android, is a mobile-software solutions company. In addition to push notifications, it also provides in-app purchasing tools and app-usage tracking.  The Portland-based software company is teaming with GamesAnalytics which specializes in predicting what to promote to users and when to promote it to maximize player engagement with a product.

“Push messaging can deliver a dramatic uplift in user engagement and retention, especially when context is considered to deliver truly relevant and targeted messages,” said Christopher Dean, Urban Airship’s chief revenue officer. “Our partnership with GamesAnalytics helps streamline the triggering of messages that hit the mark from the user’s perspective and positively impact the publisher’s bottom-line.”

Urban Airship plans to implement GamesAnalytics’ wealth of data to determine which gamers are most likely to stop playing, which are likeliest to pay for virtual items, and which care the most about social features.

“We are delighted to be partnering with Urban Airship,” GamesAnalytics’ chief executive officer Chris Wright said. “GamesAnalytics’ technology suite already offers real-time in-game messaging using player segmented data from advanced predictive modeling. This integration will now enable developers to also reach out-of-game players in order to build engagement by delivering relevant offers and personalized experiences based on their playing behaviors.”

Urban Airship has made its reputation by providing a reliable push-notification service to app developers. This shouldn’t be confused with the ad-push companies that force commercial advertisements into your notification bar. On Android, iOS, and Blackberry, Urban Airship will only alert users to the information that is applicable to the apps that they have installed.

Now, with GamesAnalytics help, Urban Airship can adjust its messaging on a per-user basis.

For example, a free-to-play game that makes money on virtual goods will be able to predict which players are willing to spend money upfront and which will only make a purchase when the game puts them in a critical position to do so. That’s more likely to make the developer money, and it’s less likely to annoy users that just want to play the game without distraction.

Customers that currently implement Urban Airships technologies include Sega, HBO, and Tapulous.