UPDATED 15:25 EDT / JULY 22 2014

Yahoo extends mobile footprint to app analytics with Flurry acquisition

question search analytics numbersWith smartphones and tablets now accounting for more than half of the traffic to its services and related advertising revenue up more than 100 percent from last year,  it’s only natural for Yahoo Inc. to want a bigger slice of the burgeoning mobile universe. The latest sub-segment that the struggling web giant has set its eyes is among the fastest growing of the bunch: app analytics.

Yahoo hopes to capitalize on developers’ growing appetite for user data with the acquisition of Flurry Inc., a San Francisco-based software shop that focuses on helping customers gain a better understanding of their mobile audiences. No financial terms were disclosed for the deal, but TechCrunch cited an anonymous source as saying that the transaction is valued somewhere between $200 to $300 million, which would make it the company’s biggest investment since buying blogging powerhouse Tumblr for $1.1 billion last year.

If accurate, that figure also represents a hefty return for Flurry’s investors, which have collectively injected a total of more than $73 million into the company since it hit the scene in 2005. In the nine year that have passed, the humble startup has grown into a true force in the mobile development industry with over 170,000 users across 150 countries and a footprint spanning 1.4 billion devices generating some 5.5 billion sessions every day, according to internal numbers.

The Flurry appeal

 

Flurry divides its attention among three markets. For developers, its core audience, the firm offers a free service that provides insight into how consumers  interact with an application down to every last menu tap, level completion and ad impression. That data is processed into visualizations that present a detailed view of how users travel through the app and allow developers to compare metrics such as session length and retention with the category average.  The company claims that the tool is used to track over 540,000 apps across iOS, Android, Blackberry, Windows Phone and the mobile web.

For advertisers, Flurry offers the same technology in an expanded package aimed at making it easier for brands target consumers across multiple apps as opposed to just individual titles. The product breaks down audiences by not only age and gender but also “personas” based on the individual’s areas of interest, includes a survey tool courtesy of partner Research Now and a packs a granular identification feature that allows advertisers to push out custom promotions to specific devices.  In exchange for providing that functionality, Flurry takes a 20 percent cut from any sale generated through the service.

The Publishers edition of Flurry’s offering offers the same level of visibility as the other two versions  but provides a number of value-added capabilities on top of that, notably an automated ad space acquisition  service and the ability to serve video ads and free cross-promotion among apps owned by the same account. The core features of the offering are available at no charge while advanced functions such as persona-based targeting incur a flat fee ranging between $0.1 to $2 per impression.

Blurry Flurry future

 

Yahoo said that Flurry will continue to operate independently with the current team and offices intact after the deal goes through, but didn’t go into detail about how it plans to bake the company’s technology into its portfolio. No matter how CEO Marissa Mayer approaches it, however, the interaction will put her firm  in a more competitive position, adding Flurry’s rivals to Yahoo’s  list of competitors.

photo credit: qthomasbower via photopin cc

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