UPDATED 07:07 EDT / MARCH 25 2015

The Big Business of Mobile Analytics NEWS

Localytics gets $35 million in SAP-led funding to inject more data into mobile apps

Phone gearThe analytics bandwagon arrived at the mobile universe this week after Localytics Inc. closed a $35 million investment from venture capitalists to help drive the adoption of its data-driven targeting service. The funding follows a record year that saw revenue more than double, according to the company.

That boost came on the back of an equally impressive increase in the number of organizations leveraging Localytics’ cloud-based platform, which provides information on how users interact with mobile applications. The startup stands out from the many others offering similar services thanks to an integrated approach that pairs the data with functionality for acting upon it.

That integration allows publishers to distill insights about the habits of their audiences into push notifications and in-app messages that are customized accordingly. A marketer could, for example, measure how much time members of a particular demographic spend on an application every day, produce more of the content that proved the most effective in holding their attention and test different variations for the optimal recipe, all without leaving the dashboard.

The ability to carry out the entire process in the same environment instead of switching back and forth among different services as is required with some alternatives is apparently big enough of a benefit to have helped Localytics win over big-name customers such as Microsoft, Visa Inc. and Home Box Office, Inc. The new funding is meant to fuel the development of predictive analytic functionality to reinforce that advantage.

Yet the most notable part of the investment is not what the startup plans to do with the capital but rather where it’s coming from. The round was led by Sapphire Ventures, the investment arm of business intelligent SAP SE, which is locked in a fierce competition with Oracle and Adobe Systems Inc. over enterprise marketing budgets.

It’s not uncommon for big vendors to buy a stake in potential acquisition targets before swooping in, a move that would make sense in this case. The addition of a proven (not to mention popular) mobile solution such as Localytics’ service could provide SAP with a potential edge. At the very least, having a seat on the board should make it considerably harder for competitors to make a move.

The round, which brings Localytics’ total raised to $60 million, also saw the participation of existing backers Foundation Capital and Polaris Partners. Doug Higgins of Sapphire is joining the startup’s board as part of the investment.

Image via Pixabay

A message from John Furrier, co-founder of SiliconANGLE:

Your vote of support is important to us and it helps us keep the content FREE.

One click below supports our mission to provide free, deep, and relevant content.  

Join our community on YouTube

Join the community that includes more than 15,000 #CubeAlumni experts, including Amazon.com CEO Andy Jassy, Dell Technologies founder and CEO Michael Dell, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, and many more luminaries and experts.

“TheCUBE is an important partner to the industry. You guys really are a part of our events and we really appreciate you coming and I know people appreciate the content you create as well” – Andy Jassy

THANK YOU