Mobile analytics and engagement solutions are among the most competitive arenas in the mobile app space, especially as more startups enter the market.
To combat this heavily fragmented space, mobile analytics firm Kontagent and mobile monetization platform PlayHaven announced Wednesday that they are pooling their resources by merging.
“Creating a top application today involves dozens of SDKs and services [and so] we’re excited to take this leap forward — offering an end-to-end solution that greatly reduces complexity and helps developers act quickly in a highly competitive environment,” said Josh Williams, CEO of Kontagent who will become the new (and currently un-named) company’s CTO.
Both companies will begin to come together as a unified platform throughout the course of 2014, wrote PlayHaven CEO Andy Yang (who will be the CEO of the combined company) in a blog post. Once the merger is complete, the combined solution will reach more than 400 million monthly active users and track more than 370 billion events per month, according to the firms.
Kontagent and PlayHaven have not provided details yet on how existing customers will be grandfathered into the new solution and both services will remain individually available for the time being.
Prior to the merger, PlayHaven had raised $8 million in revenue from GGV Capital, E.ventures and Tandem Entrepreneurs, and Kontagent had raised $17.5 million from Altos Ventures, Maverick Capital and others. Mobile gaming continues to grow more lucrative. Mobile gaming revenue is expected to nearly double between 2013 and 2015, from $13.2 billion to $22 billion, according to Gartner.
PlayHaven and Kontagent face stiff competition from other players that are focused on the mobile apps space, such as Flurry, Fiksu and Chartboost. Through its mobile app install ads and analytics offerings, Facebook also has a growing presence in mobile apps. Twitter is getting into the game as well with its new native ads for mobile apps offering.
Founded in 2009, San Francisco-based PlayHaven was originally a social network for gamers before relaunching as a monetization platform. It offers acquisition, engagement and monetization tools for mobile apps and games and its services include an ad network for app-install ads and in-app ads.
Also based in San Francisco, 6-year-old Kontagent provides user metrics on mobile games (i.e., playing time, where users are most engaged, drop-off point) to help developers optimize their apps.
