App Annie acquires app marketing data company AppScotch

App Annie will use AppScotch's technology to release its own marketing data product

(Updated with comment from App Annie)

Mobile apps are big business. There are now a whopping 1.6 billion apps availabile in the Google Play store and there have been 100 billion cumulative downloads from the App Store. Worldwide mobile app revenue is over $41 billion.

Taking advantage of that opportunity, App Annie has built itself into a valuable resource for developers, giving them access to data on revenues, downloads, advertising, user metrics and consumer engagement. Now it's adding another component and product, this time centered around marketing data.

App Annie announced on Monday that it has acquired app marketing data company AppScotch. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed.

Founded in 2014, AppScotch's mission was to "bring transparency into the world of mobile advertising," Andrey Kazakov, Co-founder and CEO at AppScotch, wrote in a blog post. 

AppScotch allows advertisers to discover publishers, learn about different creative optimization strategies and identify the ones that perform the best. Publishers could use it to find advertisers, and learn about monetization partners and strategies to get the best eCPM. Agencies can use it to discover new clients, close more deals, and learn about premium advertisers who are ready to buy more.

While AppScotch has collected hundreds of millions of mobile ad impressions across dozens of countries and networks, by becoming a part of App Annie, which has over 500,000 registered members and 15 global offices, the company will be able to scale its technology much faster and reach a wider audience. 

"As the mobile advertising economy grows, we believe there will be an increasing need for competitive marketing information. Joining App Annie allows us to scale our technology and complement one of the the industry’s most trusted providers of app market data, enabling more insights for more companies," Kazakov said.

App Annie will be incorporating its technology, using the purchase to develop its next product, called Marketing Intelligence, its solution "aimed to inform all aspects of your mobile advertising, marketing and monetization strategy."

App Annie will communicate at a later date with existing customers about the transition of the current experience to the next phase of the product. However, additional development efforts will be focused on creating a more advanced product which will become available only on App Annie’s platform," Bertrand Schmitt, CEO and co-founder at App Annie, told VatorNews. 

"The AppScotch team has built some exciting complementary technology. The next major release in App Annie’s Intelligence product suite will focus on adding new app advertising metrics to aid marketers assessing and optimizing their marketing and creative strategies. This new release will leverage some of AppScotch's technology," he said.

"We are always looking for technologies and talent that enhance our products and mission. The AppScotch team shares our passion for apps and this acquisition will help us deliver another wave of powerful products for app publishers and marketers. App Annie continues its quest to bring more transparency and clarity for all who desire to run a better app business."

AppScotch had raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Almaz Capital, IMI.VC and ImpulseVC.

This acquisition follows the close of App Annie's $63 million funding round in January, which brought it's total venture funding to $157 million. 

This is App Annie's third acquisition in two years. It previously purchased Dutch firm Distimo in 2014 and the Canadian firm Mobidia in 2015.

Here's a short video from AppScotch, explaining a little more about what it does:

(Image source: blog.appannie.com)