Mobile app developers face a lot of friction when it comes to getting people to use their apps. They have to advertise the app and get a user to touch the ad, download the app, and then start to use it. But 1APP wants to address that by making apps infinitely distributable.
Raheel Hasan, CEO of 1APP, spoke about this at our recent GamesBeat Summit 2017 event in a lightning talk. He noted how app distribution hasn’t changed much in the past 10 years, and the cost of advertising apps has skyrocketed. 1APP has virtualized Android in the cloud so that you can access the app or game instantly.
When you tap on a link in an ad, you can instantly play the game. These links can appear anywhere, such as a Twitter stream, and you can bypass the app stores altogether. Hasan believes that will restore virality to apps and allow them to become platform agnostic, so they can run on any device.
The concept is a lot like deep linking. Say you have Spotify and want to share a song with someone. If you do, you don’t have to worry if they don’t have the app. You share a link, they tap on it, and it plays instantly.
For growth marketers, 1App has created InstantClick, which provides clickable web links that can be dropped into any consumer-facing marketing channel. InstantClick can be used in existing channels to provide a full app experience to have users complete a transaction or install an app. There are a variety of options startups are trying to accomplish this same kind of task. Facebook Instant Game makers, for instance, are doing the same thing through HTML5 apps in messaging streams. But Hasan believes that his technology can deliver the best experience.
Please check out Hasan’s talk in the YouTube video.