Mnectar and Branch Metrics have partnered to make mobile games better. They’re trying to raise adoption for Mnectar’s “playable ads,” where a player can tap an ad on a mobile device and briefly play a game.
Mnectar’s playable ads are based on cloud technology that streams a version of an advertised game to a user’s phone. With the cloud technology, the player can play the game before actually downloading it. It helps with app discoverability, and Mnectar says it improves player retention. Meanwhile, Branch Metrics has contextual mobile deep-linking technology.
That means a player can download an app and then return to the section of the game that they were playing within the playable ad. This is called deep linking. And Mnectar believes that the deep linking makes for a better user experience as the experience is continued in a sequential manner when the user installs and opens the app. This way, a player doesn’t have to play through a section of a game that he or she already played.
“Integrating playable ads and deep linking with mobile gaming is a first,” said Wally Nguyen, the CEO at Mnectar, in a statement. “The entire app ecosystem, specifically gaming, is currently missing out on the benefits of combining the two.”
“Developers across our network see nearly 100 percent lift on both the conversion to register and the one-month retention for users who originate from a contextual deep link,” said Branch Metrics’ cofounder Mada Seghete, in a statement. “It’s the best way to welcome and delight users: by showing them what they expect to see.”
San Francisco-based Mnectar said that its advertisers are seeing user retention rates that are four times as effective as other types of mobile advertising and twice as effective as video ads.
Mnectar recently raised $1 million. It has raised $8 million to date from New Enterprise Associates, Fenox Venture Capital, Social Starts, Correlation Ventures, and XG Ventures. Facebook also has a deep-linking technology that it calls App Links. Since its introduction last year, App Links URLs have been used more than 7 billion times.