Flurry started out as a mobile analytics firm, but it has built a bunch of services for app developers around that. And now it says that its video ad network is one of its most popular new services. Video ad views across its Flurry AppCircle network soared past 100 million views in the month of August.
The San Francisco company hit this milestone a year after making AppCircle Clips video ads available on Apple’s iOS (iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch) platform. And today, the company is also announcing that it has created AppCircle Clips on Android for both publishers and advertisers.
AppCircle Clips enables an advertiser to reach the right mobile users with TV-style trailers for brand campaigns. Advertisers can efficiently reach consumers already using certain apps and hit them with engaging video ads that are likely to appeal to them based on analytics data such as demographics, geography, device, personas, and more.
“Video has established itself as an important format for mobile advertising,” said Simon Khalaf, Flurry president and chief executive officer. “The unprecedented success we’re seeing for in-app video advertising demonstrates how smartphone and tablet consumer behavior closely mirrors that of television viewing, where consumers accept commercials in exchange for their content experience.”
Game publisher Gaia Interactive used AppCircle to reach consumers with video ads that worked better than static banner ads. The consumers that AppCircle found for Gaia’s Monster Galaxy battle game used the application 43 percent more often and 23 percent longer per session than the average user. Monster Galaxy hit No. 15 in the games section of the iTunes App Store when it was launched in September 2011, but it fell out of the top 100 ranks after only six days. Banner ad campaigns were ineffective. Gaia relaunched with a strategy to target new users who were more intense, hardcore players via mobile video ads. Gaia distributed the ads on Flurry’s AppCircle Clips, which reaches millions of users in Flurry’s publisher network. Users were asked to install the app after the video ran.
“Flurry AppCircle Clips is a top acquisition channel for Gaia Interactive to build high quality app audiences,” said John Dionisio, Gaia Interactive director of marketing and business development. “AppCircle Clips campaigns deliver audiences we care about, while exceeding all user quality performance metrics we track versus our other acquisition channels.”
Flurry also said that developers and publishers on Android can now use AppSpot to serve video ads, with eCPMs (a measure of performance for ads, dubbed effective cost per thousand) above $10. Android advertisers can now create video trailers for their Android apps and promote them on the Flurry AppCircle network to reach targeted audiences.