There are over half a million apps on the App Store. That’s great for consumers, except for sifting through the bad ones, but for developers it’s creating fierce competition. Now, it’s not enough to just launch an app and hope it does well. Developers need a partner such as San Francisco-based PlayHaven, who offers its Lifetime Value (LTV) Maximization platform for iOS, and now Android, to engage their users for the long-term. Oh, and monetize of course.
They’re expanding extremely fast with 150 percent increase in users and game sessions over the past six months. Their client roster has some of the bigger names such as Tapulous, Pocket Gems, Natural Motion, NAMCO and Digital Chocolate.
I recently interviewed Andy Yang, CEO of PlayHaven, who walked me through some of the bells and whistles of their LTV platform and I must say, it’s impressive. With a robust toolkit and user friendly web-based dashboard, their platform enables developers to increase the LTV of their users by employing customizable HTML5 content called Dynamic Overlays within their app without submitting an update to the App Store.
This is huge, as any developer will tell you that submitting an update can become cumbersome and costly. Taking this step out gives them more time to focus on providing value to the player and connecting to them in the fastest way possible.
It’s the ultimate way for developers to acquire, retain, re-engage, and monetize their players.
One of the greatest features, which is new, is their Virtual Goods Promotion Tool. It’s a module that has huge potential for increasing the success of social mobile games by simplifying the process in which the developer directs players to the virtual goods or in-app purchases.
For me, there is nothing worse than getting annoying pop-ups and ads that are difficult to navigate and linger too long. PlayHaven’s platform is so sleek you don’t even notice them. They look like they’re part of the game and they’re non-intrusive, which is a great feature for keeping the flow of the game going. And according to the company, early testing by their partners have shown that using this new tool can increase revenue by over 400 percent per user. Cha-ching.
“The field of in-app monetization is constantly changing and PlayHaven has decided to lead the charge towards greater innovation with our revolutionary new features,” says Andy Yang, CEO of PlayHaven. “Our LTV platform has already reshaped the App Store process in a way that allows developers to forgo resubmission for simple updates. Our latest additions are sophisticated and powerful tools which hand in-app revenue optimization to iOS and Android developers.”
They’re not stopping there though. Soon to be added to their toolkit is the Segmentation feature. Basically, it allows developers to target specific players based on specific data that is based on real-time metrics taken from the LTV platform. This is targeted marketing at its best.
PlayHaven has a reach of 30 million unique users who are driving 350 million game sessions per month. With its dynamic and easy to use LTV platform, proven monetization track record and impressive client list, you can bet their phones are ringing off the hook. Wait, who uses their phone for calls anymore?
