Durham startup Appia, founded by Jud Bowman six years ago, is becoming part of Mandalay Digital in a stock deal worth some $100 million. Th sale was announced Thursday evening after the markets closed.
Why sell?
Bowman knew Mandalay as a business partner and in a conference call he told analysts: “[T]he revenue metrics from our partnership with Mandalay Digital are better than anything we’ve seen to-date. It’s so great that we wanted to be a part of it.” Read why Bowman made the deal in his own words, based on a transcript provided by the financial news website SeekingAlpha:
“We founded Appia six years ago, the month that Apple launched the App Stores. So, we’ve been here since the beginning. And we held a belief that the smartphone and apps are the transformational technology platform of our time. So now forward six years, and over 100 billion app downloads from the App Store and Google Play, the number of apps has now surged pass 2 million. And as the number of apps continues to increase exponentially, app discovery is becoming a harder and harder problem for consumers and also for app developers, game developers and brands that are trying to get their apps discovered.
“Since 2008, Appia has focused on creating solutions to help those marketers in driving mobile app discovery, while achieving higher lifetime value user acquisition and positive return on ad spend. We’ve grown to become the number one independent app-install network driving more than 85 million sponsored app installed to-date on behalf of hundreds of advertisers and agencies including 60 of the top 100 grossing apps on the App Store and Google Play, only Facebook has driven more app-installs.
“[The transaction] started earlier this year as a partnership combining Appia’s app-install network and advertisers with the Digital Turbine class room for app-installs both Ignite and IQ. And … the numbers were nothing short of extraordinary.
“Appia works with more than 200 publishers today across the mobile ecosystem and we serve literally hundreds of millions of app-install ads every single day across iOS and Android. And the revenue metrics from our partnership with Mandalay Digital are better than anything we’ve seen to-date. It’s so great that we wanted to be a part of it. As a key Mandalay Digital partner, we’ve been amazed at the revenue per device metrics from Mandalay’s recent operator launches including Verizon and T-Mobile and couldn’t be more excited to join forces.
“The reason the numbers were better is simple, the Digital Turbine app preload solution takes several steps out of the app-install process, which is great for both the carrier and the user. In essence, it greatly simplifies the conversion flow for users, and as a result, the revenue metrics are in order of magnitude greater than any other model Appia has seen from 85 million plus app-installs that we’ve driven to-date and we’re just getting started.”
The full transcript can be read online.
