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Earlier this month, mobile market intelligence platform AppMagic raised $3 million in a Series A funding round, eight years after it was founded in 2016.
The firm provides mobile apps and games data such as revenue and download estimates, app rankings, global and regional market estimates, ad intelligence, live ops analysis, and more.
Its investment round comes just a few months after the market intelligence space saw a major shakeup in March, as the two market leaders merged with Sensor Tower acquiring its chief rival data.ai for an undisclosed fee.
“In previous years, I didn’t understand completely how exactly we can catch up to the market leaders, which were data.ai and Sensor Tower,” AppMagic founder and CEO Max Samorukov tells PocketGamer.biz.
“Just in the past year, I’ve finally realised how exactly we can work out such metrics as retention, DAU, organic rate split, and some others; session times, session lengths, and I learned how to get this data and how to accomplish all this work.
“So we just needed financial leverage for this.”
AppMagic doesn’t have an office, and instead its team is distributed globally. Most of its staff are based in Europe, but it aims to use its new resources to expand with dedicated sales teams in key markets in the US, China, South Korea and Japan. Funding will also go toward the research and development of new platform features.
Competitive opportunities
AppMagic faces a tough, competitive market. Sensor Tower had previously raised $45m in 2020, data.ai had raised approximately $157m in the years prior to its sale, according to Tracxn, while the two have also made other acquisitions in the past, including for Pathmatics and Libring.
Their merger brings together significant investments in market intelligence, a substantial team size, and feature rich platforms.
“Their price war has ended … they went down a lot during the last five years because of the price war.”
Max Samorukov
Samorukov admits “it’s probably not enough to compete with them” when it comes to fighting for first place. For its current pipeline, he says the $3m funding is enough for the next couple of years, “and then it depends on our ability to grow in scale”. At that point, the company may seek further investment.
He also explains that Sensor Tower’s big deal may have benefits for other players in the space.
“Their price war has ended … they went down a lot during the last five years because of the price war,” says Samorukov.
“Many other companies in the market are now looking for an alternative and we are here for it. So we are actually in a good position thanks to the deal.”
Samorukov says AppMagic aims to effectively be that alternative, and claims no other platform positions itself as a substitute to Sensor Tower to cover a range of data points, instead focusing specifically on areas such as ad intelligence and ASO.
“We are the only platform that actually has really everything, starting from ad intelligence down to downloads estimates and monetisation intelligence,” he states.
Future of market intelligence
One of the key challenges faced by market intelligence platforms is how they can maintain data accuracy amid shifts in ware publishers generate their revenue.
Platforms like AppMagic provide estimates for apps and games on the App Store and Google Play, with no visibility on third-party Android stores, such as the highly lucrative marketplaces in China.
Meanwhile, a move to web shops, third-party payments opening up, more third-party marketplaces popping up in the West, and a shift to cross-platform all create holes in data gathering. So how will companies like AppMagic take on this challenge?
“There are platforms in the market which cover just PC and console stores,” says Samorukov.
“So there are technical ways to get this data, and there are ways to get the data for web shops. The accuracy is going to be lower compared to mobile app intelligence because we have top charts and we know who is above every other competitor.
“So the accuracy is going to be worse. But nevertheless, it’s very important to understand the performance of IPs across platforms, and definitely it’s in our backlog.
“It’s not only this, but it’s PC, console, web shop and also ad revenue. It’s a very important thing, a very demanded feature and we are right now working on that, and I hope we will release it this year.”
For more insights on the market intelligence landscape, you can read our interview with Sensor Tower COO Tom Cui here.
