Analytics firm Flurry takes on Testflight with new data-driven app ad platform AppSpot

Flurry is a company that is most known for its huge analytics platform that’s integrated in more than 160K apps across iOS, Android, Windows Phone and the web. Now, it’s using that data to launch a new ad platform it’s calling AppSpot.

Flurry describes AppSpot as a ‘data-powered’ advertising platform. Basically, its planning on using the data that it gathers across 500M devices running its analytics platform and using it to supercharge the ad targeting of its new ad platform. This is an incredibly smart move, one that other companies are going into as well.

Just last week saw the announcement that ad platform Burstly had acquired Testflight, the app beta testing service. The acquisition had actually happened late last year but was only revealed after they had finished building a brand new analytics product called Testflight Live.

Burstly’s ad products will no doubt benefit heavily from the data gathered by Testflight Live’s detailed analytics about app users and their app usage habits, effectively bringing Testflight into the ad game. This is exactly the kind of data that Flurry is looking to use to help it target its advertising better.

Flurry points to its own data to that says time spent using mobile apps is over 20x greater than the money publishers spend on mobile device ads.

 Audience targeting for ads is an art, one that is powered heavily by data. You may not like ads in your apps, but that’s how many of your favorite developers make money,  for better or worse. And well-targeted ads mean more revenue for them and more money to make more apps. If there are going to be ads, they might as well be effective and thematically appropriate.

Here’s the big kicker to the Flurry announcement though, by default, Flurry will not be charging to serve up ads, its only when a publisher chooses premium targeting that Flurry will start to charge. That’s smart, because it gets people in using their service and allows them to flip a toggle to try out their ‘better targeting’.

“With so many companies vying to claim a part of their success, app publishers pay too much in fees today,” says Rahul Bafna, Flurry senior director of product management.  “Unlike other services, we built Flurry AppSpot so that publishers pay only after Flurry has delivered them additional revenue. ”

Like it or not, ads are here to stay. Making them more effective means less of them cluttering up your apps and more cash flow for the developers that make your favorite free titles on the App Store and Android Market.

Combining analytics and ad platforms for mobile is a very smart move and I don’t think that Flurry, Testflight and Burstly are the last we’ll hear of this trend.