Victoria-based startup Tapstream is announcing a seed round worth $700,000 this morning, lead by the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) and others.
Tapstream is a marketing dashboard for app makers that solves the user acquisition problem for apps. Users can track acquisition, retention, and ROI across hundreds of channels, while app makers can gain complete clarity of marketing ROI, “enabling them to reduce cost of customer acquisition and focus on channels with high customer lifetime value.”
Tapstream’s customers include Bleacher Report, WebMD, HootSuite, KISSmetrics, and Neverblue, who use Tapstream to manage and measure millions of dollars of direct advertising and brand advertising spend.
“Our platform has seen a tremendous growth this year, an average of 40 percent month-over-month. This seed round marks the next big step for Tapstream’s mobile app marketing toolset. It allows us to expand our free mobile marketing attribution to all app developers, regardless of the size of their user-base” said CEO Slaven Radic.
Tapstream says it works as simply and accurately as cookies do for the web, for both paid user acquisition through mobile ad networks and organic marketing through mobile web, social networks and inbound. Its services goes “beyond attribution, with built-in analytics to highlight app engagement, brand lift, and monetization broken down per marketing channel.” Cohort analysis further “supercharge” any type of app marketing.
According to the company, creating a successful app has never been harder: the competition is fierce, CPI rates are higher than ever and the audience is getting more fickle.
The company offers a freemium payment model, where a free account can access several marketing analytics like Per-channel LTV and engagement analytics and inbound analytics (website impression tracking). The next account costs significantly more: $495 per month for an advanced account that also gives insight into advanced user acquisition metrics.
Founded in 2012, the company is based in Victoria, but has offices in both Vancouver and San Francisco. iOS, Android, Windows, PhoneGap and Unity amongst others.