A new eBook: Unlocking Mobile App Alpha

We recently published a co-authored eBook that featured a collaboration between our data partners Sensor Tower and our own team at Maiden Centruy.

Below is a summary and you can access the full eBook for free here.

Investment managers, including Hedge Funds, Private Equity, and Venture Capital firms, are increasingly turning to mobile app intelligence to make more informed decisions. This data-driven approach provides a valuable lens through which they can view the performance of companies and sectors, whether in the public or private domain. For instance, traditional metrics might not provide a comprehensive view of a company’s health, especially when it comes to mobile-first businesses like Uber. In these cases, app intelligence can fill in the gaps, offering insights into Monthly Active Users (MAU), consumer behavior, and other key performance indicators (KPIs).

 

For private investors, this method is particularly useful as private entities often don’t have the obligation to disclose as much information as public companies. Mobile app intelligence can give these investors a way to gauge the performance of companies’ apps, track consumer responses to new products, and understand customer retention and churn rates. Metrics such as MAU can offer insight into the overall health of a company or even an entire sector, allowing investors to spot new opportunities and assess risks.

 

Hedge Funds were the pioneers in using mobile app intelligence to make investment decisions. These funds saw an opportunity to leverage this type of data to predict how mobile-first businesses would perform. As this practice gained acceptance, other investment vehicles like Private Equity and Venture Capital firms have also adopted it. Far from abandoning this data source, Hedge Funds have doubled down on it, recognizing that having mobile app intelligence is becoming standard practice, especially for those investing in mobile-first companies.

 

App intelligence is not limited to mobile-first businesses; it’s also useful for companies that have incorporated mobile apps as an additional channel for customer interaction. Metrics from app intelligence can serve as a strong proxy for overall user behavior, providing insights into market-level growth scenarios as well as the potential for a single app’s adoption. The data can help investors understand everything from macroeconomic trends to company-specific issues like competition and risk management.

 

 

The variety of usecases for mobile app intelligence includes idea generation, due diligence, benchmarking, macro trend analysis, and more. To make the most out of these data sets, investors often rely on platforms like Maiden Century, which sits between widely-used datasets and the world’s preeminent investors. Our platform helps streamline the journey from raw data to actionable insights and offers various KPIs such as global downloads, daily and weekly active users, and session count and time spent on the app.

 

Choosing the right KPIs is crucial and depends on the stage of adoption an app is in. For well-established apps like Instagram, metrics like “new downloads” may not be as revealing as “active users” or “session count,” which offer insights into current user engagement. For newer apps, it’s important to look at both downloads and usage. If these metrics start to deviate, it could signal potential problems with the app’s ability to engage its user base. Investment managers often also consider other data points like ad spend and number of impressions to evaluate the effectiveness of an app’s marketing strategies.

 

Finally, understanding user engagement is key for apps relying on ad revenue. The ‘Total Time Spent’ KPI is particularly crucial here, as it correlates well with ad revenues. Maximizing this metric is often a priority for app publishers, whether it’s by offering entertaining content or essential free services.

 

To dive deeper into App Intelligence and learn how investors use this data, access the full eBook here.