Mobile game developer Rovio today announced that Angry Birds Toons, an upcoming cartoon series based on the company’s popular game franchise, will be accessible within all Angry Birds mobile games.

After installing an update, any of the Angry Birds apps will be able to get access to a new channel button in each game’s home screen, which is where users can watch episodes of the show.

The cartoon series is scheduled to begin airing this upcoming weekend (March 16 for broadcast TV and March 17 for on-demand services) on a dedicated channel within Rovio’s game portfolio, and on Comcast’s U.S. video platforms like Xfinity on Demand, Xfinity.com.tv and in the Xfinity TV Player app on Samsung Smart TVs. Rovio plans to add support for Roku and other platforms in the future. In other parts of the world, the Angry Birds Toons will air on FOX8 in Australia, JEI TV in South Korea, ANTV in Indonesia, Cartoon Networking in India, MTV3 Juniori and MTV3 in Finland, the Children’s Channel in Israel, 1+1 networks in Ukraine, Gulli and Canal J in France, SUPER RTL in Germany, TV2 in Norway, Canal 13 in Chile and Gloob in Brazil. Rovio has also partnered with Activision, Paramount Pictures, BlackBerry and Sony Pictures for the launch of the Angry Birds Toons channel.

So far, Rovio has planned 52 episodes for the cartoon series, with a new episode scheduled to air every Sunday. Rovio hopes the cartoon show will help with increasing installs as well as its engagement and retention rates for its Angry Birds games.

User acquisition and marketing company Fisku today reported a cost per loyal user decrease of 7 percent from $1.67 in its December 2012 Index to $1.56 in its January 2013 Index. The Boston-based company defines a loyal user as a person who will open an app at least three times. Compared to January 2012′s average cost of $1.14 per user, January 2013′s user acquisition cost is up 37 percent year-over-year, but the drop from December 2012 to January 2013 by 7 percent was not as dramatic as the drop from December 2011 to January 2012 by 59 percent, which fell from $1.81 to $1.14 per loyal user.

The company, which measures the average aggregate daily download volume of the top 200 free U.S. iPhone apps, saw mobile app downloads increase by 13 percent from 5.32 million daily downloads in December 2012 to 6.01 million downloads in January. With monetization company Flurry which saw 50 million iOS and Android device activations and 1.76 billion apps downloaded during Christmas week last year, Fiksu says the high trend of user activity and app discovery continued into January.

CEO Micah Adler says Fiksu’s January Indexes are early indicators of the “mainstreaming of mobile advertising,” meaning marketers emphasizing value over volume by spreading their budgets out for maximum profit, especially to mobile advertising campaigns.

“We expect brands to allocate more dedicated spending to mobile advertising campaigns in 2013 and to only get savvier about aligning seasonal spending to the ebbs and flows of user acquisition costs,” he says, in a statement.

Game cross-promotion network Applifier today revealed data from its recently launched game recording service Everyplay as well as a new its new FaceCam featu.

Everyplay is a service that allows users to record gameplay from iOS games, with the aim to drive social discovery for a developer’s mobile game. Developers can integrate the service into its games  with the free Everyplay SDK. Applifier founder and CEO Jussi Laakkonen says Everplay is meant to capture that word-of-mouth sharing moment of a mobile game between friends in-person, but in digital form through gameplay replays. Users can share their replays through social services including Facebook, YouTube or Twitter.

“We are trying to approach the discovery problem by not approaching the discovery problem,” he says. “We are trying to enable you, the player, to share meaningful moments from the games you like. That in turn, solves the discovery problem because it’s authentic, social, word-of-mouth, in action, in video form — you can actually see what it is.”

The Helsinki and San Francisco-based company revealed Everyplay replay sharing data from the mobile game Stair Dismount. The objective in Stair Dismount is to earn points by breaking the most bones in the dummy after launching the dummy down stairs and other environments. The game saw 10,000 video replays recorded by players in 30 days. The most popular sharing vehicle by far was Facebook, with 50 percent of the shares followed by YouTube with 35 percent and Twitter with 15 percent. Drilling deeper into its Facebook sharing data, Applifier found that an average of 15 friends watched every replay and 12 percent clicked through to download the game from the Apple App Store. So far, Laakkonen says about 10 games have integrated Everyplay along with dozens of games with Everyplay integration that have yet to be released.

“The best way to discover good games is through friends, somebody showing me,” he says. “This is what we want to recreate digitally, so its shareable and you can go authentically viral.”

Moving on to the new feature, FaceCam utilizes a device’s front-facing camera and speaker for users to add themselves into a replay through video and audio commentary, which Laakkonen believes, changes a replay from just a gameplay clip to a meaningful moment from a user. Click here for an example of the new FaceCam feature.

Currently, Everyplay doesn’t monetize, but Laakonen believes the service could follow YouTube’s model for content monetization where a promoted video would be shown right before a video.

Applifier funding to date totals $6 million from backers including Lifeline Ventures, MHS Capital, PROfounders Capital, Tekes, Webb Investment Network and angel investors.

For developers interested in Everyplay, click here for additional information about the service and registration for FaceCam’s private beta, which is expected to roll out in March. (more…)

Monetization and user acquisition provider W3i announced that it has partnered with affiliate marketing company HasOffers. More specifically, W3i will be integrated into HasOffers’ third-party tracking service MobileAppTracking, which allows app developers to track ad networks, and see exactly which network, like W3i, resulted in acquiring users, for example.

“We were first to market in this category and really serve to equip advertisers to work with whatever distribution partners they want, however they want,” says HasOffers CEO Peter Hamilton. “We do not use their data for any sort of retargeting or separate ad network monetization. We simply charge as a software as a service model to the advertiser or app owner.”

With the MobileAppTracking product, mobile app developers can essentially figure out which ads are working or not. Cookie tracking, which is how web advertisers effectively reach its target audience, is limited on mobile, making it more difficult for app developers to track app installs and determine their cost per install (CPI). Without accurate tracking, app developers can’t attribute app installs back to an ad network or publisher responsible for driving a download. With the use of device fingerprinting, which allows the identification of a user or device without cookie tracking, MobileAppTracking can determine which user installed a developer’s app after clicking an ad and where they came from.

Essentially, mobile app advertisers can now follow their app marketing performance in detail, thus getting the most out of their budget by putting their money in the right places as well as track the lifetime value (LTV) of a customer they acquire.

Hamilton says W3i went the extra mile to reconcile their findings with HasOffers’ to provide mobile app advertisers with the most insight possible in real-time. Services that W3i offers its customers include an offer exchange, freemium game expertise and advanced ad optimization technology which includes A/B testing, heat-mapping and predictive analytics.

“Online advertising is about relationships, and we simply work to help those relationships grow through transparency in technology,” he says.

Mobile app developers generally work with more than one ad network to promote their app to generate installs and acquire users, so MobileAppTracking supports more than 85 ad networks like Tapjoy, Mojiva, InMobi and now W3i.

Customers can track anything such as distribution partners like ad networks, publishers, and affiliates, or by tutorial completions, which countries performed best and more.

App developers can install the MobileAppTracking SDK into their iOS or Android app, choose the publishers they work with and use the tracking link generated in their campaigns, which serves as the destination URL.

About 20 percent of the top 100 grossing iOS apps are using Facebook’s mobile app install ads to drive more downloads, said Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg during the company’s Q4 2012 earnings call yesterday.

Facebook first launched its mobile app install ad unit in mid-October 2012 for iOS and Android developers that have integrated Facebook into their apps. The ad unit allows developers to promote their native mobile apps in the News Feed of Facebook’s mobile app. An “Install Now” prompt in the ad unit sends users to an app’s landing page in the Apple App Store or Google Play.

Mobile-social gaming developer and publisher Cie Games used Facebook’s mobile app install ads to drive installs to its new game, Car Town Streets. As a result, it made the top 10 games chart on iOS in multiple countries with a 40 percent lower cost per install compared to its other advertising channels, Sandberg said. Sandberg believed that Facebook’s mobile app install ad units will help retail, travel and financial services transition their business into mobile.

Facebook advertising company Nanigans ran a successful campaign for an unnamed e-commerce company during the holidays using Facebook’s mobile app install ads. The app moved from the No. 253 spot to the No. 5 spot at the end of the 10-day campaign. Naningans found an average click-through-rate (CTR) of 0.74 percent, and the app acquired more than 24,300 new installs in 10 days. The campaign cost $325,000, delivering 32.5 million impressions.

Sandberg cited ComScore research in December, which found that Facebook aided the app discovery process for new mobile apps. Among the users who discovered new apps from Facebook, 48 percent clicked directly from the Facebook app to download the new apps.

Facebook now takes 23 percent of all time spent on mobile apps in the U.S., according to ComScore, a point Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg reiterated in the company’s earnings call yesterday. Facebook also reported in its quarterly earnings that its mobile daily active users (DAUs) count exceeded 618 million, surpassing the social network’s web DAUs for the first time ever.

Monetization and insights provider W3i today released data for two of its partners, mobile game developers SkyVu and PlayCoMo, both of which saw a spike in daily new users and daily active users (DAUs) while featured on the Google Play app store.

Featured in Google Play from Dec. 21-28, 2012, SkyVu’s action game Battle Bears Royale saw an increase of 1,899 percent in new users acquired, averaging 148,100 new users daily and peaking at 200,023 new users on Dec. 21. After the featuring on the Google Play Store, the game averaged 233,967 DAUs, an increase in DAU by 3,058 percent, reaching as high as 270,478 DAUs on Christmas Day.

PlayCoMo watched its breeding management title Little Dragons increase by 4,686 percent in new users acquired, with a DAU increase of 514 percent. It should be noted that Battle Bears Royale had a primary feature on Google Play while Little Dragons had a secondary feature.

The impact of app store features has been well documented before like fitness app Runkeeper boosting its download count by 673 percent after being featured in Google Play.

W3i provided monetization solutions for both SkyVu’s and PlayCoMo’s Android games before the holidays as well. W3i co-founder and senior vice president said in a statement that W3i now has more than 66 million monthly active users (MAUs) across its networks. W3i signed an exclusive monetization deal with Temple Run developer Imangi Studios back in October 2012, and expanded its Android monetization partnership with mobile game developer and publisher Pocket Gems earlier this month. We also recently spoke with W3i’s general manager of its San Francisco office on Android games monetization, tablets as the next frontier and closing the revenue gap between Android and iOS.

iOS app discovery service AppGratis announced a $13.5 million Series A round of funding today led by Iris Capital, with participation from Orange Publicis Fund.

AppGratis is an app that features one free app a day and sometimes an app that’s heavily discounted as well.

“I look at the market today and I see people throwing millions [of dollars] at building the most complex technologies around app discovery. We’re throwing a lot of money at building the simplest product you can find in the market today,” AppGratis founder and CEO Simon Dawlat told Inside Mobile Apps.

Since AppGratis’ launch in the U.S. last week, the app has already reached the one million new user mark, and reached as high as the No. 6 spot on the top free iPhone apps chart. Dawlat also claims that AppGratis can deliver between 500,000 to 700,000 installs for an app in a day.

“From all the approaches to app discovery, we’ve set out for the simplest one, which is featuring a great free app every day and giving this app a hell of a lot of exposure among our community of app shoppers,” Dawlat says.

One of the apps AppGratis featured, Etermax’s word game Word Crack, generated 701,556 downloads on Jan. 12, according to a tweet from the official Word Crack Twitter account.

AppGratis, which was founded in 2011, currently has more than seven million users worldwide and more than two million daily active users (DAUs). It’s available in more than 120 countries including Japan, Brazil and now the U.S.

Paris-based AppGratis, which currently has 40 employees, makes money through a cost per install (CPI) model with big brand apps and through a revenue share model with indie developers, who don’t necessarily have a big budget. When working with indies, AppGratis gets a cut from monetization methods in the indie developer’s app, such as advertising or in-app purchases.

The new funding AppGratis received will be used to scale the company globally, hire top talent, and build on their app’s self-learning technology which will recommend certain apps to users once it learns enough about a particular user’s downloading habits.

According to our traffic tracking service AppData, AppGratis is currently the No. 6 ranked app on the top free iPhone apps chart.

Value-exchange advertising company SponsorPay today announced it more than doubled revenues in 2012 thanks to a 479 percent growth in transactions on its platform.

SponsorPay credited this growth to its BrandEngage platform, its mobile ad network and user acquisition campaigns for Fortune 500 brands and app developers.

“Mobile became the dominant growth engine for SponsorPay last year,” CRO and co-founder of SponsorPay Janis Zech said. “It’s still early – mobile ad spend will grow exponentially over the next few years, and our aim is to continue to outgrow the market significantly.”

SponsorPay also touted conversion rates on social engagement were as high as 76 percent, and click-through to online retail pages were often greater than 30 percent. The company cited its Domino’s campaign specifically, which integrated video ads into social games, resulting in 36 percent clicking through to the Domino’s online ordering page.

You can read our full interview with Zech about SponsorPay’s plans for mobile in 2013 here.

Facebook advertising company Nanigans ran a Facebook mobile campaign for an ecommerce app developer during the holidays, moving the app’s rank in the Apple Store from the mid-200s to the top 10 in its category, with the use of Facebook’s mobile app install ads.

Within a 10-day campaign period leading up to the holidays, the app moved more than 200 spots from No. 253 spot before the campaign to the No. 5 spot. Nanigans found an average click-through-rate (CTR) of 0.74 percent, reaching as high as 1.5 percent in core segments. The ad delivered more than 32.5 million impressions, with more than 8.5 million in one day. In total, the campaign cost $325,000, with daily spend surpassing $90,000 on multiple days.

Facebook first announced its mobile app install ads coming out of beta in October 2012 for iOS and Android developers that have integrated Facebook into their apps. The ads allow developers to promote their native mobile apps through Facebook’s mobile News Feed, featuring an ad design with a “Install Now” call to action that brings the user to an app’s landing page in the Apple App Store or Google Play.

As a result of Nanigans’ campaign, the ecommerce app acquired more than 24,300 new installs in 10 days, with some days reaching more than 4,500 installs. Install rates averaged 10.11 percent and were as high as 33.33 percent in core segments. The campaign ran at an average CPI that was within the app developer’s target range, and as low as $5.50 in core segments.

Nanigans, who handles Facebook advertising for more than 100 companies including Zynga, Kixeye and Kabam, said the app developer’s campaign targeted iOS-only users in the U.S. The campaign initially targeted the developer’s core audience of females over the age of 22, but extended the campaign reach to a larger audience, adding 900 unique segments that were created through a city-specific strategy coupled with broader age, gender and interest targeting.

Additionally, the advertiser optimized the campaign to reach audiences with low cost-per-clicks (CPC) and who generated high install rates. The campaign achieved an average install rate of 10.11 percent, going as high as 33.33 percent in core segments. CPCs averaged $1.35, while going as low as $0.50 in core segments.

Another Facebook ad optimization company AdParlor recently shared some of its mobile app install ad results from a four-week campaign of an unnamed gaming company. The campaign garnered an average CTR of 0.5 percent and higher. AdParlor also took a peek at the average cost-per-install by region for an iOS RPG title, finding a range between $2.24 and $2.88.

Chartboost announced a $19 million Series B round of funding today led by Sequoia Capital. The money will be used to focus on building better and more products and hiring more people. Existing investors TransLink Capital and SK Telecom Ventures also participated in Chartboost‘s second round of funding.

Chartboost is mobile game cross-promotion service that allows developers to cross promote their own apps, or directly connect with other publishers to create advertising deals or promote other apps in Chartboost’s network. Notable companies in Chartboost’s portfolio include Backflip Studios, Supercell and GREE.

“The vision of Chartboost is to become the business engine for games,” Chartboost co-founder and CEO Maria Alegre told Inside Mobile Apps. “The same way that Unity’s 3D engine and plugins are used by game developers to solve different needs. We want to be the business engine and help [developers] focus on making great games, being creative and brining great content. We can focus on helping them make money and run a business with their games.”

Chartboost also revealed that its network now reaches more than 300 million unique devices per month, powering six billion game sessions per month in more than 12,000 games, which means that 300 million users opened games using Chartboost’s technology every single month.

“The reason why this is huge is that it puts Chartboost in the same league as the Flurrys of the world, and we’ve been around for less than two years,” Alegre says. “Suddenly, we are the same size as companies that have been around for over four or five years since the very beginning of the app stores.”

Jim Goetz of Sequoia Capital will be joining Chartboost’s board as part of the partnership. Goetz was previously on the board of mobile game developer Pocket Gems and ad network AdMob, which was acquired by Google for $750 million back in 2009. Sequoia Capital is a well-known venture capital firm that has invested in the likes of Apple, Atari and Electronic Arts as well as Airbnb, Dropbox and Unity.

“Jim understands the industry from both of the technology platform and game developer perspectives,” she says.

In 2013, Chartboost seeks to expand into more products that are related to the gaming business. In particular, they want to build products specifically around virtual goods and analytics

The San Francisco-based company, which was founded in 2011 and recently moved moved into a new office in downtown San Francisco, has raised a total of $21 million from Sequoia Capital, TransLink Capital and SK Telecom Ventures.

“It’s not about the money,” Alegre says. “It’s about the developers and the community. We are going to use this money to keep our commitment with that community to build products and technology to help them build successful businesses. It’s always for us very clear that game developers are the center of our world, and it’s not about us, it’s about them.”