Mobile ad exchange Tapdaq has raised $1.4 in its first funding round, appointing former AdMob boss as its company chairman. The company, founded in 2012 by 23 year-old serial entrepreneur, Ted Nash – the first teenager in the world to achieve 1,000,000 App Store downloads. Tapdaq circumvents the need for cash, which independent developers often […]
Mobile ad exchange Tapdaq has raised $1.4 in its first funding round, appointing former AdMob boss as its company chairman.
The company, founded in 2012 by 23 year-old serial entrepreneur, Ted Nash – the first teenager in the world to achieve 1,000,000 App Store downloads.
Tapdaq circumvents the need for cash, which independent developers often do not have in abundance. Instead, the platform operates on its own currency called ‘daq’, avoiding the traditional CPI arms race which has excluded the majority of these developers.
The site lets independent developers advertise within each other’s creations. Developers earn daq by promoting other developers’ apps and driving users to them.
Each developer sets their own daq per install (DPI) for their apps, providing a genuine market economy where developers are able to shop around for more relevant applications to promote.
“Tapdaq is our response to the ever escalating cost-per-install advertising arms race, which has now completely isolated the vast majority of the independent mobile developer community, many of whom have little or no budget to spend on advertising their work,” commented Ted Nash, Tapdaq CEO and cofounder. “Around 25 major developers currently take home approximately 50% of earnings from sales on the App Store. As mobile developers ourselves, we know the market is in need of a serious shake up, and with Russell’s expertise now on board we can’t wait to grow Tapdaq into the solution developers have been crying out for.”
Dubbed ‘The Godfather of Mobile Advertising’, Russell Buckley joins as Tapdaq’s Chairman having been the first employee at AdMob, responsible for launching the company’s EMEA division. After its 2009 sale to Google for $750m, Buckley became an active angel investor and business mentor. Prior to AdMob, he was Director of Marketing at location based advertising service ZagMe, as well as Global Chairman of the Board of The Mobile Marketing Association.
“Having worked amongst the great and the good of the mobile advertising industry, I have been waiting for a company innovative enough to disrupt the existing setup for driving app downloads, and I believe Tapdaq is just that,” commented Russell Buckley, Tapdaq Chairman and investor.
“The combination of cash-alternative purchasing and a community-driven economy gives independent developers a real opportunity to get discovered through their contemporaries’ applications, as well as to bypass expensive CPI on more traditional networks.”
Developers need to integrate the free to download, iOS compatible SDK in order to start serving a variety of dedicated ad formats that are able to coexist with any other advertising networks.
The supporting web dashboard allows developers to trade inventory, insight, and advice to create a network driven more by community than price alone.
Tapdaq’s SDK is available now for iOS applications, and is currently in development for Android and other formats. For more information:
https://www.tapdaq.com/
http://blog.tapdaq.com/
