Why Video Advertising is a Must for Your Mobile App or Game

adweek.com

Video has long proven its value as a powerful and compelling way to deliver interesting content and turn consumers into loyal fans. So it’s no surprise to find out that video advertising is doing the same for mobile marketers across the world.

Recent research reveals that video advertising is increasingly growing and used to drive interest, buzz and downloads in the mobile app economy.

But why is that the case? With the help of the Growmobile team and Andrew French, general manager of Europe, the Middle East and Africa at AdColony, we picked out four reasons why video advertising is on the rise.

1) Video is important in the mobile economy as a whole

Why is video advertising becoming such a big part of the mobile advertising industry? To understand that, we need to understand the growth in mobile video across the app economy as a whole.

And the reason for that growth is simple: technological development combined with audience growth. Super fast smartphones boasting 4G mobile connectivity and ever increasing screen quality are perfect canvasses for delivering high quality video on devices. And when you consider that these devices are in the hands of hundreds of millions of people worldwide, it means video has an unparalleled opportunity to grow as a whole.

This is borne out by demographic data. According to a study by multiplatform video services company Vubiquity, 44 percent of all users said they watched viral videos on their phones. And for younger consumers (aged 13-17) the smartphone ranks only behind the TV for video viewing, with 37 percent using it to watch video daily.

Video advertising isn’t a big thing simply because of marketing returns then; it’s a big because it taps into the broader trend which has seen YouTube, Vine and auto-playing Facebook videos capture the interest of mobile users across the world.

2) The format of video ads encourages engagement

It’s within this market context that video advertising is able to grow.

According to a study published by eMarketer earlier this year, advertising professionals predict that mobile video ad spending in the U.S. will see the highest growth rate in the coming years, compared to other formats studied.

But the reason video it is outstripping the growth of most other mobile advertising and likely to be a multi-billion dollar industry within the year is how engaging the format is.

Rather than rely on a static interstitial pop up that reveals little of the game or even a nicely designed, but dull, Facebook install ad, video ads work well for two reasons in particular.

The first is what French calls “the sneak peek” factor. Whether the video ad simply displays gameplay in the energetic manner of Trials Frontier or subtly sells lifestyle changes such asAirbnb’s TV campaign, the mixture of audio, video and text produces a richer flavor of what experience that app will provide.

Second, and equally important, is that video ads save the user time, French said:

Video campaigns also cut down on wasted efforts and spend because users know precisely what they are getting into. [When they see a video ad] they know what to expect and they genuinely want the app for that reason.

And ultimately, that means anyone who does decide to install is likely to be more engaged in the long run. As French explained, video advertising creates a “preconceived idea in people around what the user experience can be and so users are more likely to play or interact with the app until they get that experience.”

Not only is video an interesting format then, it’s one that actively sparks user interest beyond the moment of install.

3) Video ads can be used effectively outside of ad networks

What’s the secret to Clash of Clans‘ TV advertising success? Is it that solely that their ads, such as the Liam Neeson Super Bowl spot, prove popular with a massive TV audience? No – it’s that they have social reach too.

If you check out the game’s YouTube channel, you’ll see that many of their TV ads boast tens of millions of views. There are even fan-made videos with hundreds of thousands of views, which spoof their campaigns – as shown in this Hog Rider tribute video.

And the reason why this is the case is that video as a format, and video ads by proxy, have real potential to deliver value outside of the confines of an ad network.

A well designed video ad can easily go viral on a social video site such as Twitter or Facebook and drive users to your app or YouTube channel, which benefits from having a billion users as well as one of the best search engines in the world.

You can even use a video adt within your overall app marketing efforts. The arrival of app trailers on the App Store last year and the longer term embedding of YouTube videos into Google Play means that a video ad can sell on a store as well as in an ad slot.

Video ads aren’t just a pretty format that’ll help out the acquisition team; they have serious usage advantages across social and product marketing teams as well.

4) Video ads reward quality

Finally, and reassuringly for most marketers worth their salt, video ads reward quality.

Out of all the formats, a video ad is the format which users demand the most from, French said:

Generally speaking, users have downtime and they want to be entertained. They are in a ‘need-state’ where they need entertainment.

As a result, the quality bar for a video ad needs to be higher than a simple graphic-driven counterpart like a banner or an interstitial. Generating a compelling 30-second narrative, capturing the appropriate footage, editing it together professionally and sound-tracking it well is a tricky challenge.

But, as we’ve seen in this piece, doing it well delivers clear rewards. Rovio’s investment in an animation studio has helped its gameplay video trailer for Angry Birds 2 stand out; Kabam’s trailer for Star Wars Uprising has helped establish the game as a key part of the Star Wars Episode 7 hype machine; ustwo’s zen announce trailer for Monument Valley helped to establish it as a mobile game to watch ahead of its meteoric rise.

Obviously, not every studio or developer will be able to create videos of that standard straight away. But by putting time, money and effort into video ads, your company can benefit from an engaging format that delivers returns for UA experts, social marketers and for the brand of the company as a whole in the long term.

Monetising mobile apps without harming the UX [Q&A]

itproportal.com

In the past making money from a mobile app has usually involved signing up to an advertisement network and allowing the app to display banner ads.

The problem with this is that it doesn’t make for a particularly good user experience and may actually turn people off using the app. For some time now the buzz around the industry has been about ‘native’ ads within apps. But exactly what is a native ad and what are the benefits? We spoke to Yannis Dosios, VP of Yahoo Publisher Services to find out.

What is a native ad and how do they differ from more traditional options?

YD: At Yahoo, we believe advertising doesn’t have to compromise how users enjoy an app, and that advertisements should, and can, complement the user experience. This is why Yahoo introduced native advertisements inside its own mobile applications. What makes these advertisements native is how seamlessly they are integrated into the user experience. For example, users scrolling through the Yahoo Finance application articles see a native advertisement after every few pieces of content. This ad has the same look and feel, and layout as the other content sections, while clearly denoting that this content is sponsored.
What we have found is that these native ads deliver significantly higher revenue and eCPMs (revenue per thousand impressions) than the traditional banner or full-screen interstitial advertisements. We also have found that these ads perform well for advertisers, delivering superior click-through rates and post-click conversion rates. Users notice and engage with these advertisements.

Yahoo announced back in February that it was launching native ads following its acquisition of Flurry. What success has this brought?

The Yahoo Mobile Developer Suite is helping mobile developers measure, advertise, monetise and enhance their apps. We’ve seen a lot of early success with Gemini, Yahoo’s native advertising solution. According to a recent Flurry from Yahoo survey, nearly half of mobile app publishers already have or are planning to introduce native ads, and that number is growing rapidly. We’ve seen publishers express that revenue and control of the user experience are most important to them right now. It’s a rapidly evolving space, and we’re excited to be a leading player in it.

Is Yahoo competing directly with other mobile ad networks?

YD: With its Yahoo Mobile Developer Suite, Yahoo offers mobile developers a comprehensive solution for acquiring, engaging and monetising users, and for deeply measuring and optimising their mobile applications. In particular, with Yahoo App Marketing, developers can use just one platform to gain exposure to an enormous audience of highly engaged and active users across desktop, mobile and social. With Yahoo App Publishing, developers can maximise their advertising revenues through a combination of well-integrated Gemini native, video and search ad units, extensive and unique data from both Yahoo, Tumblr and Flurry, and a powerful ad selection algorithm that leverages this unique data. And with Flurry Analytics and Explorer, developers can instantly measure their application performance and identify problem and opportunity areas to maximise performance.

Are search ads as important for mobile apps as they are for the desktop?

YD: Search ads are certainly also important in mobile. But the search context and experience are also very different in mobile. Flurry data shows that about 88 per cent of time spent on mobile devices is spent inside mobile applications, so it makes sense that mobile searches also get initiated directly from those applications. This is why Yahoo offers a Search-in-Apps service, which enables app developers to introduce search capability from within their apps. For example a user of the Pinger messaging application can easily search for movie times for the movie that they have just chatted about with their friends, all without leaving the Pinger application. This is an exciting space with lots of room for innovation.

What trends are you seeing in the mobile advertising market?

YD: This is a fast changing market, but the main trends I would call out are:
1. Growing interest of brands in spending more on mobile — in recognition of the very rapid increase in mobile usage.
2. Increased advertiser focus on measurement and impact assessment from mobile campaigns.
3. Growing importance of data and programmatic for more precise and better optimised advertising campaigns.
4. Rapid growth of native and video ad formats.

Native ads are obviously good for the end user but what benefits do they offer advertisers?

YD: What’s special about native ads is that they appear to be meeting the needs of all three key parties: they monetise well for developers, they perform for advertisers, and they are accepted and even liked by users. In particular, a recent Yahoo/Ipsos Consumer Perceptions study showed that 60 per cent of consumers have said they feel positive about native ads. And 80 per cent of advertisers say they will invest in Native in 2015. This, combined with the superior monetisation performance of native advertisements over other ad formats makes native advertising a very compelling ad format.

3 Ways Email Is Embracing the Trends That Were Supposed to Make It Obsolete

adweek.com

Improved personalization helps give email marketing an edge, advocates say. 

Marketers are getting faster, smarter and more interactive

The eulogy for email has been in slow-clap mode for a while. With social app after app after app promising to make communication faster than it already is, it's become a common theory that email is, if not dead, well on its way.

Of course, not everyone agrees. (There's even a whole website devoted to proving email is alive and well.)

But there's no doubt email has evolved, from the original snail-mail killer to a data-driven, customer-focused fox of a form. In fact, some say email is the leader of the pack.

Thanks to the growth in user-generated content, segmentation and automation, brands are turning to email as a way of blending the best of today's real-time data boom with the holy grail of personalization. 

"Years ago, there was this huge threat that social media was going to kill email off, and now we're seeing that they work together pretty nicely," said Cynthia Price, director of marketing at Nashville-based email marketing company Emma.

Here are three ways email marketing experts say the industry is embracing the very trends that were expected to make it obsolete:

1. Making customers part of the content, in real time

Marketers no longer have to take on the entire burden of creating all the digital content consumed by their audience. In fact, it's often better to use user-generated content, as consumers often trust it more than if it comes directly from a brand.

Good photos and video submitted via social channels or promotions can often be repurposed for an email newsletter (with the creator's permission, of course).

But the new scope of email content opportunities goes well beyond simply cross-posting images from other networks.

Ron Cates, director of digital marketing education for Constant Contact, said integrating email with a real-time marketing plan can be very effective, especially with event marketing.

"For example, say you're a local winery hosting a wine tasting," he said. "You snap a picture of a couple enjoying themselves at the event and post it to Instagram. You then take your beautiful filtered Instagram picture and also send it via email to those who had RSVP'd for the event but have not yet arrived. You now have two audiences who realize that they are missing out on a great time, and I guarantee you'll get a few more attendees as a result."

2. Talking to the individual, not the crowd

While a lot of marketers emphasize the benefit of user engagement on ostensibly social platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, most brand activity in social still tend to be more like broadcast ads aimed at as many fans as possible.

Some say email holds more keys to personalized marketing, especially since an email address can be linked to a myriad of other data, like shopping preferences.

"We think email has the capacity to facilitate truly one-to-one custom relations and dialogue," said Cassie Lancelloti-Young, executive vice president of customer success at email service Sailthru. "I think the challenge we still see with social media is that brands still use it as megaphone to their customers."

Savvy email marketers are even going beyond personalizing your messages based on what you've done in the past and are starting to tailor messages based on what you'll likely do in the future. Lancelloti-Young said Sailthru is "putting our eggs in this predictive analytics basket."

"With the richness of that data, it's not just what happens in the past," she said. "It's having a really tight handle on each individual user and what they are likely to do."

3. Measuring and adapting every day

There's no doubt that big data drives much of the segmentation behind today's email strategies, but a giant database isn't going to magically create giant results.

Today's email marketing industry is focused on learning from each blast, each call to action and each lost subscriber. Marketers experiment not just with messaging and structure but also with new creative options like animation and video.

"If you think of email as a confining medium creatively, a lot of companies have developed ways to break through that," said Jose Cebrian, vice president and general manager for email and mobile messaging at marketing agency Merkle.

The best email teams also don't work in a vacuum. Instead, they collaborate regularly with other key marketing teams overseeing the social, advertising or direct pieces of a campaign. The lessons learned from one often translate easily to another.

"I think that today's marketers largely don't look at one digital channel as a silo," said Kraig Swensrud, chief marketing officer for Campaign Monitor. "They look at what's happening and what's working across these different channels."

Why Brands Need A Social Marketing Team To Manage Real-Time Engagement

business2community.com

Facebook recently released three new features, putting the spotlight on new ways to streamline the communication between brands and users in real-time. As the responsibility of social engagement for brands grows, they must ramp up their community management and social media marketing strategy to capture digital authority.

Facebook Mentions

The first is Facebook Mentions, an app that puts real-time events on Facebook all in one place. Starting today, influencers can share live video with their audience right on news feeds. Mentions makes it easy for influencers like athletes, musicians, and politicians to interact directly with their fans and each other.

The next logical step after autoplay video is to start streaming live. While Facebook is limiting streaming privileges to the rich and famous, integrating that functionality into a Facebook-developed app could mean that the appeal of streaming from mobile could rival the likes of Meerkat and Periscope.

These broadcasts can receive comments, likes, and shares right from the news feed. When other public figures start interacting with these livestreams (or even just Facebook friends), it will all be visible right from the news feed.

More than that, app users can keep track of what’s trending and share updates across Facebook, Instagram, and, oddly enough, Twitter as well. This is the best opportunity for community managers, who already keep up with what’s trending with a brand’s userbase, to prepare for the wider release of stream engagement on Facebook.

While the app is not available for brands to use, Facebook fans can download it right away and start interacting with these broadcasts and trends.

Pages Messaging

Also announced today is Pages Messaging. Starting soon, if a customer posts a comment on a Facebook Page, admins can chat with the customer privately in a new window. The message will include a link to the original wall post.

Most importantly, wall posts that receive responses from Page admins will show other visitors that the business has taken the steps to respond privately to the comment.

It’s important to have a team of social media experts ready to respond to comments in real-time. This is another avenue to integrate a brand’s customer service model into visible, measurable results with buyers.

It’s no secret that Facebook Pages essentially serve as a brand’s social home base. Community managers are vital to keeping people engaged with the brand. The attentiveness that comes with a dedicated social media team can prevent a Digital PR nightmare before it happens.

The benefits of hooking up with Facebook Messenger are pretty clear-cut. It’s snappy, convenient, and instant messaging beats checking the inbox for both parties. With this new functionality, more value is put into personalizing each instant message.

Not only that, but with the tools already set in place with Messenger for Business, it’s messages between a brand and a consumer are a two-way street.

This is a relief for public relations specialists and customer service representatives. Facebook is also allowing businesses to create, save, and use answers to common questions. With one tap, Page admins can send these saved responses to customers with the ability to edit them before they’re sent.

This means that brands can set approved messages for social media managers to use for simple questions, but can redirect anything more complex to customer service teams. New pain points can also be revealed more easily with the tools to start a conversation with a real person.

Businesses that message back their customers frequently will get a stamp on their profiles that tell future visitors that they are “Very responsive to messages.” The benchmark to earn this badge is 90 percent of private messages must have responses.

The value in this marker is twofold. Brands can say front-and-center that they have great customer service and can put it to good use. It also puts those brands a notch above their competitors that haven’t worked towards it.

Send Message Button

Facebook is rolling out another expansion of their messaging service with their advertising. Just as marketers could before with “Buy Now” buttons, Facebook will now offer a “Send Message” button to go from seeing an ad to talking directly with a business owner online.

The brands investing in paid Facebook ads get new toys to play with. Their social media experts have a new opportunity to learn about what can cause a user to reach out directly, evoking an evolution in communication across the board.

This new call-to-action is something only Facebook’s popular and robust Messenger app can effectively provide. It’s feature-packed, with ways to make purchases right in Messenger and read receipts built into the platform.

Facebook also allows brands subscribed to their Messenger for Business platform to send rich messages. This means they can send locations, prices, and package tracking information right in the app.

After tapping Send Message, users are taken right to a new Facebook chat window and can start up a conversation with a business right there. Incoming messages include an attachment that tells brands which ad prompted the message.

Capture Authority

These updates are strategically designed to take advantage of Messenger’s strong commercial downloads and use. Though used casually to rival texting, phone calls, and video messaging, these moves are a step towards integrating business into the app past the occasional download.

Ad social giants like Facebook continue to expand brand’s reach and user connectivity, the need for a strong social media team becomes increasingly more essential. Having social media managers at-the-ready for any change is the best way to integrate the apps into business transactions. Facebook and other social media channels will continue to scale as apps and social engagement evolves.

As social media trends towards real-time updates, real-time marketing expertise will become necessary to manage Internet communities efficiently and save brands time.

Your connected device habit costs an average of $3,800 a year

fortune.com

Actually, it probably costs you more.

By the end of this year globally we will have about 16 billion devices connected to the Internet and Americans will spend an average of $3,800 on them according to data out this week from Chetan Sharma Consulting. However, of that $3,800 only $800 of it is on the devices and the rest is on recurring access charges.

Sharma is an independent analyst covering the telecommunications industry who has a long history of predicting the future for the telcos, and figuring out how their business models need to shift (sometimes before they do). His mini study on connected devices focused on their proliferation in the home and how we pay for them. The biggest winners heading into the Internet of things isn’t a surprise on the connectivity side, it’s cellular broadband and wired broadband, but consumers might be piqued to know that while their spending on cable television and mobile voice has dropped, their overall spending on communications on the go and at home has remained the same and even increased slightly.

Image courtesy of Chetan Sharma

Sharma even estimates in an interview with Fortune, that the spending on broadband might surpass the spending on cable in the 2018 or 2019 time frame, which means that the fears of cord cutting will no longer worry pay TV providers as the total revenue they get from subscribers each month will remain the same.

And yet, these charges don’t reflect the money that consumers shell out for Internet-related services such as Dropbox for storage or Netflix for TV. So as Sharma notes, the overall $3,000 per year on average that people are paying for access stays relatively flat and the mix may change, but the consumer is paying more companies more dollars for services and devices related to their connected lifestyle. It’s just that those dollars so far aren’t going to the broadband and telecommunications companies yet.

  

Instead, the revenue is going to the aforementioned services companies such as Netflix, Dropbox, Skype, etc. and the device makers. Sharma anticipates that $800 average in device spending will increase as people snap up connected home devices, cars, robots, drones and wearables. However, he doesn’t believe we’ll see the rise of a single winner-take-all device like the smartphone or the PC again. “The next wave of revenue will come from hundreds of tiny revenue streams,” Sharma said. “You’ll get smaller islands of categories that in and of themselves may not be huge, and maybe 10 years from now they could be sizable when taken together.”

That’s a very different business model, innovation model and even talent-spotting model for investors and corporate M&A departments. It’s easy to say that the Internet of things is the the next big thing, but when you realize that there will be hundreds of different device success stories instead of one it clarifies why everyone is fighting to be the OS layer and why no one wants to play nicely on standards yet.

Meanwhile, consumers, should get ready to keep paying more for devices and services and about the same for connectivity.

Three Common Mistakes Mobile App Marketers Make, and How to Fix Them

marketingprofs.com

The idea behind an app is just the beginning of a long, sometimes smooth, often difficult path on an app's journey to success or failure.

Rest assured that quite a few mobile app marketing and development mistakes have been made along the way of any app's journey—from how the app maker designs the mobile user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) to in-app purchases.

How the app makers learn from these mistakes is what empowers them to take the app to the next level. So let's take a look at some common mistakes on the path to creating an app that engages users.

Mistake 1: Incorrectly Onboarding App Users

Every app marketer wants active users. From the moment a user touches your app, you want to be creating a positive experience, which begins by onboarding. Think of onboarding as constructing an entry ramp to a highway. You want users to have a smooth experience when getting onto your app.

Numerous mistakes can be made when onboarding, but I'll go over one mistake that has hampered many an app's growth: forced registration.

What is one of the first things you usually do when launching an app for the first time? Register, right? Think about it: You don't know much about the app aside from recommendations by some people or lots of buzz about it.

Forced registration basically tells you, "Sign up first, and we'll show you what we're all about after." Forced registration is a mistake. Don't let your users become victims of the signup brick wall.

Solution: Allow your users to experience your app first. Give them a tour; show them what your app is about before making them commit. Most of the time, after experiencing what your app has to offer, they will gladly register and you'll be able to retain them as users.

App publishers are now offering first-time users content-driven offers as alternatives to registering, and active user numbers and retention rates are soaring in response.

But let's take a look at the Product Hunt app, which has an even more novel approach. It not only bypasses forcing users to register or sign in but also doesn't walk them through a tutorial. Upon initial launch, it instantly takes the user to a feed of the top products that are trending:

Users get to browse at their leisure until they'd like to make a comment or make a product suggestion. Only at that point does the app require sign-in. It's a good example of an app that doesn't present any barriers to the user, offering them a chance to play first.

Of course, that model won't be applicable to all apps—and only when an app isn't too complicated to navigate without a tutorial. Apps relying on a social network obviously would require a login. (For more strategies and best-practices for onboarding, see "Refining Your Mobile Onboarding Experience Using Visual Analytics.")

Mistake 2: Mobile UX Design and Not Knowing Your Audience

UX designers might think they know who wants to use their app, but do they really know them?

The problem here lies with who exactly is creating the apps and who is using them. The creators of the apps are mostly Generation Xers, age 30-55. The most prominent demographic in the US are the millenials, those below age 30, and Baby Boomers, those over age 55.

So, the developers of apps are creating apps for those in other groups, not their own, and those groups have a different conception about what makes a technology cool and useful.

Solution: App makers need to conduct a lot of research into their target audience to understand preferences, culture, behavior, and so on if they are reach educated decisions on what to incorporate into their app.

For example, Chinese audiences are attracted to the color red, associating it with good taste and the positive. Chinese developers might want to incorporate the color in their app, particularly in calls to action. Color psychology plays a huge part into making an app attractive to a culture, so do your color homework.

In addition, you need to possess in-depth knowledge of the distribution of various mobile devices and operating systems among your target audience.

For example, users on Android and iOS devices use different gestures to take the same action—made all the more tricky by the diversity of numerous Android devices, and relatively few iOS devices. Simply taking an Android app built for a Samsung device and porting it over to an iOS device will almost certainly fail.

Mistake 3: Not Testing Pre-Launch and Not Measuring Post-Launch

Not testing pre-launch—not performing app testing, or not doing it thoroughly—is a huge mistake. Before the launch you need to identify problems such as blank screens in certain sequences, gestures that don't work as they should, app crashes, and on and on.

Solution: You need to develop a comprehensive mobile testing strategy that encompasses all the elements of your app as well as the environments that will be used, including target-device testing, network testing, and all app features to ensure that nothing interferes with the user experience as you planned it. (Read more about various types of app testing, such as functional, performance, and compliance.)

Not measuring post launch is a common mistake of app makers. That is, they don't implement mobile analytics from day one, or if they do have it implemented... much of the time they do not measure the right metrics, or they focus on numbers instead of causes and reasons. App optimization cannot be accomplished effectively without proper monitoring.

Solution: Post-launch, if you want to discover that area of your app that's ripe for optimization, you should be monitoring the key metrics under engagement, such as retention, user flow, and session lengths. Moreover, app makers should distinguish between downloads and active users. By monitoring key metrics, you will be able to see where users are spending the most time, where in the app they are bouncing, and how often they return to use it. (See more about what metrics to measure.)

Going beyond key metrics, app makers need to understand the reasons behind the numbers by deeply diving into the user experience and seeing exactly how users interact with their app. Using visual mobile analytics to analyze the user experience is crucial to app optimization.

Conclusion

In this article, I named three common mistakes made in the course of mobile app marketing and development. I also suggested solutions needed to correct those mistakes.

Identifying where your app delivers and where it does not is half the battle to a winning app; discovering the why and seeing where your app needs work using visual mobile analytics will streamline the path to the ongoing process of app optimization.

How Fitness22 is making 'millions of dollars a year' selling iPhone apps with no marketing

businessinsider.com

In the tight-knit startup community of Tel Aviv, Israel, a lot of people are talking about a tiny company called Fitness22.

It's been raking in big bucks selling iPhone apps.

The company makes about a dozen (so far) fitness apps and charges $2 to $6 apiece for them, plus offers them in bundles for $9 to $25.

All told, Fitness22 — formerly known as ClearSkyApps — has wracked up 30 million downloads so far, all on iOS, and is generating "millions of dollars a year," it's CEO founder Benny Shaviv confirmed to us. Shaviv just launched his apps on Android a few weeks ago.

The company's most famous app is called 5K Runner. It trains you to run a 5K race in 8-weeks by working out for 30 minutes, 3 days a week.

It's been downloaded over 4.2 million times, according App Annie, and costs $3. Others include training plans for 10Ks, marathons, for building your abs or backside. There's even an app called Sleep Pillow Sounds (a white noise machine app).

But the coolest part is that Shaviv built his company without any marketing or ad campaigns and without any investors.

The secret to success, he says, is two things. First, he created apps that were very targeted. They do one thing and do it very well. Many of his apps have nearly perfect five-star ratings. 

Second, he makes sure that people looking for those very specific features can find his apps easily. From naming the app precisely to writing detailed descriptions, "I do my very best to optimize for long-tail searches," he says.

Although his apps have been featured by Apple in the App Store half dozen times, he can't rely on that for revenue. He needs people to find his apps when they search, he says.

Out of a "colossal failure"

The whole company was basically started as a hobby in 2011. Shaviv was licking his wounds after the economy crashed and killed Shaviv's previous startup. "A colossal failure" is how he describes it.

He had sold his house and invested a chunk of the proceeds to bootstrap that startup, too. On top of that, the company had raised and quickly burned through $4 million of VC cash. Shaviv was living on savings, the rest of the money from selling his house.

Benny Shaviv

Fitness 22 Benny Shaviv and his son after running a 5K

His dad, trying to cheer him up, bought him a high-end Mac for his 41st birthday.

Since Shaviv loves to code and loves fitness, he started writing fitness apps, with the company officially launched in 2012.

A few years and 30 million downloads later, Shaviv says he has no interest in taking on VC funds ever again.

He employs 16 people (and growing), fitness clubs around the world train with his apps, and his 9-year old son used his app to complete his first 5K, too. 

And he's happy.

"Everyone says they're building a company to do something for the greater good," he explains."We get emails every day from people telling us we changed their lives."