It's becoming ever more difficult to keep your audience and make money from them in the free-to-play sector.

The solution is applying new thinking when it comes to in-game retailing and communications, and that demands new tools; the sort offered by US vendor PlayHaven.

Calling itself the 'business engine for mobile games', it's reporting a four-fold uplift in terms of the numbers of developers and games using its acquisition, engagement and monetisation tools over the past 12 months.

At the coal face

Now working with more than 10,000 developers and in 20,000 games, it's seen its reach rising 44 percent quarter-on-quarter to more than 800 million unique players.

Broken down another way, that's 176 million active players every month, up 150 percent compared to 12 months ago.

"PlayHaven is building a comprehensive set of intelligent tools that developers can use to manage a successful business," said CEO Andy Yang.

"We do this by getting in the trenches with developers every day - learning what happens in their games, providing helpful insights, and crafting creative solutions that help them solve their problems."

Pleased to push

Most recently, the company launched its push notifications service, which during its private beta period was used by 500 developers, including the likes of Glu, PikPok, and Magmic.

"We can set up marketing campaigns that start from a Push and end with a virtual goods promotion sale," commented PikPok's technical director Joe O'Sullivan.

"The whole thing is handled end-to-end by PlayHaven, with tracking and conversion rates for campaign monitoring. This is a really powerful marketing tool."

PlayHaven's push notifications are now available more widely as an open beta. You can sign up and find out more information here.