User acquisition is the foundation of a successful free-to-play game.

But given the cost of getting users, concerns are also growing about the increasing impact - and expense - of fraud and more general network transparency.

After all, no one likes buying the same low quality user twice.

These are the type of problems that new mobile marketing agency PocketWhale is looking to solve.

It certainly has plenty of experience in the field with all three of the co-founders having previously worked at fast-growing German UA outfit AppLift, (part of the HitFox group of companies).

Jean-Philippe Decka was previously AppLift's Chief Revenue Officer; Thomas Mellinger, was previously its Director of Global Traffic Management; while as well as having worked at AppLift, Xavier Rezgui was MD of HitFox's GameFinder business.

Traffic monitoring

Based in Paris, with offices opening in San Francisco and Singapore, the company has already closed a 6-digit seed investment and is looking to hit the ground running.

"During the five years I spent working with mobile game publishers worldwide I saw their growing need for a close and transparent partner that would accompany them through the entire user acquisition process," commented Decka.

"Most of my former clients did not want to work with generalist agencies that would not understand their specific challenges, and would not dedicate entirely to them as they work with too many different clients. This is how the idea of PocketWhale was born!"

The agency says it will operate across the usual UA channels such as Facebook, Twitter, search and advertising networks, but its proprietary technology will enable it to better monitor traffic and detect fraud such as bot traffic, click farming, as well as non-compliant advertising methods like mobile redirects and re-brokering.

You can check out its services via its website.