Everyone loves the overnight success story, but when it comes to making your mark in mobile games, it's usually a long game.

That's certainly what Canadian outfit Fuse Powered is playing.

Starting out as a developer of licensed games such as Jaws, Scarface and Dawn of the Dead, it's since transitioned into a tools provider and publisher.

But according to CEO Jon Walsh that's not where he wants to end up.

Advertising the next step

"We built our tools, and then worked with our development partners like Hothead and Rebellion to productivised them. Now we're opening up to a much wider group," he explains of the plan for Fuseboxx 2.0.

Labelled as a one-stop-shop for mobile games publishing, it features a highly integrated suite of analytics, and user management and reporting tools.

"Using Fuseboxx 2.0, you can see where you're getting your players from, and then segment them to see how they interact with your game," Walsh says.

It also enables developers to perform real-time retailing via a web interface so you can offer discounts and deals to different player cohorts. A future feature upgrade will enable A/B testing.

"It's getting to the stage where you'll be able to offer one-to-one gaming with Fuseboxx 2.0," Walsh says.

"We add so much value. We're an economics engine; a life-cycle platform."

Pioneering spirit

His point is that with user acquisition now such a complex activity - with developers running multiple campaigns across channels ranging from incentivised and cross-promotion platforms to adverts on Facebook or the big ad network - it's becoming difficult to get actionable data.

"We looked at all the third-party tools out there and none of them did what we needed," he says, of the decision to move from making games to developing technology.

But where he wants to end up is morphing Fuse Powered into a powerful mobile ad network.

"Our goal is to build a fully-featured ad serving platform," he explains.

Even handed approach

And this is inherent within Fuseboxx 2.0's business model.

If selected, developers use it for free, with their only obligation being that they display one Fuse Powered-sourced advert per game session.

The revenue generated from this is split 50:50 between Fuse Powered and the developer.

"Developers can run other advertising services in-game if they want to," Walsh says.

His hope, however, is that Fuse Powered will offer the best rates and developers will choose to run more of its adverts.

"Our CPMs are higher than the competition. We pay a lot more than cross promoting Kingdoms of Camelot," he jokes.

Synergy works

In this way, Walsh hopes to sign up around 50 developer partners during 2013 - "we're not looking for hundreds of partners," he says - and create a large amount of consolidated inventory.

"You need more than 200,000s DAUs to get high CPMs and that's why most individual developers can't get them," he argues.

"There's huge fragmentation of audience in mobile games, so we want to roll up a powerful network that can attract the big brand advertisers."

He says creating a network of between 5-10 million daily active users, when combined with the analytical detail that Fuseboxx 2.0 provided, is the goal.

"Brands want to know about reach and engagement, and they will pay for the correct user," he ends.

You can find out more about Fuseboxx 2.0 via the Fuse Powered website.