Christian Henschel was working at a German ad network, while Paul Muller was CTO at a German app developer.
They came from two side of the industry value chain but neither was happy with the transparency of their data, especially when it came to tracking marketing campaigns.
"There are three basic needs for app developers," says Muller.
"They want to know about their products' performance, how their marketing is performing, and what's going on in the wider market."
Each requirement is related to the others, but at present, many companies are using three separate tools to track overall performance, and losing visibility on the synergies between them.
Mind the gaps
This was the basis on which adeven was created in early 2012.
Labelling itself an 'intelligent mobile analytics company built from the ground-up to enable publishers, developers and app marketers to understand and optimise effective campaigns in real-time', the Berlin-based outfit has been plenty busy since.
The sort of data provided through adeven's adjust.io
It's raised $5.5 million in two investment rounds, expanded to over 30 people including opening a UK office, and is still hiring as it looks to open a San Francisco office imminently.
"We're not doing just analytics. We're not doing just market tracking," says CEO Henschel.
"We're giving you business intelligence; the data you don't get elsewhere."
Open for tracking
Adeven's main product is app download and post-install tracking tool adjust.io.
This provides an integrated dashboard so you can see all the relevant information relating to your apps, marketing campaigns and competitors.
"SDKs suck. No one likes SDKs, so we decided to do it right," says Muller.
For this reason, adjust.io's SDK is open source, and based on tracking downloads using a fingerprint technology to match downloads with source URLs.
It supports iOS, Android and Windows Phone and integrates with networks such as Facebook, SponsorPay, Millennial and Madvertise.
It also tracks post-install events (both financial and non-financial) in your app or game, with adeven pointing out it means strict EU eprivacy and data handling rules.
Graphing the stores
The other part of adeven's approach is demonstrated by apptrace.
It's a web-based app store market intelligence tool similar to App Annie, albeit currently limited to iOS. Support for Google Play is coming soon.
"It's our window into the market data we're collecting," Henschel says.
Sprinkle Islands' performance as viewed on apptrace
Of course, customers get a much more detailed view of what's going on.
As Muller says, the company's focus is all about giving the right information.
"We are careful to providing meaningful data," he says. "There's plenty of bogus data out there, but our goal is to ensure our clients get the data they need to answer the specific questions they require."
You can find out more about adeven via its website.
