Yahoo courted app makers hard at its first Mobile Developers Conference in San Francisco on Thursday. CEO Marissa Mayer joined with Flurry CEO Simon Khalaf and several lead members of the Flurry team to tempt mobile developers with analytics and advertising tools.
The pitch: Develop with Yahoo, and we’ll give you everything you need to make money.
Toward that end, the company announced a new mobile developer suite—a set of tools that pulls in Flurry analytics, a new dashboard for basic or fine-grained app queries, easy and efficient one-click data sharing, and, of course, mobile advertisements pushing native ads and video ads.
This showcase for profit-making potential was a logical conclusion of Yahoo’s buying spree, having picked up BrightRoll for video ad placements and mobile analytics firm Flurry. Combined with Yahoo Gemini, its mobile-ad platform, they formed a triumvirate powering Yahoo’s bid to deliver on its promise of becoming a “mobile-first” company.
What’s Inside The Box
The suite boils down to a few key components. Flurry data analytics and the Explorer console offer a way for developers to explore their app’s data in real time. There’s also Flurry Pulse, a tool that lets developers share data with partners of their choice “with one click of a button,” said Prashant Fuloria, Yahoo’s mobile advertising honcho who was chief product officer for Flurry.
The kit also provides tools for app publishing, Yahoo search in apps and Yahoo app marketing, as well as the ability to tie into digital measurement tools by new partner comScore.
The overarching theme stands in stark contrast to other developer events that hinge on the cool, interesting features app makers can offer their users (á la Apple) or a broad sweep of front and backend changes that make building apps easier and faster (as Google can offer via Android).
By contrast, Yahoo’s singular power play focuses laser-like on revenue, in the apparent assumption that pitching the company’s ability to help line the pockets of app builders will be the sexier message.
App developers interested in getting started can begin by signing up at developer.yahoo.com.
Photos by Adriana Lee for ReadWrite
