Regardless of your opinions on the Windows Phone ecosytem, there’s clearly value to be created. Lithuania-based Adduplex announces it has raised €400,000 in seed financing from Practica Capital for its cross-promotional network for Windows 8 and Windows Phone applications to help developers promote and advertise their apps. Today the company claims its network is used in over 3,000 apps, and serves tens of millions of add impressions every day.
“We have grown AdDuplex organically for more than two years and now it is time to take it to the next level,” said Alan Mendelevich, AdDuplex’ founder and CEO of the company.
Adduplex’s cross-promotional product, Adcontrol, works as a network to give your app visibility in other games and applications by allowing yours to serve adds for other apps. Their ratio comes down to 8:10, meaning your app’s ad will be shown 8 times in other apps for every 10 ads you show. The remaining two ad spots are then open for Adduplex to sell to advertisers.
Here Adduplex says it’s seeing a click-through-rate on advertisements higher than 1%, attesting that the Windows Phone users are interacting with ads more than on other platforms. Pricing for these ads can be found on their website.
This cross-promotional network concept is probably as old as the internet, but they seem to be doing something right. Since its launch in 2011, AdDuplex has been widely adopted by Windows Phone developer community and garnered support both from its users as well as from Microsoft, who sees it as a positive driver in the ecosystem. Just by poking around on my friend’s Windows phone I’ve recognized Adduplex adds, and Finns may remember Adduplex in the Startup Sauna Spring ’12 batch.
