Last Week’s Top Mobile Marketing Reads: 12 – 18 October 2020

Last week, YouTube and Facebook announced that they would ban anti-vaccine content on their platforms. Facebook announced that it will ban ads discouraging people from getting vaccines a COVID-19 vaccine. A day after Facebook’s announcement, YouTube announced that it will ban misinformation on COVID-19 vaccines. 

When it comes to investments, IPOs, and acquisitions, last week, we saw a noticeable movement in health and fitness apps. The popular meditation app Call said to seek funds at $2.2 billion valuation. The $150/mo personal coaching app Future has raised a $24 million Series B round.   

Below, we have brought together the most read industry news on gaming, business of apps, mobile advertising, and mobile marketing between 12-18 October 2020 on MMR for you.

Zoom launches Zapps to bring third-party apps into video conferences

Last week, Zoom launched Zapps, ,apps that people can use within the Zoom platform,  to make Zoom meetings more engaging and productive. The first Zapps will be available within Zoom by the end of this year for both paid and free users. It will also be open to app developers thereafter.

Ross Mayfield, Zoom product lead, said that “It’s a new model of collaborative app distribution, adoption and engagement. And we’re going to see the rise of Zoom startups, and apps for collaborative social experiences we’ve just begun to imagine.”

Vungle acquires automated user acquisition platform AlgoLift

San Francisco-based mobile ad network Vungle announced last week that it has acquired Algolift, an automated user acquisition platform for mobile advertisers, for an undisclosed price. 

“At AlgoLift, we are very proud to have built an industry-leading LTV and optimisation platform to help our clients maximise ROAS and operate at the cutting-edge of marketing technology,” said Tutundjian and Yudovsky, cofounders of AlgoLift. “We couldn’t be more excited to join Vungle’s team to now bring a joint solution of leading-edge technology to the mobile ecosystem.”

Unity launches the Game Growth Program to support mobile indie developers

Unity announced it is launching the Game Growth Program for free-to-play indie games on mobile. 

By joining the program, chosen indie developers will have a chance to access tools plus a dedicated team of Unity developers to get support for user acquisition, monetization, and engagement, alongside funding for user acquisition to acquire new players. 

Snapchat rolls out TikTok rival ‘Sounds’ on iOS to let users add music to their Snaps

Snapchat had announced a few months ago that it is working on a new TikTok-like feature that allows adding music to Snaps, and it was testing this feature in Australia and New Zealand. 

Last week, the popular social media app launched ‘Sounds’ to let Snapchatters on iOS worldwide add music to their Snaps from a robust and curated catalogue of music from emerging and established artists. 

Voodoo Was The Top Hypercasual Game Publisher By Downloads In Q3 2020

Voodoo was the top hypercasual game publisher by app downloads in the third quarter of 2020 according to recent Apptopia data and Google was the top mobile publisher worldwide for September 2020 according to Sensor Tower’s Store Intelligence platform. 

According to the latest report of Apptopia, Voodoo became the top hyper casual game publisher with over 529 million installs in Q3 2020, generating 105% more downloads than Lion Studios, the second name in the list with around 258 million installs.