Writing Code Locally, Doing Business Globally

Mobile devices have become the way the world stays connected, and Kochava has kept ahead of the technology needed to monitor the ubiquitous use of apps for some of the biggest companies around.

The young company, founded in 2011 by Charles Manning, CEO, has been experiencing growth locally and internationally. The company is planning to move to a bigger location to the old Inkwell building at the corner of 2nd and Church in Sandpoint in addition to having opened satellite offices in China, South Korea and London in 2015.

Manning focuses on monitoring mobile advertising and engagement for some big name clients, such as Microsoft, Yahoo!, Pandora and eBay. Kochava's products track the effectiveness of these clients' ads on various publisher Web sites.

“I really enjoy data. When I looked at Web apps and saw that they were moving to mobile, I thought that there was no infrastructure to measure the advertising. We are big believers that everything will be mobile. It's the primary touch point for connectivity,” he said

“We are the odometer for all of our clients' ads. We are measuring the effectiveness of the apps. Are (users) installing, using, buying through them?” Manning explained.

Kochava's products work in real time and compile results “as soon as the click happens,” Manning said. The data collected shows Kochava's clients where their ad money is best spent and if they are reaching their target audiences.

Kochava also helps filter out fraud. Smaller publishers may beef up their ad response to “look good” to their advertisers and continue receiving ad revenue.

“Our technology can detect a 'bad actor' by monitoring behavior,” he said. Kochava’s software measures fraud to avoid advertisers paying for fraudulent responses. The company’s clients have come to depend on it.

The company has created a platform of mobile apps to help clients monitor their Return on Advertising Spent or “ROAS.” The product The Collective allows clients to tailor their ad campaigns to very specific audience segments similar to how Facebook inserts specific ads according to the user.

The product TV Lift uses data from television ads to monitor the effectiveness of television ad campaigns on app download numbers. For example, if an ad runs on TV about installing a particular mobile game or app, TV Lift can track the number of downloads that occurred in a particular region and time period after the ad aired.

“We see a bump in the download (of an app) and that's the lift. It's a 15 minute window then it goes back down (but it's) an attributable lift only to the app,” Manning said.

Kochava has 72 employees but is planning to have up to 115 by the end of this year, said Manning. This includes the international offices which have a handful of people working to make local connections to publishers in their respective countries.

“Growth in Asia is staggering. Most mobile money is spent in the U.S., but in China and India, though they generate less money, the sheer volume is staggering,” he said. Each satellite office has a small staff to generate business in their respective locales.

In addition to the major clients they serve, Kochava has been honored for their innovation in the mobile analytics industry. Last year they received the Mobility TechZone Product of the Year Award, and in November Kochava was named Innovative Company of the Year at the tenth annual Idaho Innovation Awards.

The company continues to be at the forefront of the industry, holding their 3rd annual Kochava Mobile Summit where about 125 leaders from the biggest companies in mobile, including Twitter, Turner, Yahoo!, Microsoft and Google, will converge in Sandpoint this month for two days of talks about where the mobile apps industry is heading in 2016, such as trends in Facebook and television influence. On the third day, they’ll ski atop Schweitzer Mountain.

“We will have companies from New York, San Francisco, and even Asia here in Sandpoint, representing the most innovative and forward-thinking companies in mobile,” Manning said. They are even hosting a musical performance by G Love and Special Sauce at the Hive that will be open to the public. “It speaks to our desire to be a part of the community. It's about helping our community, our customers and ecosystem (the people they work with),” he said.

Upgrading Life and Kochava’s Beginnings

Manning studied international management and marketing at Pepperdine University in Southern California but always had an interest in software.

“I was interested in business, but software had been a passion since I was in middle school and I knew software would be the basis for what I did,” he said.

He began his career at Oracle in the mid-90s when the Web was just beginning. There, he led several teams in creating some of the first online subscriptions for virus software and online shopping sites. He led the team for Air Touch Cellular (later Verizon) where customers could purchase a cell phone plan all online.

“It was an interesting dynamic because kids were more knowledgeable and Oracle was trying to show their capability for commercial Websites,” he said.

After he left Oracle, he started M-Code where he wrote software for monitoring and managing Web-based apps. He saw a need to create the software in the market.

“E-commerce systems for servers were very new. When you deployed them, you needed to know how they were running, and there were no tools to monitor them,” he said.

The work he first developed is similar to the products Kochava creates now for mobile apps. M-Code was later bought by the company Managed Objects, where he worked for several years before he and his wife decided to move back west.

Originally from Denver, Colorado, Manning lived all over the U.S. before intentionally settling on Sandpoint for its beauty and more enjoyable way of life. He and wife Kimberly had been living in Washington, DC and read the book “Life 2.0” by Richard Karlgaard. In it, Karlgaard encouraged entrepreneurs to choose a location where one can both enjoy life without removing their business from the larger market. In the book, there was a list of towns to consider. Surprisingly, Sandpoint was one of them. Manning's wife was familiar with Sandpoint too after vacationing with her family here as a young girl.

“We just loved it and thought 'Let's do it,'” he said. “We didn’t know anyone but have really loved it.”

Initially, once they moved to Sandpoint, he worked as a software consultant and later began PlayXpert, a video gaming company, before starting Kochava, which means “star” in Hebrew.

As for the future, Manning says Kochava will “take it year by year” since the industry evolves so fast. They have a number of products in the pipeline that will be introduced in the coming months. For now though, he's happy with Kochava's outlook.

“We're thrilled to be a part of the community. We're both local and global in nature,” he said.

For more information about Kochava, visit kochava.com.

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