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How Investors Use Mobile App Data to turn Insight into Out-Performance
2 > How Investors Use Mobile App Intelligence to turn Insight into Out-Performance

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of their most vexing data challenges and drastically increase the ROI on their existing data ensemble.
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3 > How Investors Use Mobile App Intelligence to turn Insight into Out-Performance

What Is Mobile App Data, aka “App interest rates, and a shifting market environment.
Data” And How Is It Sourced? Insights gathered from this data can help investors
Mobile App Data refers to the information collected conduct more meaningful research, incorporate
from mobile applications installed on mobile relevant mobile market context into their investment
devices. The data is sourced through longstanding thesis, and ultimately make more informed investment
relationships with app publishers as well as via Sensor decisions.
Tower's industry-leading first-party panel of app
users that offers insight into user interactions, in-app How Investment Managers Use Mobile
purchase trends, and cross-app usage behaviors. Once App Data
anonymized and aggregated, this data can be used to Investment Managers, specifically Hedge Funds,
shed light on important KPIs tracking user behavior Private Equity and Venture Capital funds, increasingly
including downloads, usage, engagement, and other rely on Mobile App Data and analytics to gain
key indicators. These KPIs offer point-in-time insight insights into their companies’ app performance, user
into important consumer behaviors such as the number engagement, and overall market trends. As more
of times an app has been downloaded, the revenue industries and broad parts of the economy accelerate
it generates via in-app purchases, the size of its user their move to mobile, App Data becomes even more
base, and even how frequently and consistently those important. Investor use-cases encompass both macro
customers engage with it, to name a few examples. analysis, to understand directional trends in the
This data has recently become a key component of broader market and establish benchmarks, as well as
the growing data mosaic for business leaders wishing analysis of a single company, such as studying specific
to make their pivotal decisions more data-driven. App consumer behaviors that help inform a company’s
Data can be invaluable for various businesses, but in topline performance.
particular it is becoming critical data for investment For Private Investors, this data can serve as a unique
managers. Capital managers rely on App Data to gain source of visibility into otherwise opaque areas of
a deeper understanding of user behavior, competition, business. While public market investors can compare
market trends, and overall app performance for their modeled KPIs and independently derived estimates to
companies, especially in light of inflation, rising a company's published metrics, private entities have

Why Investors Rely on Mobile App Data

Key Attributes of App Data

Granular: Aggregate data by ticker, publisher or segment it by app. This lets you analyze user trends on a granular
level and roll it backup to the parent company.

Timely: Low lag with high frequency updates means always having current and relevant analysis on demand and
ahead of company earnings.

Global: Data is segmented by geography and allows analysis by country and region.

Anonymized: Data is scrubbed from personal information. You are protected from accidentally ingesting PII.

Broad: Data is available on thousands of different apps and companies.

Relevant: Analyze the KPIs that are significant movers for your companies.

Complementary: Data is even more value additive when combined with other data sources.
4 > How Investors Use Mobile App Intelligence to turn Insight into Out-Performance

little to no disclosure requirements, making App Data among the investment community and is now common
one of the few ways investors can gain insight into the with other types of investors such as private equity, and
performance of apps controlled by these companies. venture capital. But instead of abandoning this data,
By analyzing metrics like Monthly Active Users (MAU), Hedge Funds doubled down on App Data as the early
investors can identify new potential opportunities opportunity for Alpha evolved into table stakes for
and assess the overall health of a company or sector mobile-first companies.
regardless of public disclosure. They can also use Mobile As the breadth of this data continues to expand, use
App Data to understand consumer response to new cases have quickly proliferated beyond mobile-first
product launches, like Disney+, and track consumer businesses to include other companies whose models
behavior over time to understand competitive have adapted to serve the modern day consumer via a
positioning, churn, and retention. Even with public mobile app. These insights can vary from market-level
companies, management is not always forthcoming growth scenarios all the way down to an analysis of a
about the details and nuances of customer adoption of single app’s potential in terms of depth and breath of
a new launch but data savvy investors can use Mobile adoption from its user base and the risks associated with
App Data as an independent verification source. its present and future competition. While consumer
While many types of investors use Mobile App Data behavior on mobile apps is differentiated from behavior
today, undeniably, Hedge Funds were the early adopters. on desktop, the convergence of the digital platforms
Hedge Fund managers saw an opportunity to use this allows Mobile App Data to be a strong proxy for overall
type of data to accurately predict the performance user behavior.
of mobile-first businesses. The term "Mobile First"
describes companies that focus predominantly on Choosing The Right KPIs For Apps In
mobile apps as their main channel for customer
interaction. A prime example of this would be Uber,
Different Stages Of Adoption
To get the most out of Mobile App Data it is important
which relies heavily on its app to connect drivers and
to get an understanding of the types of KPIs this data
riders. HFs were able to use Mobile App Data as an
can yield. Sensor Tower is partnered with Maiden
informational edge when positioning themselves in
Century to bring data and analysis to even more
public market securities. They could take advantage
investors and make the journey from data to insight
of data that the rest of the market didn’t see or didn’t
more streamlined. Sensor Tower data on the Maiden
understand. This practice has gained wide acceptance

Common Investment Use Cases For Mobile App Data

Idea Generation / Deal Investment Benchmarking / Relative Macro

Sourcing Due Diligence Analysis Trend Analysis

Trading On Delta Between Building Long Term

Competitive Monitoring / Risk
Modeled And Expected Investment Thesis Based
Analysis Management
KPIs On Consumer Trends
5 > How Investors Use Mobile App Intelligence to turn Insight into Out-Performance

Century platform provides estimates on a variety of more concerned about usage and engagement, so the
KPIs, including global downloads, in-app revenue from best metrics would be “active users”, “session count”
both the App Store and Google Play, daily active users and “time spent” on the app. These measurements give
(DAUs), weekly active users (WAUs) and monthly active investors insight into how current users engage with the
users (MAUs), as well as session count and time spent. app. Investors often evaluate this information alongside
While there are many metrics that can be derived from the timing of promotions, updates to app features,
Mobile App Data, there are a number of considerations or ad campaigns (like data from Pathmatics, a Sensor
investors should keep in mind before choosing which Tower product, which includes digital advertising
metric to focus on for a particular company. Maiden metrics, such as ad spend and number of impressions
Century provides investors with informative metrics on across geographies and channels from social to OTT)
KPIs such as relevance (correlating past surprises in a to determine their impact on user activity and overall
reported metric to consequent stock price volatility) but effectiveness.
it is important to develop an intuitive understanding of For a newer app, such as Instagram’s Threads or the
the significance of each KPI for a particular company digital retailer Temu, downloads are crucial to

Did You Know?

Revenue:
About Sensor Tower: Sensor Tower tracks in-app purchase revenue
Sensor Tower sources its Mobile App (referred to as “ revenue” on the Maiden Century
Data through partnerships with app IDEA platform), this specifically relates to
publishers as well as from usage statistics revenue that flows through the app stores. For
gathered from the users of its own suite example, if you buy some tokens in a mobile
of apps. These collection methods jointly game, this payment will typically be processed
provide our models with ground truth data through the relevant app store and will count
that, when combined with other publicly as an in-app purchase. However, transactions
available information (such as app store that are facilitated with a merchant outside of
rankings), can generate estimates for a the app store, for example an Uber ride, do not
range of KPIs for millions of apps across count as an in-app purchase and therefore are
over 100 countries. not tracked by Sensor Tower’s revenue data. It
is an important distinction to understand when
analyzing revenues generated by different apps.

or app. understanding demand for the brand or the services the

For an established publisher with a well-developed app provides. A new app would likely see simultaneous
app, especially one that has been around for years growth in both downloads and usage. If there is
or which has an extremely high installed base (e.g. deviation in that trend (e.g. plateauing downloads and
Instagram), the “download” metric is less helpful. An falling usage), it could signal a concerning trend. This
analysis of new downloads for such an app would likely dynamic suggests that the app’s ability to engage its user
show sequential year over year (YoY) declines due to is at risk. Apps which have been successful in retaining
an already high penetration and market saturation. users have managed to integrate themselves into their
However, this would not necessarily be a negative users’ everyday lives, changing routines and habits.
indicator, as slowing YoY growth is expected in this Apps that are frequently opened, such as social media
case. An analyst scrutinizing an app at this stage is and gaming apps, are expected to exhibit a high and
6 > How Investors Use Mobile App Intelligence to turn Insight into Out-Performance

stable session count per user - a measure of “stickiness” to reopen the app after it's been downloaded, which is
that these apps count on for monetization, usually often done via in-app promotions or other deals. Apps
through ad revenue. Apps that are transaction based, like Amazon Shopping, Temu, and Walmart lead in this
such as retail, must continuously market to get users category.

Most Applicable Mobile Intelligence KPIs By Sector

Users Engagement Power Users Churn Time Spent IAP Revenue Downloads Retention Sessions

Social

Streaming

Gaming

Fintech

E-Commerce

Dating

Banking

Health /
Wellness

Rideshare

Travel
7 > How Investors Use Mobile App Intelligence to turn Insight into Out-Performance

Coming back to ad revenue, apps that rely on provider. Maiden Century helps investors make the
advertisers to drive revenue are most often concerned most of multiple data inputs by building predictive
about maximizing not only the number of users they models back tested against all their data sources and
attract but also the average amount of time each user weighted based on the relevance and accuracy of each
spends in the app. Total Time Spent is a KPI that offers data input to the modeled KPI.
a simple way to track this trend and may correlate
well with ad revenues for the app. App publishers may
choose to maximize time spent on the app in a number
Identifying A Trend And Making Data
of ways, for example, by providing entertainment Actionable
such as gaming apps, or by delivering a free but useful To help explain and visualize a typical investor use
service, such as a navigation app. case for Sensor Tower’s Mobile App Data, we used
In addition to analyzing the growth of an app, it is Maiden Century’s IDEA platform and chose to focus
important to consider how well the app retains its users. on two highly followed names in the ride-hailing space,
Barriers to entry in the mobile economy are relatively low Uber and Lyft. The IDEA platform helps investors not
and we frequently see new entrants creating significant only visualize data from Sensor Tower and other sources,
disruption for incumbent apps. A new app can explode but also evaluate the relevance and applicability of that
in popularity but fizzle out quickly. When considering data to the KPIs they care about. Most investors find
an app’s stickiness, investors can analyze the concept that simply having access to data is not always enough,
from a retention point of view (i.e. what percent of they need to understand how that data relates to their
users does an app retain over a defined period). Diving KPIs. Let’s take a look at the daily users (DAU) on the
deeper, investors can analyze retention further by Uber app vs the Lyft App. *Data as of September 9th
breaking down users into four categories: new, retained, 2023. Credit: Sensor Tower, Maiden Century IDEA.
resurrected and churned. Understanding these four The figure below shows total DAUs for both apps over
components of usage gives investors a more granular the past three years. Looking at the DAU trends of both
understanding of the underlying drivers of growth. apps, we can see that both Uber and Lyft are close to
They can see if growth is coming from new users while their highest levels of users, respectively, even though
old users churn (indicating less sustainable growth) or global users of Uber outnumber those of Lyft by roughly
a combination of new users and retained users (more a factor of ten. (Uber on left axis in blue, Lyft on right in
sustainable). Understanding these fundamental drivers red).
often provides clues about the longevity, persistence,
and the ultimate success of an app.
Daily Active Users (DAU)
One final thing to mention here before diving into
examples, is that Mobile App data is often one of many
contributors of information to an investment thesis and
can be combined with a range of other inputs to ensure
a more robust analysis. For example, App Data has
proven to provide a reliable indicator of Monthly Active
Platform Consumers (“MAPCs”) for UBER. This metric
alone is important for UBER’s performance, however, it
can be combined with, say, credit card data to establish
average revenue per MAPC and therefore help model
total revenue for the company. It is important to note
that a robust model for predicting or forecasting LYF T UBER

quarterly KPIs for public companies is almost always

built on multiple data sources. Not every investment Source: Maiden Century IDEA Platform.
Data Source: Sensor Tower
manager has the resources and data science teams in
place to build a well functioning data operation and to
bridge this gap they often partner with a technology
8 > How Investors Use Mobile App Intelligence to turn Insight into Out-Performance

Very commonly, investors want to adjust for seasonal incentives to drivers to accept rides from its customers
trends and analyze the data on a Year over Year (YoY) vs. those of Uber. It also may put a constraint on longer
basis. This view normalizes for magnitude, allowing term growth.
you to compare growth of different size companies, and Building from this basic analysis, the investor can
for seasonal volatility in the KPIs. While both apps are take multiple paths of exploration, for instance, drilling
trending up we can see that the rate of YoY growth has in on the drivers of growth for both apps like geography
declined for both apps and is currently growing about or demographics, and even comparing the trend in
10% YoY. number of active drivers vs. riders by country. The IDEA
platform lets investors easily navigate and slice and dice
YoY, Daily Active Users their data on the fly, uncovering critical insights about
consumer behaviors, but often they need to go even
further. Do DAUs matter for Uber’s revenues, and if so
how much? And how do we know if we can trust this
data to put on a trade? What public KPI does it relate to
and how strong is the relationship? Data savvy investors
expect answers to these tough questions because they
need to go beyond understanding thematic trends - they
need to quantify the data’s applicability and relevance
to a publicly reported KPI, such as, say, Revenues and
other indicators.
LYF T UBER To get answers to these data questions you need to
run multiple analyses including historical backtests
Source: Maiden Century IDEA Platform.
on each data-derived metric such as DAU against
Data Source: Sensor Tower
company-reported metrics such as Revenues. There are
Investors may also want to know the proportion of multiple steps in this process including normalizing the
active riders vs active drivers for Lyft and track this trend data and mapping to entities and KPIs. After the data
through time. This analysis can pick up on concepts work is complete, investors need to build their models,
such as potential driver shortages and other supply / deciding on the look back periods, factor weights,
demand dynamics that the company’s management and other considerations. Keep in mind that unlike
does not quantify in filings or on conference calls. This traditional data, Alternative Data can be sliced many
data can also inform investors of potential margin different ways and choosing the right inputs for your
compression for Lyft. If driver growth is running slower models can be challenging and can sometimes lead
than rider growth, in theory there's more demand and to overfitting. Investors also must correlate surprises
less supply, which could lead to Lyft increasing in KPIs against subsequent price action to see what
the rest of the market thinks of each KPI as it relates
Lyft Driver vs. Rider DAU to the positioning and performance of the company.
This usually requires a significant time and resources
investment.
Thankfully, the IDEA platform does all this on the
fly. Let’s come back to Uber as our example and ask
a simple question to start: do the DAUs relate to total
company revenues?

LYF T D R I V E R LYF T R I D E R

Source: Maiden Century IDEA Platform. Source: Maiden Century IDEA Platform.
Data Source: Sensor Tower
9 > How Investors Use Mobile App Intelligence to turn Insight into Out-Performance

One of the most important indicators on the IDEA Conclusions And Next Steps
platform is the Model Accuracy score. It lets investors Mobile App Data has emerged as an indispensable
know if they can trust the model built on top of the data tool in the modern investment landscape, offering a
they have in the system. The score is based on the Mean wealth of granular, timely, and actionable data that
Average Percent Error (MAPE) of the model to the KPI can be leveraged for a multitude of use-cases across
over the past several quarters. The higher the number, industries and geographies. From Hedge Funds to
the more investors can place trust in the forecast (higher Private Equity and Venture Capital, the utility of App
Data has become almost universally accepted for its
Relevance & Accuracy of KPIs
ability to provide unique insights into user behavior,
market trends, and competitive positioning. While
the data is invaluable for understanding mobile-first
companies like Uber, it’s applications have broadened
to include virtually any business that interacts with its
customers, or even employees, through a mobile app.
Key attributes such as granularity, timeliness, and
breadth have made App Data a staple in the modern
investor’s data ensemble. The partnership between
Sensor Tower and Maiden Century makes this data even
more universally accessible, consumable, and valuable
to the investor. It lets investors go beyond simply telling
compelling data stories and allows them to quantify the
value of each metric and build models that they can
understand and trust to put on risk.
Source: Maiden Century IDEA Platform. As the digital economy continues to evolve, Mobile
App Data will likely grow in importance, offering ever-
model accuracy corresponds to a lower MAPE). more sophisticated metrics and analytics capabilities
And what if you get the KPI prediction right, will the as well as insights into consumer behaviors that drive
market care? How important is this KPI to the price markets. For investors willing to delve into this rich
of the company’s stock? That question is answered data, the rewards could be significant, from identifying
by the Model Relevance score, measuring the relative new investment opportunities to gaining a competitive
price action following a surprise announcement for edge in an increasingly competitive and data-driven
the specific KPI you are modeling. In this case, DAUs market.
from Sensor Tower are both accurate in predicting the If you are interested in adding Mobile App Data to
KPI and that KPI is relevant to the company - meaning your data arsenal or using it in conjunction with your
the market cares if the company’s management hits or existing data assets, please contact the authors, we are
misses their KPI estimates. looking forward to hearing from you!
Looking at other KPIs, we can quickly see how the
model has performed, and how the market has reacted
to KPI surprises for Uber. Even though the model is great
at predicting Gross bookings, the market does not seem
to care as much about that KPI as it cares about EMEA
revenue. Armed with this knowledge, the investor can
leverage Sensor Tower data (and other data they have
access to) to build great models and make predictions
about the most relevant metrics.
For more information, please contact the co-authors:

Qaisar Hasan Seema Shah

Founder, CEO Senior Director of Research
[email protected] [email protected]

Don Wood Max Warren

Chief Revenue Officer Team Director, Financial Institutions
[email protected] [email protected]

Mark Trowbridge Anthony Bartolacci

VP, Sales Chief Strategy Officer
[email protected] [email protected]

Disclaimer
Our reports are based upon information gathered from various sources believed to be reliable but are not guaranteed as to accuracy or completeness. The information in
this report is not intended to be, and shall not constitute, an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any security or investment product or service. The information in this
report is subject to change without notice, and Maiden Century assumes no responsibility to update the information contained in this report.