Monetizing Premium Social App Ad Inventory and Scaling a Capital-Efficient Business: appssavvy CEO Chris Cunningham (Part 7)

Sramana: What was your strategy for funding appssavvy? Chris Cunningham: Our strategy for raising money was basic. We started in early 2008 by bootstrapping. Both Michael and I put our American Express cards to the limit. We got buy-in to the business on our own dime. We were talking to friends and family as well

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Monetizing Premium Social App Ad Inventory and Scaling a Capital-Efficient Business: appssavvy CEO Chris Cunningham (Part 6)

Sramana: How do you price that model ? How do you sell an activity to an advertiser? Chris Cunningham: We actually don’t sell an activity to an advertiser. We sell them an audience. Our ad is triggered by activity.

Monetizing Premium Social App Ad Inventory and Scaling a Capital-Efficient Business: appssavvy CEO Chris Cunningham (Part 5)

Sramana: One of the activity advertising concepts you talked about was branded interviews. Would you provide more details about that concept? Chris Cunningham: There was an application called Social Interview. Users could post interview questions to their friends. It was almost like a gaming behavior. We took that interview and were able to get it

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Monetizing Premium Social App Ad Inventory and Scaling a Capital-Efficient Business: appssavvy CEO Chris Cunningham (Part 4)

Sramana: How long did you carry on with your initial business model, and what were your revenue ramps in the early years? Chris Cunningham: We went from 80 partners in 2008 to several hundred in 2009. We went from just under $4 million in revenue in 2008 to $9 million in 2009 and over $20

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Monetizing Premium Social App Ad Inventory and Scaling a Capital-Efficient Business: appssavvy CEO Chris Cunningham (Part 3)

Sramana: Selling brand advertising in social advertising has been challenging for many companies that also tried this model. Why did you succeed when they failed? Chris Cunningham: In order to sell a premium brand representation at the highest value, we created perceived value of advertising in social apps. That is critical because many other companies

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Monetizing Premium Social App Ad Inventory and Scaling a Capital-Efficient Business: appssavvy CEO Chris Cunningham (Part 2)

Sramana: When was the official beginning of appssavvy? Chris Cunningham: It officially started in November  2007. This was pre-Apple commercials. We were one of the first companies to create a name that had “apps” in it. There was not an application conversation market in those days. I did have an important lesson I learned during

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Monetizing Premium Social App Ad Inventory and Scaling a Capital-Efficient Business: appssavvy CEO Chris Cunningham (Part 1)

Chris Cunningham is the CEO and co-founder of appssavvy, an activity advertising technology company. He also serves as co-chair of the IAB Social Media Committee and in 2010 and 2011 was a finalist for Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year award. Chris graduated from the University of North Carolina Greensboro with BA in economics

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1Mby1M Deal Radar 2010: appssavvy, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles

appsavvy is a data-driven platform and direct sales and marketing services team that helps companies to monetize social activity across the Web through organic social marketing campaigns. Its sales team represents social media applications on Facebook, MySpace, Google, the iPhone, and emerging platforms and connects the developers of these applications with major brand advertisers.