Liftoff Mobile, a performance marketing and monetization solutions for apps and games, went public last week at a $3.83 billion valuation. Today’s valuation is $4.5 billion, and that suggests investors have confidence in the company. This is why the Blackstone-backed company was able to raise $437 million. I interviewed the COO, Andre Tutundjian, about the company he runs alongside CEO Jeremy Bondy. The company is trading under the ticker symbol LFTO. He surprised me by saying he was a “huge personal fan” of my work over the years and that he is a massive gamer. Tutundjian was an analytics expert at Cie Games and Scopely. Then he founded AlgoLift back in 2016. AlgoLit focused on a machine-learning marketing optimization platform that ensures the money that app and game companies spend on performance marketing is done with intelligence. Liftoff and Vungle acquired AlgoLift back in 2020, and Tutundjian has been along for the ride, becoming COO in 2023. I covered the event when Liftoff and Vungle merged to form a performance marketing and monetization company. And so it is interesting to see him celebrating in the picture at Nasdaq’s headquarters in New York. Yet Liftoff itself doesn’t seem like it’s well known in the game industry, even though roughly half of its customers are mobile game companies.Liftoff has 878 demand-side customers who have 1.4 billion daily active users. It has 167,000 active SDK apps and high publisher retention. “The success of our advertisers’ games plays a significant role in maintaining and…
