On today’s App Developer’s Corner, we’re talking to Adrian Ochoa President of Avantar. According to their homepage; “Avantar is a sister company to Yellow Pages Directory and a leader in local search and advertising.” The following is what Adrian had to share with us about his business and the iPhone App market.
Give us a quick overview about yourself and company.
Adrian Ochoa, President of Avantar. Previous to this I co-owned an interactive yellow pages business directory service targeting Latin America, which eventually sold to TELMEX (NYSE: TMX).
Avantar is a leader in local search with nearly 3 million downloads and delivers 8 million monthly local search results. Our most famous applications are Yellow Pages (#1 downloaded Navigation app), Showtimes (”Best Movie App” Macworld), and AirYell (local navigator). We also just launched the first Facebook Yellow Pages App and will soon expand our products to other smartphone platforms.
Our business is not in development of applications. It is as a provider of a local advertising search solution for publishers. We are currently working on a turn-key advertising data feed solution for any type of app publisher that can provide local search queries.
Why did you move into the mobile space and what was your incentive to use the iPhone platform?
I’ve been an Apple enthusiast and customer since the inception of Apple. Apple’s hardware and software helped me to create a successful movie production and advertising agency for Latin America.
Having always kept up with all their technologies, the buzz about the iPhone, geolocation capabilities, and GPS on mobile couldn’t be ignored. So, with my expertise in the yellow pages industry it was a perfect fit.
We started development months before the App Store launched, and were approved just in time to have two of our apps be the first of the 300 at the grand opening.
When developing a marketing plan, what would you say has been the most successful strategy/avenue for promoting and increasing visibility for your projects?
First to market.
How has Pinch Analytics helped with app development, promotion, and marketing?
Intelligent data is key to smart marketing, development and promotion decision making. With Pinch we can tell how frequently our apps are being used, which notifies us if something is wrong and needs further looking into, or if something is working right that increases our traffic. We can also tell how many new users we have and what version of our apps they are using.
Do you have any piece of advice that you would like to share?
In the now highly competitive landscape I would suggest you focus on capturing a niche that’s not well served and excel in it. This is your best shot at long-term growth and profitability, unless you get lucky enough to be featured somewhere and strike it rich as a “one-hit wonder.”
If you would like to find out more about Avantar’s Apps, check out their website. And if you would like to track how your marketing strategies translate into resulting user behavior, register for an account at Pinch Media and let us know if you have any questions getting started.
-Adit Shukla