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The truth about SDK integrations and their impact on developers
The digital media industry often talks about how much influence, dominance and power entities like Google and Facebook have. Generally, the focus is on the vast troves of data and audience reach these companies tout. However, there’s more beneath the surface that strengthens the grip these companies have on both app developers and publishers alike.
In reality, software development kit (SDK) integrations are a critical component of why these monolith companies have such a prominent presence. For reference, an SDK is a set of software development tools, libraries, code samples, processes and guides that help developers create or enhance the apps they’re building.
Through a digital marketing lens, SDKs provide in-app analytics, insights on campaign testing, attribution information, location details, monetization capabilities and more.
Through a digital marketing lens, SDKs provide in-app analytics, insights on campaign testing, attribution information, location details, monetization capabilities and more. In the case of companies like Google and Facebook, their ability to provide these insights dovetails with their data and reach.
While that does deliver useful capabilities to developers and publishers alike, it also perpetuates the factors contributing to their perceived monopolistic status — and the detriments a lack of competition fosters.
Almost all (90%) ad-monetized Android apps have Google’s Admob SDK integrated, data from Statista showed. Additionally, the Facebook Audience Network SDK is present in 19% of all global Android apps utilizing mobile ads. It’s worth noting that the large majority of alternative “leading” advertising SDKs outside these two players are used less than 13% of the time in Android apps.
As the app ecosystem rapidly expands beyond the borders of mobile, app developers and publishers would benefit immensely from identifying economical and secure ways of adopting more SDKs.
The state of SDK adoption
While there are many SDKs available in the market today, a few key factors contribute to Google and Facebook’s overall dominance. The most basic is around the respective organizations’ reach and industry notoriety. However, a larger component here is the lack of resources and time app developers have.
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TikTok expands its influence to third-party apps with new developer program & SDK
TikTok is looking to expand its influence by integrating with popular third-party video creation and editing apps. The company today announced a new TikTok for Developers program which will introduce tools for third-party app developers, including those that allow them to access TikTok’s creative offerings as well as push content from their apps to TikTok directly. The first of these tools is the new Share to TikTok SDK, which will let users edit videos in other apps then publish them from that app to TikTok.
One of the key launch partners for the new SDK is Adobe Premiere Rush, Adobe’s mobile app for video editing. With the new TikTok integration, Premiere Rush users can access video editing features like aspect ratio switching, transitions, color filters, time lapse and slo-mo, audio control and more, then share instantly to TikTok and other video destinations.
In addition to Adobe, the apps supporting the Share to TikTok SDK at launch also include looping video creator Plotaverse, AR app Fuse.it, gaming highlights recorder Medal, Momento GIF Maker, PicsArt and Enlight Videoleop.
For some of the smaller, single-purpose apps, being able to become a useful tool for the creator community can have an outsized impact on their growth and revenues. For example, Facetune’s maker Lightricks has built a profitable business across its suite of photo and video editing apps, including Enlight Videoleap, and has now raised a total of $205 million.
In addition to built-in sharing features, apps that integrate with the new TikTok SDK will also gain access to a wider selection of creative tools, says TikTok.
But the apps will benefit in another way, too — when creators share their videos, they’ll include the specified partner hashtag along with the content. This will help to give the app the ability to gain exposure among even more TikTok users.
“This new Share to TikTok feature enriches the content available on TikTok, diversifies the types of videos users can discover, and offers more editing choices for users to explore in addition to TikTok’s built-in creative tools,” explained TikTok, in an announcement. “Most importantly, it gives users multiple avenues to create new original, high-quality content using platforms with exciting creative tools,” the company said.
The TikTok for Developers program also includes tools to embed videos on the web, and offers developer documentation, demos and more. The program’s terms of service restricts developers from collecting users’ personal data or other nefarious activity, and threatens developers’ access could be removed if terms are violated.
The news follows reports that the U.S. government has opened a national security review of TikTok owner, Beijing-based ByteDance, specifically with regard to its $1 billion acquisition of U.S. app Musical.ly.
TikTok didn’t say what other plans its has in store for the developers program, only that it will continue to expand access to its own creative tools further across the wider app ecosystem.
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Square launches its in-app payments SDK
Square today announced the launch of its in-app payments SDK that allows developers to build Square-powered payments right into their mobile apps. While Square remains best known for its offline payments solutions that grace virtually ever independent coffee shop and quirky corner store, the company has long offered APIs for taking online payments on the web and for working with its reader hardware.
Today’s launch expands the company’s reach into mobile apps, an area where it faces stiff competition from the likes of Stripe, Adyen and others. Square, however, argues that this launch puts it ahead of the competition, given that it now offers a complete online and offline payments solution.
“With the introduction of in-app mobile payments to the Square platform, developers now have a complete, omnichannel payments solution for all their payment needs,” said Square developer lead Carl Perry in today’s announcement. “From software to hardware to services, Square offers a complete payments experience all in one cohesive open platform. Even better, developers and sellers can manage all their payments across in-store, mobile and online all in one place.”
The SDK is available for Android, iOS and Flutter, Google’s toolkit for building cross-platform applications. For now, only developers in the United States, Canada, U.K., Australia and Japan will be able to use it, though. The app provides a default payments flow, but developers can also customize it to match their apps and needs. Using this service, mobile app developers will be able to take payments through the usual credit and debit cards, as well as Apple Pay and Google Pay.
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Movable Ink now lets developers build custom email applets
Movable Ink has always prided itself on providing marketers with a way to deliver highly customized emails, but today the company decided to take that one step further. It announced an SDK that enables developers to build custom applets to add their own unique information to any email.
The company has always seen itself as a platform on which marketers can build these highly customized email marketing campaigns, says Bridget Bidlack SVP of product at Movable Ink .
“We built our business on making it easier for marketers to add intelligent content into any email campaign through a library of hundreds of apps. With our [latest] launch, we’re really opening up our development framework to agencies and system integrators so that they can create those apps on their own,” Bidlack explained.
This means companies are free to create any type of data integration they wish and not simply rely on Movable Ink to supply it for them. Bidlack says that could be anything from the current weather to accurate inventory levels, loyalty point scores and recent purchase activity.
What’s more, Movable Ink doesn’t really care about the source of the data. It could come from the company CRM system, internal database or offer management tool. Bidlack says Movable Ink can incorporate that data into an email regardless of where it’s stored.
This all matters because the company’s whole raison d’etre is about providing a customized email experience for every user. Instead of getting a generic email marketing campaign, you would get something that pulls in details from a variety of sources inside the company to build a custom email aimed directly at the individual recipient.
Company co-founder and CEO Vivek Sharma says that when they launched in 2010, service providers at the time were focused on how many people they could reach and open rate, but nobody was really thinking about the content. His company wanted to fill that gap by focusing specifically on building emails with customized content.
As Sharma said, they didn’t try to take on the email service providers. Instead they wanted to build this intelligent customization layer on top. They have grown increasingly sophisticated with their approach in the last 8 years and count companies like Dunkin’ Donuts, Bloomingdale’s, Comcast and Delta among their 500+ customers. They also have strategic partnerships with companies in the space like Salesforce, Oracle, IBM, Cheetah Digital, Epsilon and many others.
The approach seems to be working. The company has raised a modest $14 million since it launched in 2010, but today it boasts $40 million in annual recurring revenue, according to Sharma.
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The day that changed your phone forever
Whether you’re a developer who’s working on mobile apps, or just someone enjoying the millions of apps available for your phone, today is a very special day. It’s the 10-year anniversary of the original iPhone SDK. Rollout.io’s Rox lets app developers deploy new features safely – just like the big guys do
Rollout.io, a company that had developed technology that allowed mobile app developers to update their apps without having to go through the App Store approval process, is now entering a new business after Apple cracked down on apps using its software. Today, the former TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield finalist has transitioned to a new product that allows developers to selectively roll out… Read More
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Scandy is bringing 3D scanning to Android phones near you
Not content with letting you 3D print your images on demand, Scandy is today launching a beta program for its $500 device to make it easy to scan objects in 3D, all from your Android device. The company is using 3D sensors from pmd to get 0.3mm feature precision, putting resolutions from far more expensive machines in the hands of consumers. Read More
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Microsoft brings Skype to businesses’ iOS and Android apps
Microsoft is further opening up Skype to businesses. On Thursday, the company launched its Skype for Business SDK – tools which allow iOS and Android developers to integrate Skype’s messaging, audio and voice capabilities into their own mobile applications. The idea is to allow Skype to power the communications experience inside applications, so developers can focus on building… Read More
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It’s the end of “euphoric times” for custom app developers
For the first time in about eight years, we saw a decline in the small business customer base of app developers (in terms of revenue and per-project value). The primary reason cited is the rise of white labels and SDKs. “Uber for X” toolkits have indeed become a force to reckon with. Small businesses increasingly rely on “ready to use” frameworks rather than opting… Read More
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Rollout.io Puts Mobile Developers Back In Control Of Their Apps
A new startup, Rollout.io, launching today at TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco 2015 wants to put mobile app developers back in control of their software by allowing them to make code-level changes on the fly. This service aims to address a common problem app developers today face. That is, when there are critical bugs or other issues that need to be fixed, the process of actually getting an… Read More
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