Kochava named Idaho's most innovative company

SANDPOINT — Sandpoint-based Kochava was named Innovative Company of the Year by Idaho Innovation Awards for its work with how people interact online.

Jeremy Grimm, director of publisher development, said Kochava won the award Oct. 21, after going through an interview and the nomination process. He said the Idaho Technology Council takes nominations, and companies can self-nominate, which is what Kochava did.

“A couple of weeks later we were notified we were a finalist and needed to be in Boise,” Grimm said.

Kochava works with companies, large and small, to help them know what platforms their applications are being downloaded from, and how that person interacts with the app. The companies advertise their application on different platforms, and Kochava tells them which platform is the most successful, which groups of people are most likely to download the app, and how they should spend their advertising funds.

“We show them which platforms that person installed the app from,” Grimm said. “They can see they are getting a good return.”

He used CNN as an example and said that if someone was to download the CNN application from a site, such as Internet music company Pandora where they have placed advertising, then someone will get paid for the download.

“What they end up seeing is ‘lift,’ or higher return on their advertising investment,” Grimm said.

Part of what Kochava offers is a measure of how the users are using the app. He said they use software codes inside the application to monitor the movements. This helps companies target the large usage areas and send incentives to those people. The process is anonymous and uses a device number, not the name of the person who owns the phone.

“It doesn’t get too spooky,” Grimm said. “People can limit ad-tracking on their phones.”

Grimm said that up until a few years ago, most advertising funds were spent on live television, in newspapers and in magazines. That has changed to mobile devices and the Internet.

“Those ad dollars are shifting away from mainstream,” Grimm said, adding they are one of very few companies that detail and measure how an advertisement is performing.

Kochava has locations in Silicon Valley, Calif., Seattle, Beijing, South Korea and London. But most of the employees, or 58 of them, work at the Sandpoint location.