StartApp’s Mobile Search Monetization Platform For Android Surpasses 150 Million Downloads

You may remember StartApp from their September 2011 launch, or perhaps from the $4 million the company raised in March. But today, 10 months after the initial launch, StartApp is back with the news that its search monetization software has been downloaded more than 150 million times on Android.

The company has said that around 4,000 live apps in the Google Play store are using its platform, with approximately 1.25 million daily SDK installs.

If you’re not already familiar with it, StartApp is basically a platform that lets developers bundle in a search portal with their app, meaning the user not only installs the Herp Derp app but they install a little search icon controlled by StartApp. Developers then receive a cut of the revenue generated by the search, though the user has every right to delete the icon immediately.

That said, 150 million downloads as opposed to 450 million downloads in December is a huge spike in growth. Developers using StartApp receive an upfront payment for their free apps, where they’ll receive $10-$50 per 1,000 downloads, depending on location. Alternately, they can choose to share the revenue generated by the search option on an ongoing basis.

Some developers have said that they have generated 10 times more revenue than they were before implementing StartApp, so clearly StartApp’s partners are happy campers. I’d be more interested, however, to see how users feel about that curious little search icon that appears after downloading an app. Sure, the developer is required to mention the search icon bundle, but I’ve blown through permissions and informative pop-ups plenty of times. And I’m sure I’m not the only one.