Dive Brief:

• Mobile deep linking firm, Branch Metrics, increased its total venture capital investment to $53 million after a Series B $35 million round led by Founders Fund and including all of the company’s previous investors.
• According to Branch Metrics, it has over one billion users and 1.6 billion links created for app developers. Companies using its technology include Pinterest, Redfin, Hotel Tonight, BuzzFeed and Jet.com.
• Branch Metrics' deep linking allows app developers to link to in-app content and either opened installed apps, or sends users to the app store to download the app before taking them to the clicked on deep-linked content.

Dive Insight:

For app marketers, deep linking offers a way to reach an app’s audience through more organic and inbound channels such as email, SMS and social media marketing rather than more expensive paid app install campaigns.

"There is a good reason why people spend 85% of their time on mobile in apps — they offer superior user experiences and unique content," Alex Austin, CEO and co-founder of Branch, said in a statement. "However, the process of finding these apps in overcrowded app stores and generic install ads is painful for both consumers and app developers. We plan to use this new funding to continue our efforts to improve the app and app content discovery process."

Last summer both Google and Apple began pushing for mobile deep linking. At the time, Bitly Chief Product Officer Matt Thompson wrote in a guest post for VentureBeat, "Deep linking adoption got a massive boost when Google and Apple made it more enticing for all apps to name, expose, and index deep links. At I/O this past May, Google announced Now on Tap and unveiled ways for locations inside of apps to surface in search results via App Indexing. Apple announced Spotlight for iOS, and it’s expected that 70% of all iOS devices will have the new deep linking capabilities within five months of the planned fall 2015 rollout."