Keen IO releases “analytics-as-a-service” for apps, sites, and devices

For marketers, the quality of analytics — in the tools they use or the software products they sell — can define their success.

In this age of cloud-based software, many tools and products employ outside platforms for specific functions that complement their core, such as Stripe for electronic payments, Twilio for communications or Amazon Web Services for cloud computing services.

Today, San Francisco-based Keen IO is making a bid to become the analytics equivalent of those services, with the release of its Native Analytics. It is a white-labeled platform that, via a software development kit and API, offers analytics and advanced visualization that can be customized, branded by the client company and embedded natively into an app, website or service.

“Nobody else offers this analytics-as-a-service,” COO Will O’Brien told me. Point solutions like Mixpanel, Amplitude and Google Analytics, he said, have specific capabilities, while Native Analytics is highly adaptable. The chief competition, he said, comes from developers who choose to take months to build their own analytics stack.

Previously, Keen’s platform was designed for integration by developers, but now it’s been productized, expanded and white-labeled. The open-source visualization library, the company says, is the largest of any private firm.

Ecommerce automation platform Bluecore white-labels Native Analytics to provide real-time dashboards and shopping cart data, customizing the platform for clients.

Visual marketing platform Pixlee offers a Keen-powered analytics dashboard that describes user engagement and conversion (see screen below), while online publication Mic.com employs Native Analytics to integrate user engagement stats with its content management system.