Mobile technology company Button today announced a partnership with affiliate network Rakuten on the heels of launching with Uber Eats and Groupon its suite of personalization and intelligence products, Button Evolution.

The company says the partnership using Rakuten Advertising’s expansive publisher network will allow it to support retailers and mutual customers like Sam’s Club.

Button enables marketers to target specific audiences and determine the optimal rate of media spend through mobile.

Through Button’s latest product, Reach, the company offers deep linking and app-tracking technology as a service to affiliate network traffic. Through this tool, brands aim to convert high-intent traffic into lifetime-value boosts through app installs.

The mobile tool enables brands to manage partnerships and view their app affiliate data from Button on their Rakuten Advertising dashboards. In addition, publishers benefit from app payouts without having to update links.

Mobile app use continues to grow. Airship, which measures customer engagement with mobile apps, on Tuesday released results of its global benchmark study, “The State of Global Mobile Engagement 2020,” examining the state of mobile app behaviors across nearly 750 million people worldwide. Data in February 2020 was used for year-over-year analysis, then compared with data between March and June 2020.

Year-over-year analysis for February 2020, compared with 2019, showed that while global active mobile app audiences grew by more than 30%, the average number of app opens per user declined 28.5% to 17.6 app opens per user, per month globally.

Similarly, global average notification direct open rates fell from 6.44% to 6.35% in February, but both metrics reversed this trend by growing 29% from March through June, averaging 22.6 app opens per user and a direct open rate of 8.2% globally. 

Mobile app engagement metrics vary at a regional level, from markets that are more mature, to rapidly emerging markets with significant mobile-only populations, as well as by industry vertical — especially those most impacted by COVID-19.

Among 41 countries included in the study, India, Romania, Mexico, Japan and Brazil saw the biggest gains to location opt-in rates during March and June 2020 — the U.K. was sixth, while the U.S. had the ninth-largest growth rate.

Countries seeing the biggest gains in average notification direct open rates included South Africa (+147%), Austria (+92%), Taiwan (+69%), Belgium (+64%) and France (+63%).