It looks like the URL shortening service, Bitly, has announced today that it’s offering brand marketers a way to drive more consumers to their mobile apps by going deeper into mobile.
This new feature that Bitly has come up with, called Deep Links, gives Bitly enterprise customers the ability to create links that send mobile users to appropriate in-app locations, instead of normal webpages. Typically, when you click a link that takes you in-app, that’s usually the work of a developer, major platforms such as Google and Facebook, and deep linking startups.
The solution that Bitly has decided to focus on is targeted at marketers who want a fix now. The feature is an extension of Bitly Brand Tools, and allows marketers to set an alternate app link for any Bitly link created.
With this feature, any customer who taps on a link found on a mobile device will be taken to a location targeted on an app, assuming that the app is installed on that device. If not, the link will take them to the web page.
According to Matt Thomson, Bitly’s chief product officer, they will be adding the ability to serve an app-install interstitial to people who doesn’t have a brand’s app installed.
Bitly processes more than 5 billion clicks a month from mobile devices, and now with this feature, it will be able to direct people to an even more appropriate place on their mobile devices.