Adjust, an app analytics firm, raised $17 million in funding as it looks to “power a faster and more efficient mobile marketing ecosystem”.

The investment will be used to “accelerate Adjust’s product expansion”, while strengthening its efforts to “encourage user-friendly advertising practices and prioritisation of privacy protection in mobile marketing,” the firm said.

Adjust’s open source SDK allows developers to track and analyse data such as user acquisition, feature releases and user lifetime cohorts.

The investment will also enable the company to expand its offering among “underserved, high-potential businesses”.

Spokesperson Christoph Terwitte told Mobile World Live this refers to apps “competing in a tough market that would benefit from the comprehensive analytics and attribution services we offer”.

He added that in a recent study, iOS engineer Ryan Olson said Adjust’s SDK is integrated in 14 of the top free 100 apps – “more than twice as often as our competitors’ SDKs” (which include Kochava, Mobile App Tracking by Tune, and AppsFlyer).

However, less than half of the top 100 apps had an integrated attribution and analytics SDK. Terwitte said with the new funding, the company will be able to “fast track product development and expansion, and is optimistic this will be indicated with a corresponding uptick in these numbers.”

Adjust processes more than 1 petabyte of mobile data each month and currently there are 1.3 billion installations of apps on mobile devices around the world that are tracked with Adjust’s SDK.

The company also said it turned profitable in 2015, having launched in 2012.

Over the past three years, Adjust has expanded from its Berlin office to six more cities, including San Francisco and Istanbul.

Christian Henschel, CEO and co-founder, said that “as an independent third-party attribution solutions provider, we assume a central role in connecting app developers to ad networks, publishers and other ecosystem parties”.

“The growth of mobile-born companies signals a positive environment for the development of tracking solutions that provide quality data for business decision makers. As these companies become market leaders, more and more businesses will require a holistic mobile marketing tool. Our ambition is to become that essential part of their business intelligence and process data at scale, just as SAP broke out of its market scope decades ago,” he added.

Adjust’s clients include Rovio and Sony Music.

The funding round takes the company to a total of $30 million raised since it was established. The current round was led by Highland Europe.