Archive for March, 2010

Offerpal Media Publishes New Policies for Mobile Advertising Offers

Establishes new standards to protect the user experience in mobile games and applications

Fremont, Calif. – March 22, 2010 – Offerpal Media, the leader in virtual currency payment alternatives, today published a set of formal advertising policies for offers and other marketing actions that appear in applications on mobile platforms such as the iPhone, Android and others. The policies can be found at http://www.offerpalmedia.com/mobile-ad-policies.

The policies echo those previously published by Offerpal Media for advertising offers on social networks, virtual worlds, online gaming sites and other web properties. One notable difference is that the policies for mobile offers take into consideration the limited screen size of mobile devices and dictate that the terms and conditions of all mobile offers must appear in sufficient font size to be easily identified and read by the user.

“Offerpal raised the bar by setting acceptable standards for currency-based offers on social networking platforms and the open web. With the rapid growth of mobile gaming, it was time to set policies and standards for mobile offers as well,” said George Garrick, Chairman and CEO of Offerpal Media. “Our policies are more stringent than any other mobile advertising network, but we felt this was an important step to protect the user experience. We encourage other providers to follow our lead and ban any offers that are at all misleading or objectionable.”

About Offerpal Media

Offerpal Media is the leader in virtual currency monetization for online games, virtual worlds and social networks. The company’s turnkey payment platform gives consumers the opportunity to earn virtual currency for free by taking part in targeted advertising offers, shopping at big-brand retailers, completing online surveys, watching videos or otherwise engaging with brands.  Since its launch in 2007, Offerpal has issued more than 1 trillion virtual points to over 200 million consumers across 2,000 publishers. The company is headquartered in Fremont, California. Investors include Interwest Capital, North Bridge Venture Partners, and D. E. Shaw Ventures. For more information, visit www.offerpalmedia.com.

Company Contact:                                                    Media Contact:

Matt McAllister                                                          Jennifer Parson

Offerpal Media                                                          Atomic PR

(510) 403-7319                               (415) 593-1400

matt.mcallister@offerpal.com                                jennifer.parson@atomicpr.com

comScore Study: More than Half of Social Gamers Willing to “Pay” with Marketing Action

More than half of all social gamers would be willing to “pay” for virtual currency by completing some type of marketing action, according to the results of a new study conducted by comScore and commissioned by us. That’s in stark contrast to the 23% of social gamers who say they’d be willing and are actually able to buy virtual currency through direct cash payment options.

The numbers prove that there is not just demand but downright enthusiasm for marketing actions such as offers, surveys and videos as a source of virtual currency, and that most social gamers strongly prefer these alternative, or indirect, payment options over direct payment methods like credit cards or PayPal more than 2 to 1. However, since 53% of consumers say they’d be willing to complete a marketing action but only 35% say they actually have done so, there is also a clear opportunity for game developers to monetize larger portions of their user base by promoting alternative payment options more heavily and by integrating them into their game play more tightly.

We also released other numbers today from our network-wide performance that supports the theory that alternative payment methods lead to higher monetization rates and incremental revenue. The number that really jumped out at us during our analysis is that ever since September 30th, 2009, when we started rolling out new alt pay options such as surveys, shopping rewards, tasks and, most recently, videos, we have seen a 20% increase in the number of users we are able to monetize.

Take videos as an example. In the tests we have conducted, not only have 75% of the people who watched a video in exchange for virtual currency been new users who had never completed any type of offer nor made any type of payment before, but more than 10% of those users went on to make another transaction–in many cases a high value cash transaction–in just the first week after watching a video.

What does this all mean for an industry where most developers are lucky to monetize 3% of their users and, according to our study, most users either don’t have the ability to pay with cash or simply aren’t willing to fork over their hard earned money? Mostly it means that the future of monetization lies in alternative means of payment. I may not be willing to use my credit card to buy clothes for my avatar or a virtual gift for a friend, but I’d certainly be willing to watch a few videos or fill out a brief survey for it.

Other findings from the release include:

• Gamers in the 25-34 age range are most likely (70.9 % “very likely”) to be willing to earn virtual currency through marketing actions;
• Most of the gamers (54.5%) report playing games online at least once a day; 26.7% reported playing several times a week; 11.5% play about once a week; and 7.3% play two to three times a month;
• When asked what kinds of games they play on a regular basis, 58.4% of the respondents said they regularly play virtual world/simulation games, followed by arcade games (40.3%), role playing games (33.5%), action games (29.7%), board games (26.9%), card games (25.6%) and word games (23.4%);
• Of those who say they are “very likely” to buy points with a cash payment method, a majority of the users are men (53.4%) and a plurality in the 25-34 age range (42.8%); 85.4% of the users who say they are “very likely” to buy points with cash are also “very likely” to earn points through marketing actions.

The results of the survey will be presented by George Garrick, Offerpal CEO, during our forum at the GDC this Friday, March 12th, at 3:00 pm in Moscone’s South Hall, Room 310. To register, click here.