Today, we’re thrilled to announce our partnership with TubeMogul, a media buying platform for brand advertising, to bring real-time media buying to social video advertising for the first time.
TrialPay recently developed a private exchange that enables brand advertisers to efficiently buy audiences across hundreds of games, and for our first integration, we partnered with TubeMogul, an early leader in real-time media purchasing of video advertising. TubeMogul’s clients, which include the world’s top trading desks and brand advertisers, will now have the ability to buy video ads for these new units alongside pre-existing formats (pre-roll, in-display, etc.).
This real-time bidding is an especially welcome and exciting development because it lends more transparency to brand advertisers: they can see what they are buying and can access detailed audience reporting from TubeMogul. Brand advertisers will know where their ads are running in each campaign and can leverage built-in optimization to maximize engagement and brand impact in real-time. This capability—combined with the advanced targeting possible on the Facebook platform—now gives brand advertisers a unique chance to engage viewers on a deeper level.
Video ads in our private beta tests performed strongly, even stacking up well against in-stream units. The new in-game Facebook placements heightened awareness and purchase metrics across the board for the brand surveys tested, with particularly pronounced results for message association and brand favorability.
Brand advertisers are increasingly looking towards social media games as the audience size continues to grow rapidly. TrialPay’s partnership with TubeMogul will increase returns for developers while supplying relevant and engaging inventory for players.
TrialPay co-founder and CPO Terry Angelos will be participating on a panel titled, “Monetizing Social Games on Facebook: Credits, Today and Tomorrow” at Inside Social Apps on February 8. The panel will address current monetization trends in the developer ecosystem, what the roadmap looks like for 2012 and how Facebook Credits will continue to evolve beyond its current form.
The Facebook Credits economy has rapidly evolved over the past year. Not only can players use credits to buy virtual items in social games, now they can rent movies from studios such as Miramax, Warner Brothers and Paramount Pictures, in addition to buying MP3’s from popular recording artists. Facebook Credits are here to stay, and the Credits model will continue to expand and present more opportunities in 2012 for innovators looking to take advantage of its monetization potential.
In light of the introduction of in-app currency, understanding the Facebook Credits landscape is crucial for game publishers looking to develop monetization strategies and creating a monetization roadmap.
Inside Social Apps will be held on February 8-9 in San Francisco and will bring together the world’s leading entrepreneurs to discuss and strategize on the future of social apps and game monetization. The TrialPay team will be there, so let us know if you want to meet us there!
Coca-Cola, Wendy’s, State Farm Insurance, even Lady Gaga—those are just a few examples of brands that have started to advertise inside social games on Facebook. Brands are spending a greater proportion of their ad budgets on online advertising, and Facebook is quickly becoming one of the most sought-after channels. Brands are especially eager to make headway into the social gaming arena because they’re realizing the high potential of advertising in a space with a captive audience of more than 300 million users.
For those of you who are attending Casual Connect Europe, TrialPay SVP of Sales and Partnerships Jim Gerber will be speaking on this topic at the event on February 8 in a session titled, “The Evolution of Brand Advertising: How Brands Are Changing Game Monetization.” Jim’s presentation will outline new types of advertising strategies that are connecting big brands with social games, such as video engagements, in-game promotions, branded virtual goods and more. Jim will also share his predictions for how virtual currency and goods monetization are going to evolve as big brands continue to enter the space.
Casual Connect Europe will be held on February 7-9 in Hamburg. Casual Connect is the premier event for the casual games industry, bringing together knowledgeable experts for the best networking and learning experience in the casual gaming field. The TrialPay team will be at the event, so let us know if you’re attending and want to meet us there!
We’ve all been pretty excited here at TrialPay and now we get to tell you why: today we announced a $40 million round of funding from Greylock Partners, Visa Inc., DAG Ventures, DFJ Growth, QuestMark and T. Rowe Price in addition to other well-known investors. This latest round comes in connection with TrialPay’s explosive growth in 2011 and allows us to continue to develop our platform and innovate in the digital payments space.
As the digital goods market flourishes, payment providers are quickly learning that interchange fees make it impossible to process microtransactions for digital goods. New revenue models are emerging to tackle this failure and this latest investment is a big step towards solving that problem. As Facebook’s monetization partner, TrialPay uses advertising to fund microtransactions free of interchange for billion dollar companies, including Zynga, Facebook and EA. While less than 5% of Zynga’s 232 million monthly active users actually pay, this problem is not unique to social gaming. Our CEO, Alex Rampell, recently spoke on this topic at Web 2.0 Summit, which you can watch here.
The team at TrialPay is looking forward to another great year, and we hope you will follow the evolution of our company as we continue to innovate and solve new problems in digital payments.
Our full press release can be found here. Also be sure to check out AllThingsD for exclusive coverage of the funding announcement and what this means for digital payments.
