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.

Integrating a Valentine’s Day promotion through DealSpot is not the only way you can reach your players during this valuable holiday.

We’ve come up with a few more ways you can ensure all of your players take advantage of a Valentine’s Day flower promotion, even when they aren’t actively playing your game.

1. In-Game Welcome Message

In-game welcome messages appear when a player logs into the game and is a great way to notify players about new features and deals. Capture the attention of players as soon as they open your app with a Valentine’s Day-themed welcome message. Encourage players to complete the seasonal offer so that they can progress more quickly in your game. In the example below, the welcome message grabs the player’s attention with a simple message and clear call to action to buy flowers and earn Happy Valley Horseshoes.

2. Wall Post

Once a player “Likes” your game on Facebook, you have the ability to post to his or her wall. Create a special Valentine’s Day wall message that highlights your seasonal offer and the value it drives to players. Wall messages are a more personal way to reach players and remind them to resume gameplay, so that they can take advantage of this special Valentine’s Day offer. The wall post from “Happy Valley” highlights the offer and provides more details on the promotion as subtext. You can add whatever messaging you want, including a deadline (i.e. “Ends February 14”) to create a sense of urgency and encourage players to act sooner.

3. Seasonal Email

We hope you integrate some of these strategies in your Valentine’s Day campaign today!

We’ve already discussed the value of seasonal flower promotions during Valentine’s Day, but now we’d like to introduce a new touchpoint that we’re rolling out just in time for Valentine’s Day!

So what is it?

It’s called the Bottoms Up Bar, and it’s a touchpoint that looks just like this:

The Bottoms Up Bar is a banner that automatically appears at the bottom of the page at a time of your choosing to prominently display an offer to users. It grabs the attention of consumers without distracting from your site content, and the customer can freely scroll up and down on your page with the widget in place (or even easily close the widget if they choose).

Because it can be displayed on a number of different pages, including landing, product and cart pages, it’s a very versatile touchpoint. The Bottoms Up Bar is also highly customizable. We can feature your product image, a range of background/text colors, as well as your personalized headline, subtext and call to action. You choose when you want to display the banner and how frequently you want it to appear.

Integrating your Bottoms Up Bar is simple and only requires a single line of JavaScript, so tap into Valentine’s Day spending and make more sales this season by featuring a Valentine’s Day flower promotion through a Bottoms Up Bar.

If you contact us here by January 30 and launch a Bottoms Up Bar campaign in February, we’ll give you a $100 Amazon.com gift card!

For most game developers using offers, Valentine’s Day can generate more offer revenue than Christmas! How’s that possible? Let’s look at the numbers…

According to the National Retail Federation, Valentine’s Day is the 3rd biggest holiday in terms of consumer spending. The average person spent $116.21 last year buying chocolates, flowers and other gifts for loved ones, friends and even pets!

Plus, the NRF says 1 in 3 people are expected to buy flowers for Valentine’s Day this year, which means developers can profit from ultra-targeted campaigns that are sure to appeal to millions of users with just a single proposition: “Send Flowers, Earn Coins.”

In fact, our research shows that seasonal flower promotions can drive a 5X increase in offer revenue and yield $20 per transaction. Plus, many developers see first-time purchases from about 40% of users who take advantage of flower offers—that is, when they use the right offer placement.

Offer placement is one of the most important factors in campaign performance because if your users don’t see, they won’t take advantage of it. Upper-funnel placements (such as on your game home page or in your game navigation) ensure that 100% of players see your offer compared to the 5% of players who will voluntarily visit your payment page.

Adding a Valentine’s Day DealSpot to your game is an effective upper-funnel placement that increases sales by capturing players who want to buy flowers for Valentine’s Day but wouldn’t otherwise have made a virtual currency purchase.

Integrate a DealSpot flower promotion for Valentine’s Day to keep the holiday monetization momentum going. (There’s even a $200 early bird bonus!)

If you’re one of the millions of shoppers looking to take advantage of the great deals on electronics and buy a computer this holiday season, CNET Download.com’s “New Year, New PC” deal offers the perfect starter pack of software.

CNET has partnered with top consumer software publishers to offer an exclusive bundle of 6 products worth $177.88 for just $30! That’s an 83% discount on the leading anti-virus, system care, PDF creator, compression and remote access software. For just $30, you can protect your computer, create and compress documents and stream media content from your computer to any connected device!

The “New Year, New PC” bundle includes:

• Avira Antivirus Premium 2012 – reg. $29.99
• Smith Micro StuffIt Windows – reg. $29.99
• IObit Advance SystemCare PRO 5 – reg. $19.95
• TreeCardGames SolSuite 2011– reg. $19.95
• Foxit PhantomPDF™ Express – reg. $49.00
• Pogoplug Remote Access Software – reg. $29.00

This limited-quantity special offer will begin Black Friday—perfect timing for the holidays!

CNET’s Download.com is able to bring you this fantastic value by leveraging its wide network of premier software publishers and high-volume traffic of more than 85 million monthly unique visitors. This exclusive offer is powered by TrialPay’s platform and is made possible by our extensive network of industry-leading software publishers and relationships with CNET Download.com, the world’s largest download site.

Remember, this limited-quantity promotion is only available until January 1 or while supplies last. Get yours now here!

With all of the holiday campaigns and promotions going on, it can sometimes be a little challenging to figure out the best way for you to make the most of this busy season. But as we pointed out in our earlier post, the consumer holiday spending spree presents a great opportunity to boost sales—even if you don’t sell holiday products. We’ve looked at the strategies of successful online merchants to narrow down a list of best practices that you can implement today!

1. Direct web placements and in-product notifiers
   
   

   Placing a holiday-themed banner on high-traffic areas of your site can be a great eye-catching way to highlight promotions to potential customers. To upgrade existing customers, consider adding the TrialPay option to your in-product notification screens. Here are some tips:

   • Keep your messaging simple and to the point

   Highlight the value the customer gets by completing an offer. You should emphasize the point that customers can do their holiday shopping while getting your product for free. For example, the above banner from Restaurant.com uses contrasting colors to make their message stand out and leads with this statement, “Shop this holiday season.” Below, Avira highlighted a specific TrialPay offer and chose a relevant and simple message, “Give the gift of wine and flowers.”

   

   • Showcase the discount consumers are receiving

   Restaurant.com displays the regular price of $25 and reiterates the point that a consumer can get the gift certificates for free by completing an offer. Avira highlights the value with a bright yellow and orange burst that says, “Now Free.”

   • Feature a prominent call to action

   Make the button large enough so that users can easily identify the call to action and make sure that the color pops out to entice the viewer. Restaurant.com uses a large blue button with the call to action, “Get It Free.” Avira chose an orange button against a beige background to draw more clicks and provide a clear option to get its software for free.

2. Bundle products or services

Putting together special bundles of products is a valuable way to motivate cost-conscious consumers to buy more products at a discounted rate.

Product bundling is useful because the package is often of greater value to the consumer than individual items. Bundling offers a convenience factor as customers can look to a single destination (your site) for several products or services. This strategy is also great for increasing sales volume and generates more exposure for the array of products/services in your inventory. For example, last year CNET offered an exclusive holiday deal of $170 worth of software essentials (anti-virus, registry cleaner, compression software, PDF creator and more) for just $30.



3. Scheduled email campaign

Sending holiday emails at regularly scheduled intervals throughout the season increases engagement and reminds customers of the offers that you are currently running. Plus, email reminders are a good way to reach customers who might not be actively checking your site. Email content also deepens your relationship with your audience because it brings your messaging to a more personalized space: the inbox. Ideally, by providing valuable and timely information to your customers, you can effectively connect with customers in a cost-efficient way. Read more about how to best utilize scheduled emails in our recent blog post about how to retain more customers.

Write to the TrialPay team to get started with a holiday campaign today!

The holidays are just around the corner and many people have already started their holiday shopping. The National Retail Federation projects that not only will spending increase 2.8% to reach $465.6 billion this year, 46% of Americans will shop online for holiday purchases. According to Forrester Research, e-commerce holiday spending will increase 15% to reach $60 billion.

You can take advantage of this busy season by letting customers get some of their shopping done when they complete a holiday offer to get your product or service for free!

Our partnerships with some of the best-known retail brands such as Gap, Shoebuy.com, Lancôme and more, present great holiday shopping opportunities for merchants to convert more customers.

Stay tuned for our next post on holiday campaign best practices and see how you can boost your sales this season by offering the TrialPay payment option.