In-game advertising platform monetising games via sponsored virtual gifts.
Business overview
Location | Braintree, United Kingdom |
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Social media | |
Website | www.giftgaming.com |
Sectors | Advertising & Marketing Digital B2B |
Company number | 08819255 |
Incorporation date | 18 Dec 2013 |
Idea
Introduction
giftgaming® is a non-intrusive in-game advertising platform.
Players receive an in-game gift containing a free currency or a power-up in exchange for viewing a banner or interstitial ad.
HOW WE ARE DIFFERENT
To summarise, unlike competitors, giftgaming®:
* Is less intrusive as it takes less time out of gameplay:
3 seconds versus 30 seconds (for videos)!
* Monetises more players as it has a very high engagement rate of up to 95% - see PocketGamer coverage: www.pocketgamer.biz/news/63835/giftgaming-gets-...
* Is cleaner to integrate and is more robust as it does not require a Software Development Kit (SDK) to be installed.
* Has potential to improve loyalty, spending and reviews through gift psychology.
REVENUE GENERATING
We have a healthy sales pipeline with several companies using giftgaming® and revenue generated consistently each month. We are signing up more game publishers and all we need to do now is increase our firepower to get more leads.
Intended impact
There are two key problems with mobile games today:
1) Ads suck. They can be disruptive to the gaming experience and can alienate players. If players stop playing, game publishers lose money.
2) Only 1.35% of players spend any money on in-app purchases in mobile games. So there are a lot of players left un-monetised.
giftgaming® solves these problems through our innovative approach. Already we have increased one client’s daily revenue by up to 38%. See PocketGamer coverage: www.pocketgamer.biz/news/63994/giftgamings-lift...
Substantial accomplishments to date
KEY METRICS
Companies signed up to the giftgaming® Dashboard: 51.
Approximate daily revenue per Daily Active User for one of our clients: Up to $0.00681.
Current Gross Revenue per Month: up to $2,000.
Current Net Revenue per month: up to $419.
Current Monthly Net Burn Rate: £2.4k pcm.*
*source: unaudited management accounts.
ACHIEVEMENTS TIMELINE
November 2016:
- Revenue per gift increased by up to 46%.
September 2016:
- King adds support for giftgaming to their Defold game engine.
- Boosted DEUL's daily revenue by up to 38%.
August 2016:
- Record-breaking 95% opt-in rate achieved with Creative Mobile.
- Toby Moore (Former CTO at MindCandy, Co-Founder of Space Ape Games) joins giftgaming as an Advisor in a personal capacity.
- Gross monthly revenue increased from $25 to ~$2,600 a month.
July 2016:
- Estonia's largest games publisher, Creative Mobile, becomes a client.
June 2016:
- giftgaming® appears on Cambridge TV in an exclusive feature.
April 2016:
- Cost-per-impression revenue model proven.
2014 - 2015:
- Launched at TechCrunch London Disrupt Battlefield 2014.
- Named "1 of 10 Silicon Fen Companies to Watch" by StrategyEye.
- Overall winner of TechCrunch London Meetup 2014.
- £8,000 gift from an investment committee led by Sir Paul Judge.
- Accepted onto Accelerate Cambridge accelerator.
Monetisation strategy
We work with advertising exchanges who pay us on a cost-per-impression (CPM) basis for showing ads through our platform.
Every time a giftgaming® gift is opened inside a game, an ad is shown and we accrue revenue with the advertising exchanges that we work with.
The ad exchanges pay us and we share this revenue with our game publisher clients. We typically retain 30% of the net revenue from exchanges as commission before paying our publisher clients.
Use of proceeds
We are currently closing deals and getting publisher leads through low-cost methods such as automated email marketing, developer ecosystems/forums, and online marketing. We believe that all we need is additional firepower to get more leads.
We believe we can increase leads and sales by:
- Hiring an engineer to onboard clients faster to enable focus on sales.
- Outsourcing cold calling to generate more leads.
- Outsourcing online content creation to drive self-service signups.
- Increasing presence at conferences to generate further awareness, reputation and leads.
Our current net monthly burn rate is currently very low at just £2.4k.*
*source: unaudited management accounts.
Market
Target market
Our target market is freemium mobile games studios and publishers who have ideally at least 10,000 daily active users. We believe that there are a number of these.
Characteristics of target market
ABOUT THE MARKET
The percentage of players who make in-app purchases is incredibly low: 1.5%, despite King’s success with Candy Crush and freemium. One way to compensate is with in-game advertising, an industry where spending is estimated to be $7.2 billion and is predicted to account for 78% of total game advertising revenue by 2016 (DFC Intel, 2011).
With Rovio's 2013 profits down by half, EA's Battlefield 4 players angry at in-game movie ads, and King dropping in-game ads for being "too intrusive", there is high demand for a solution like giftgaming from both gamers and game companies alike.
Free games account for half of the European games market. On the App Store alone, there are over 260k games and entertainment apps and an increasing trend of games with in-app purchase; 93% of apps use a freemium model, and 49% of publishers use paid advertising within their apps.
WHY PUBLISHERS WOULD NOT BUILD IT THEMSELVES:
There are a number of reasons why game publishers are likely to outsource monetisation:
- Many game companies are too small for brands to work with directly.
- Hidden complexities (technical, business and legal).
- Lack of time and development resources.
- Not core competency.
- Risk.
giftgaming® also provides additional benefits and features that make it more worthwhile to use rather than attempting a copycat solution, such as revenue maximisation through exchange mediation, geolocation data collection, and demographic data collection.
Marketing strategy
Since we reach a number of brands through advertising exchanges which supply us with adverts to put into the gifts, we are focusing on selling to freemium games publishers right now.
When we reach more players, we can then work with Demand Side Platforms, ad agencies, and brands directly to get better pricing for the adverts.
GAME PUBLISHER CHANNELS:
* Automated email marketing.
* Online marketing to drive self-service sign-ups (eg. Content Articles).
* Developer Ecosystems (eg. Unity Marketplace, King’s Defold Engine).
* Game publisher networks.
* Game Developer Consortiums.
* Direct sales.
* Game developer conferences: (eg. Pocket Gamer Connects).
Competition strategy
THE COMPETITION: INCENTIVISED VIDEO AND OFFERWALLS
Solutions like incentivised video ads require the user to watch a video in order to receive in-game currency. Only around 13% of players will complete a rewarded ad offer during their app lifetime, leaving a large percentage of the player base un-monetised, and the videos can take anywhere between 30 to 60 seconds which disrupt the game flow.
Other solutions like "Offerwalls" involve requiring the user to take an action, such as install another app, make a real-world purchase (and so forth), in order to receive in-game currency. These offers can take a while to complete and can also be disruptive to the gaming experience.
In comparison, giftgaming® offers players instant gratification and is less intrusive.
INTEGRATION
Our experience suggests that most monetisation solutions require the implementation of either an Application Programming Interface (API) or a Software Development Kit (SDK). The former is problematic, as it requires much more programming and a deep understanding of the service to integrate. The latter is not ideal as SDKs increase app size, can contain bugs which crash the game and they can create conflicts with other SDKs.
In comparison, giftgaming® offers an easy and clean SDK-less integration.
WHAT ADDITIONAL VALUE DOES GIFTGAMING® PROVIDE?
Saves time and money:
We have a patent-pending SDK-less integration which is clean and simple to integrate and can be maintained with little input from publishers.
Aims to maximise revenue through innovative features such as:
- Displaying of full-screen ads non-intrusively.
- Efficient GPS location collection which can get higher CPMs.
- Opt-in collection of player gender and age range.
- Multiple ads per gift.
Maximises fill rate (ad availability):
We fetch at least three different ad sizes for every ad request to maximise fill rate.
In addition, we tap into several advertising exchanges, which not only increases fill rate but also should mean publishers save time and money by using our service versus working individually with them.
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