Animation Blog

One of the world’s largest social games developers to tap into ad-supported model for virtual goods and items

WildTangent, one of the world’s largest and fastest growing game services, today announced that leading social game developer Playdom, Inc. is integrating WildTangent’s newly launched BrandBoost™ advertising platform into its popular Facebook game, Tiki Farm.

With BrandBoost, Playdom can now reward gamers with virtual items and premium social games content in return for the gamer choosing to view a video or rich media advertisement from within their game experience. This ad-supported option supports a recently released Nielsen survey of 27,000 consumers indicating that over 85 percent of gamers would prefer to not pay for their digital games content, highlighting the significant opportunity for trusted brands to play a role in the online games ecosystem.

“BrandBoost offers a new, frictionless option for our players to get access to valuable game items courtesy of trusted brands,” said Sean Phinney, vice president of business development at Playdom. “This means more of our players will be able to experience the benefits and thrill of premium virtual goods while playing play Tiki Farm.”
Building on the success of the company’s Sponsored Session™ advertising model for downloadable games, BrandBoost now makes it possible for leading national advertisers to scale major brand campaigns across the rapidly growing areas of social games, MMOs and virtual worlds with guaranteed engagement and proven results. For gamers, it offers the choice of either paying for game content with micro-currency or accessing it for free by engaging with the brand sponsor.

“The magic of BrandBoost is its unique ability to connect online gamers with premium content in exchange for relevant engagement with the world’s most well known brands,” said David Madden, executive vice president at WildTangent. “For developers, BrandBoost opens up a completely new revenue opportunity and gives gamers a frictionless way to get free access to content and virtual goods.”