Inside Social Games

WildTangent has been around since 1998, and its business has long included running ads within developers’ games, including incentivized ads where users watch videos or otherwise interact with an ad in exchange for limited access to a paid game. But its customers have been in more traditional parts of the gaming world, like console and downloadable games.

The company is now making a bigger push into online games — especially social gaming — by making it possible for users to earn virtual goods, or gain one-day access to online subscription-based games.

If this concept sounds familiar, it’s because a wide range of advertising offers companies have been using doing essentially the same thing in social games for years. But other companies have typically provided advertising offers that require users to take other actions — sign up for a Netflix subscription, take a survey, etc. However, in recent months they’ve been introducing ways for users to earn points through branded ad campaigns. Check out the video ads that gWallet and SocialVibe have been testing for some examples.

So, WildTangent may not be the first ad company to enter the social gaming market. But it has 75 of the top 100 advertisers in the US, and it has those advertisers used to advertising within games. The company  tells us it expects “virtually all” of these advertisers to use BrandBoost.

It also says it has some big social gaming companies lined up as partners, who it will be announcing soon. Clients with live implementations of the service, called BrandBoost, include Sony Online Entertainment, Outspark and OMGPOP. While WildTangent isn’t disclosing the exact revenue share with developers, it tells us the split is the same as what it does with download-game partners.