Social game distribution and monetization company PapayaMobile announced the launch of a new SDK to help independent Android developers access the Chinese mobile market.

The first free game with in-app purchases to launch in China using the new SDK will be Scottish developer Cobra Mobile’s WW2 shooter iBomber for Android.

The PapayaMobile SDK helps Android app and game developers monetize by plugging into the company’s cross-promotion and ad network AppFlood, where they can buy, sell or exchange ads and traffic with advertisers and other publishers.

More importantly, the SDK also plugs into China Mobile, China’s biggest mobile operator with more than 700 million subscribers, to allow for in-app purchasing via carrier billing.

Carrier billing is tremendously important if not absolutely necessary in order to monetize in the Chinese market. In November 2012, CocoaChina’s US GM Lei Zhang Zhang told us that carrier billing accounted for 90 percent of Fishing Joy 2’s total revenue of $1.6 million per month. At the 2013 Game Developers Conference Yodo1’s CEO Henry Fong told us that there may be other companies that are able to push games and apps to the many Android app stores in China, but that only those with standing deals with the mobile carriers and access to carrier billing will be able to monetize.

The official release from PapayaMobile claims that the company is taking the lead in opening up the Chinese market to Western developers, but in reality they are already in competition with big and established players such as the aforementioned Yodo1 (which also offers important localization services), InMobi’s App Publish distribution platform which can push an app or game to more than 130 Android app stores in a few clicks, and others.

In-game product placement advertising company MediaSpike today announced it’s making its services available to mobile developers and that it has hired Manny Anekal as Chief Revenue Officer. Anekal, who formerly led in-game advertising sales at Zynga, EA and Microsoft, will also “initiate” the company’s presence in New York City

MediaSpike is geared towards letting developers and advertisers work together to put product brands into games with a minimal amount of fuss. The way the system works is developers can apply two-dimensional images with product advertisements to parts of their game.

MediaSpike allows advertisers to use lightweight SDKs to target specific user groups while the company’s background servers do the lion’s share of the work. An advertiser selects the target audience’s demographics (which determines which partner game the content will appear in) and the length of the campaign. From there, the SDK lets a user select what type of item would sport a brand image, with arbitrary sizing being automatically supported.

Now iOS and Android game developers can join MediaSpike’s platform lineup alongside offerings for Flash and javascript developers. Mobile game developers can add this new revenue stream by dropping in the appropriate library and declaring which objects can become placements. MediaSpike then works with major brands to place the appropriate ads.

MediaSpike also revealed that a recent campaign for Pepsi which placed virtual vending machines in Gaia Online had players interacting with the machines and even complaining when the campaign was finished and the machines removed.

Director of Digital Brand Marketing at PepsiCo Beverages Andrea Harrison said “We love seeing these kinds of results.”

Director of Sales & Business Development at Gaia Interactive Christopher Castagnetto was also pleased with the service. “For a small, one-time integration effort you get a new, on-going revenue stream that also enhances the user experience,“ he said. “We’re looking forward to many more product placement campaigns.”

Director of Sales & Business Development at Gaia Interactive Christopher Castagnetto was also pleased with the service. “For a small, one-time integration effort you get a new, on-going revenue stream that also enhances the user experience,“ he said. “We’re looking forward to many more product placement campaigns.”

Mobile game developer resource PlayHaven announced a new hire today with Charles Yim joining the company as Chief Operating Officer. Yim was previously at AdMob, which was acquired by Google in 2010.

PlayHaven’s mission is to maximize the lifetime value of a mobile game player; a large part of this strategy comes from advertising, which is where Yim’s expertise comes in. With more mobile developers turning to native video ads as a monetization solution, it makes sense to bring in a guy that helped AdMob launch mobile video on iPad and Android tablets. PlayHaven has grown to 60 since closing an $8 million third round of funding late last year.

The following is a brief interview conducted with Yim earlier this week.

Inside Social Games: Do you see Tablet emerging as the dominant “mobile” games platform in the next year, or are we already there?

Charles Yim: If you look at the games industry holistically, it’s pretty broad. Each different game genre — a casual game, a casino game, a hardcore game — they lend themselves to different users and tablet is a good platform for certain genres, but not all genres. I don’t think tablets are the end-all, be-all of the industry.

ISG: We’ve seen a lot of advertisers and ad platforms focus on video in the last year — including AdMob. Where can native ads go beyond video?

Yim: The ongoing debate that you find is in the advertising technology perspective — on one side of the spectrum, you have super native and then on the other you have scalable. When I think back to AdMob in 2009 when we came out with our own video ad unit, the companies were developing niche swipable video ad units, but the industry couldn’t scale those. Integrating with a large number of publishers was a difficult process to manage. Whenever you look at a new channel in native ads, there’s a natural dynamic tension between delivering a native, unique experience and something that can be scaled. AdMob’s [ad unit] was the first that really gained traction because it was easy for advertisers to understand. The things you could do outside of video is really a question of how much deep integration are people willing to do and are advertisers willing to buy into that experience.

ISG: What’s the biggest mistake game developers make in implementing ads on mobile?

Yim: Game developers have gotten much better at this, but they think about building their game before they think about monetizing it. They’re very focused on the player experience and afterwards, they slap ads on top of it. Savvy game devs in mobile understand that ads are a important part of the business model and they incorporate that into their game from the get-go.

ISG: Anything to add?

Yim: My motivations for joining PlayHaven are asking what are game developers doing well or not doing well. As the industry matures, the needs of the developers mature. As their business scale and grow, they run into growing pains they haven’t anticipated. PlayHaven has an incredibly talented team and the best perspective on what’s coming and on helping game developers manage their businesses.

Monetization and insights provider W3i is stepping up its game with Pocket Gems and other mobile game developers on Android going into 2013. This could be the year that Google’s platform finally catches up in revenues to Apple’s iOS.

Through its expanded partnership with Pocket Gems, W3i now provides monetization solutions to Tap Paradise Cove and Campus Life. Far from being mere banner ads, the monetization service focuses instead on providing a native experience in these Android apps — tailoring ads, offers and video campaigns to the user experience.

Erik Lundberg, General Manager at W3i’s San Francisco office (pictured), explains that the shift toward native experiences comes from mobile advertising finally moving away from online advertising models. With 15 years in online ads before joining W3i just eight months ago, he’s had time to study the changing trends.

“In the early days of ads and mobile apps, people took online models and slapped them on a smartphone like small banner ads that are only 100 pixels wide,” says Lundberg. “Users have tuned those out. More native ads like a full screen interstitial or offer-based ads, we see a much higher CPM, like 10 times higher. We think that trend will continue toward native ads that are a part of the application instead of just throwing up a banner.”

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We are in New York for the Inside Social Apps conference at the New Yorker Hotel. Managing Editor of Inside Network AJ Glasser sat down with a panel on the topic of platform opportunities for 2013. The panel consisted of Jamie Conroy, Director of Special Product at TripAdvisor, Josh Hubbal, Head of Business Development at App.net, David Miyoshi, VP of Social Games at GSN Digital, John Spinale, SVP of Social Games at Disney Interactive Media Group and Jeremy Toeman, CEO of Dijit Media.

The panel offered perspective on what major platform operators ought to be doing to improve the developer ecosystem. The Following is a paraphrased account of what was said on the panel.

Glasser: Platforms are a constantly evolving space, where are your users coming from?

Conroy: More and more people are coming through mobile or Facebook. Facebook is interesting as a touch point for users. It is important to optimize experience on Facebook. It is important to fit into the flow of the platform that you choose.

Miyoshi: Mobile is more for paid content.

Spinale: There is a casual gaming audience there as well. Dependent on User interfance and platform. More and more people are accessing mobile platforms.

Toeman: The No. 1 driver is app store SEO. It’s a highly specific, highly known universe. You get natural uplift from television viewers and associated app SEO.

Hubball: We’re starting to see other social services using app.net, word of mouth and cross posting on Facebook and Twitter.

Glasser: What is the biggest challenge in becoming a cross platform developer?

Miyoshi: Hiring top talent. Everybody wants to work on mobile right now so you need people that are willing to work on separate platforms.

Spinale: Creating the right experience at the right point in time.

Conroy: Now that mobile has proliferated it is especially complex. Developers need to ensure they are available to their users across all the platforms and provide a good experience there.

Toeman: We need a more purposeful experience. People access our products through different devices so we had to reinvent what the experience is. It is important for you to create the right experience for the item they are using. You need to figure what to be rather than being cross platform.

Hubball: We focused on building the API. It is the most expressive use of information available. Instagram focused on iOS when It started which allowed it to focus on a good job. Focusing on being cross platform makes you spread out resources.

Glasser: What is the best technology to use for apps that aren’t games?

Toeman: HTML is the only way to go, it is versatile. The Android tablet experience isn’t at the level of what could be offered at the moment.

Hubball: Our initial strategy was a hybrid of different technologies.

Glasser: The cost of user acquisition is rising. What do you expect to see in the competition between the platforms in the next year?

Toeman: Next year it is going to be much more expensive for iOS user acquisition so it is important to focus on that until the new year.

Glasser: Do you see potential other emerging platforms in the future?

Miyoshi: Windows is worth a look with how heavy they are pushing this platform as a competitor.

Toeman: No way. consumers are smart. It is one of the best products they have put out, the ship has sailed for windows.

Miyoshi: We look at iOS users as the most valuable, the Android user is dead. We may see windows. They may not dominate, but there could be a shift in user base.

Toeman: The iOS is so much far ahead than others and that is why we may see better experiences.

Glasser: Which phone do you have with you today?

All the panelists say they have an iPhone with them.

Conroy: It is important to look across the world as many users are outside of the english speaking territories This is why iPhone and Android are see large growth ant the market can still change.

Glasser: If you could go back a year, what changes would you make based on what you know now?

Toeman: Simplify. Cut things down. Get everything you can get in your app in the simplest way possible. Reduce the clutter.

Hubball: The business model of the platform for which you are developing for is important. if your plan does not fit into what they are doing, you need to adjust.

Spinale: We would have jumped on the Android bandwagon earlier.

Miyoshi: Focusing and doubling down. Once you see success, you should focus.

KingsRoad developer Rumble Entertainment activates on its multiplatform strategy with a second game, Nightmare Guardians, launching on tablets in early 2013.

The company has an aggressive growth strategy aimed at being both developer and publisher right from the point of launch. Rumble secured a $15 million first round of funding nearly a year ago before any of its games had been released. But, as CEO Greg Richardson tells Inside Social Games, Rumble was already hard at work on developing a suite of titles to straddle mobile, social and open web platforms. By covering all the rapidly growing bases, the company is better set up to act as a publisher of third-party titles on any or all of these platforms.

“We [wanted] to be a publisher from day one,” Richardson says. “We needed a platform that could reach multiple devices and [support] multiple genres. KingsRoad and Nightmare Guardians work on the same backend, which shows the strength of our [publishing] platform.” (more…)

King.com today revealed its popular social game Candy Crush Saga is now available on iOS (including iPad Mini), as well the fact that its advertising revenue from social games has increased tenfold over the past year. We sat down with CMO Alex Dale to talk about the developer’s recent milestones and what to expect next.

Like Bubble Witch Saga before it, Candy Crush Saga’s mobile version is a fully cross-platform experience, featuring identical gameplay to its Facebook counterpart. Also like Bubble Witch Saga, the game allows allowing players to synchronize their progress between the Facebook and iOS platforms.

Dale tells us King is actively embracing cross platform game experiences for its titles, saying “We just got back a survey from people who play cross-platform; the three top motivations being they want to pick up where they left off on Facebook, they want to compete against friends and they want to get help from friends.” (more…)

Editor’s note: The following article comes from Sridhar Muppidi, CEO of mobile social developer YesGnome, and offers advice to smaller developers on how their social/mobile titles can still be profitable even without massive marketing spends to drive them up the charts. YesGnome develops games for iOS and Android devices, specializing in city-builder, RPG and strategy titles. The company’s first success is the folklore-inspired city builder FairyTale City, and it recently developed Madagascar – Join the Circus. The studio’s titles are supported by the proprietary SocialKinesis back-end web service, allowing it to control the game experience dynamically in real time.

Even though we haven’t spent millions in marketing and our games haven’t hit the top charts more than briefly, YesGnome is still a profitable company.

One of our first games, FairyTale City, has hit the top charts only briefly, and has not been wildly popular, but we consider it a success for a simple reason: on a month to month basis, it makes significantly more money than we spend on it.

This does not mean that we are seeing dramatically high Lifetime value (LTV). In general, our games on iOS make around $1 on a 90-day average revenue per user. True, this is not even close to what some of the top mid-core developers are seeing, but when you do the math, these numbers still make us very profitable. This article is an attempt to demonstrate how to be a successful and profitable social games developer even with average revenue per daily active user in the range of $0.06 to $0.08. (more…)

Developer Toylogic’s Happy Wars, which quietly hit Xbox 360’s digital store Xbox Live Arcade Oct. 12, is the home console’s first free-to-play game.

Happy Wars is multiplayer action game with a cartoon style in which two teams battle across variety of combat arenas. As many as 30 players can play the same match and choose from three character types — Warrior, Mage and Cleric, each with unique set of abilities.

As is the norm with many of the free-to-play games we cover here at Inside Social Games, Happy Wars monetizes by selling vanity items (outfits, skins and gear) and a special in-game currency (Happy Tickets) that can only be obtained by spending Microsoft Points, which cost real money.

At the moment it seems as if there is no way to spend real money to directly purchase items that will give users an advantage in the game, but players can spend Happy Tickets to enter raffles in order to have a chance at winning items with improved stats.

Inside Social Games usually doesn’t cover home console titles because those are traditionally closed platforms, but we will cover free-to-play games that employ the same monetization methods that are the standard on Facebook and other social, open platforms. With free-to-play games like DC Universe already up and running on Sony’s PlayStation 3 and more free-to-play titles like Ascend: New Gods coming to 360 in the future, we think releases like Happy Wars is part of an upcoming trend that is worth keeping an eye on.

You can look forward to our review of Happy Wars later in the week.

Mobile developer PerBlue’s flagship location-based social game Parallel Kingdom is generating over $200,000 a month on mobile devices, even though it isn’t in the top 100 grossing games categories on either iOS or Android.

This figure comes to us from CEO Justin Beck’s GDC Online talk “Bootstrapping 101: How College Kids Built a Thriving Game Company in Under Three Years,” where he was detailed his company’s history since it was founded three years ago. The developer now grosses over $3 million a year. A good portion of this talk dealt with how the company’s early founders decided to stay in Madison, WI, due to the low cost of living and the pool of recruitable talent that comes out of the University of Wisconsin. Beck also explained how the company decided to raise its initial funding to launch Parallel Kingdom from family and friends, raising $72,000 in exchange for a small percentage of the company.  (more…)