Virtual Currency Gets a Video Boost for Gamers
gWallet, the virtual currency platform designed for social media integration, has teamed up with ten major brands to launch its new video offering. The idea behind the new videos are a multimedia experience tied in with social gaming and advertising, engaging players beyond basic offerings typically found in their casual games.
As with several other virtual currency platforms, gWallet incorporates offerings from advertisers into a social, casual gaming experience to reward the gamers themselves. Between their participating in the offerings and other activity-oriented rewards programs, gamers can rack up points, currency credits and other game-related items to use for advancing.
What gWallet is aiming to do with the new video campaigns is extend yet another way in which advertisers can appeal to gamers. So far participating brands include Best Buy, Nestle, Coke and The History Channel. Playing previews and other promotional clips along with an offering for gamers, the new video integration is an interesting take on the type of marketing that can and should take place within a social gaming experience.
gWallet reports that numbers are great only a week into the new campaign options, with viewership reaching over 480,000 views and 1 million minutes of total viewing time. User engagement was rewarding, averaging out at more than 2 minutes per video campaign. Revenue has increased for publishers taking advantage of gWallet’s new video options, seeing reported increases of up to 600 percent. gWallet is working exclusively with TubeMogul to monitor video metrics.
Sounds like gWallet could wow your socks off. Being among the first to integrate video offerings within its virtual currency platform could be a great move for gWallet, if taken further in the right direction. Weeks after landing over $10 million in its latest round of funding, gWallet was quick to expand its features and capabilities for clients.
As a relative newcomer in the virtual currency space, gWallet has already had to prove itself in the face of competitors that were derailed because of scam-like methods used for their advertising offers. In doing so, gWallet is calling upon the validity of its own service by working directly with advertisers for their socially integrated gaming campaigns.
Continuing to validate virtual currency platforms as an industry will be an ongoing task for gWallet, as it embarks in new territory with video offerings. On the one hand, it could revolutionize a still budding industry. On the other hand, the numbers reported by gWallet could reflect an immediate “wow” factor that could taper off in coming months.
Doing more extensive research on video offerings will be necessary for gWallet and others interested in this type of social gaming monetization. On the mobile front in particular, video ads and offerings are being considered by platform owners, publishers, developers and advertisers as a new frontier for these types of ads. In a certain sense, video offerings appear to validate the social gaming experience overall, with apparent spending being allocated to this type of marketing. Extending this to social media on the web and mobile phones is of interest to virtual currency platforms like gWallet.
As virtual goods are expected to take off in 2010, there will be a lot of attention focused on companies such as gWallet to establish standards around the monetization of social, casual gaming. Finding a way to best facilitate relationships between advertisers and gamers will be key to the successful future of social gaming in its current capacity, as the expectations around this type of gaming is less requiring of time and money than the console gaming industry.
