Rewarded Advertising Diversifies Revenue And Motivates Mobile Gamers During Pandemic Gaming Boom

[BunnyCakes]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/peggyannes ... 4c70cb7a6a

(The part of the article that IMVU is mentioned)


Driving connection and removing friction
While adjoe started out with a sharp focus on more traditional games of skill and chance, it's receiving increased interest from gaming categories where virtual currency powers virtual in-game marketplaces. A prime example is IMVU, a pioneer in the gaming genre that offers its players a 3D avatar-based social networking universe. "Members [in IMVU] generate value when they spend money to purchase our virtual currency and redeem it to meet people, play games and have fun," Lomit Patel, Vice President of Growth at IMVU, told me in an interview. But cash alone isn't the prize. "Members who take part in chat rooms, just being present and being a friend in the community, generate another kind of value–one that benefits the entire ecosystem."

It's this "engagement value" that IMVU, home to more than 200 million registered users and 7 million monthly active users, wants to incentivize and monetize, Darren Markovitz, IMVU Head of Monetization, told me in an interview. Markovitz, responsible for "finding ways to monetize our traffic that go beyond driving direct in-app purchases,” was searching for a "differentiated product" and one that complements the other ways IMVU monetize audience attention, like rewarded videos, offerwalls and user surveys.

Today adjoe, which operates only on Android, is a "fully integrated partner," Markovitz adds. "In terms of performance, they are a significant partner for us now." The technology was the draw, and adjoe's parentage is a plus. "The company also has the financial backing of a much larger company [Bertelsmann], which from our standpoint reduced the risk of a partnership of this kind," he says.

Members appreciate the virtual currency they receive for spending time in games they try during their gameplay in the IMVU metaverse. The bigger bonus, though, could be quality user experience and the lack of friction, Patel says. "It rewards how members interact with the app anyway as opposed to requiring them to stop the fun and fill out a survey or watch a video." He adds that rewarding members for time spent also gives IMVU more options to shape longer-term player habits and behavior. "It's about getting people to really love the product, and we know the more time they spend in the product, the more they're going to end up using it."