Meez Nation – a 13-million strong online virtual world aimed at teenagers – recently partnered with AdNectar to introduce social gifting into its universe, and according to Meez Nation, users have sent double the expected number of Hot Pocket gifts so far. With the support of AdNectar’s proprietary Virtual Goods system, Meez now has an engaging virtual gifting service on top of their existing virtual goods service that has kicked off well with the support of the Hot Pockets brand. This will likely lead to more sponsorships.
That said, the first Meez sponsored gifts were announced along with the introduction of the social gifting system. This partnership with HotPockets for the “Eat Freely” campaign is a message that the future integrations with AdNectar will likely be bigger brands and bigger gifts. The Meez Nation gifts are ”branded virtual clothing, contact lenses and other accessories for personal avatar use or for gifting to friends“.
AdNectar is well known as one of the fast risers in the virtual goods game, recently announcing they have served over 2 billion virtual goods across their networks. AdNectar works by designing optimal virtual goods based on advertisers’ campaigns and then distributing these virtual goods to AdNectar’s massive network of publishers. Their network of publishers is massive, ranging from MySpace to RockYou to Facebook itself. Gamers that encounter an application that uses AdNectar, like the 3M TMI App will not be aware that they are engaging with AdNectar virtual goods, but they will probably enjoy the fact that branded items are available. This is why the usage rate on these sponsored goods is as high as 2 billion. The success of the model has been proven: as we reported last year, branded virtual goods are clicked 10 times as often as their non-branded counterparts.
Meez Nation is a perfect match for the great system, as their virtual world game is entirely about social interaction and gifting has always worked well in these types of games. Only time will tell what kind of adoption rate will occur, but if it’s anywhere close to AdNectar’s reported 4%, we can be sure that this will be a profitable relationship for all parties involved.
