Today, Offerpal released the results of a survey that targeted social gamers’ monetization activities.  Specifically, the report found that 29.7% of social gamers do not have the ability or means to pay for virtual currencies with cash, and 53.3% of consumers are willing to engage in alternative payments, like offers, to earn virtual currency. The report also found some other interesting statistics related to monetization behavior.
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Offerpal is promoting their latest mobile promotion where users are able to earn virtual currency by installing mobile applications. This new offering is reminiscent of the cost-per-install (CPI) campaigns which first proliferated on Facebook weeks after the Platform launched in 2007.  While SocialMedia was the initial impetus for CPI campaigns, all ad networks quickly jumped on board.  In this article we’ll examine how Offerpal’s CPI campaigns differ on mobile applications.
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OfferPal – the social media advertising and monetization company that allows users to gain virtual currency by participating in offers, surveys and more – has announced a new method of monetization: Tasks.  Specifically, they are utilizing Amazon’s Mechanical Turk artificial intelligence system to source the tasks.  Amazon’s MT system enables people to do small tasks that can’t be completed by computers themselves, and the broker of the transaction (here, Offerpal), receives a bit of compensation for the task.
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Offerpal is one of the primary targets of the recent complaints about aggressive offers on the social web. However following those criticisms, the company brought in a new CEO, and today is releasing a new set of advertising policies which holds the company “to the highest standard of ethics and corporate responsibility.” If you want the full details of the advertising policies, you can read them here. The advertising policies are relatively clear, however the “gray” areas which generate a large portion of revenue for many publishers, still exists.
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What could make iPhone app development and monetization a more seamless operation? Combining the two to create a one-stop-chop-shop. Offerpal Media has partnered with Tapjoy to present such an offering. As part of Tapjoy’s Software Developer Kit for iPhone apps, developers can choose to optimize monetization options through Offerpal Media. It’s a package deal that covers some of the most important bases for iPhone app developers.

For Tapjoy, the inclusion of Offerpal’s monetization platform means that the company can offer a range of new features for its own clients. This holds especially true as Tapjoy already benefited from creating package deals that encompass advertising and monetization options through companies such as Google. As a core focus for Tapjoy’s SDK is to enable developers to profit from their iPhone apps, broadening options towards this end is in the best interest of Tapjoy.
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Yesterday Offerpal Media announced the launch of an “onboarding” feature for MySpace applications. What does this mean exactly? Well, MySpace developers can ultimately integrate Offerpal’s advertising services quicker and easier than before. The bigger story is that Offerpal claims to be seeing nearly equal activity on MySpace as they are on Facebook. What does this means in terms of engagement?

Not much because correlating Offerpal payouts with the absolute number of active users is not completely accurate. The reality is that MySpace users could be more likely to be converted into recipients of Offerpal’s “offers”. Unfortunately we don’t have enough data to make this correlation. What we can say is that that CPA advertising models appear to be the most effective so far on social platforms.

Many have considered the CPA model to be controversial as historically there have been many misleading offers provided to users. The result is still the same though with Offerpal touting an extremely high payout for average active daily users. What does all this mean? Honestly, there doesn’t appear to be nothing new to be honest. MySpace has continued to see growth and is increasingly rivaling the dominant Facebook platform.

Competition is clearly heating up though as Super Rewards, Offerpal and Social Cash compete for new developers and fight to retain existing customers. Some companies have been accused of playing dirty in terms of locking in developers and slandering competitors but playing dirty in a CPA/offer-based environment isn’t far from par.

It’s clear that the point and reward-based advertising appears to be most effective at generating the highest ad revenue for many of the larger applications, especially games. It will be interesting to see if this advertising model continues to dominate or if we see new forms emerge.