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Berlin - August 4, 2010
SponsorPay And Smeet Boost Offer Revenues By 60% With In-World Integration; 21% Of Users Convert From Offers To Direct Payments
SponsorPay, Europe’s leading monetization platform, has boosted offer revenues for 3D virtual world Smeet by 60% through effective in-game positioning. Additionally, 21% of previously non-paying users who completed SponsorPay offers were converted into paying customers.
“Smeet is an excellent example of user-friendly, in-game offer integration resulting in higher conversion and revenue generation. An increase in the number of paying users is the biggest revenue opportunity for most free-to-play gaming companies,” said Janis Zech, Managing Director and co-founder at SponsorPay.
The offers were optimized through in-world integration methods such as linking banners directly to SponsorPay’s iframe or placing promotional avatars in different locations within Smeet’s virtual world. Revenues from offers increased by 60% because user attention was directed at them during regular game play and not solely during the payment process. Through SponsorPay’s high quality offers, non-paying users were introduced to the concept of acquiring virtual currency. With this deep level of integration, Smeet was able to reach out to those users who would otherwise not have participated in the payment process.
“The conversion effect is especially astonishing,” said Sebastian Funke, Smeet’s CEO and co-founder. “Thanks to SponsorPay, we experienced a massive inflow of new paying customers – about one-fifth of the users who received Smeet Coins with free offers from SponsorPay later returned to purchase Coins using PayPal, PaybyCall, SMS, credit cards or other options. The number of paying customers increased significantly. This proves that SponsorPay is not only a strong addition but actually boosts our regular payment options.”
In Smeet’s multi-user social game, users can meet others, create their own avatars or rooms and get to know each other by playing games, watching videos together, earning points, competing against each other in different levels as well as communicating via text or voice chat. SponsorPay provides Smeet’s 3 million-plus members in Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Greece and Poland with free Coins for taking part in localized advertising offers from trusted partners.
Berlin - July 14, 2010.
Lolapps, King.com, VZnet, NHN USA And i-Jet Media Trust SponsorPay For Localized Monetization
SponsorPay, Europe’s leading virtual currency monetization platform has announced new partnerships with industry leaders of social games publishers and social networks.
Lolapps, King.com, VZnet, NHN USA and i-Jet media are the latest among hundreds of publishers who provide their users with SponsorPay’s transparent and localized ad offers as well as easy direct payment options. “We are very happy to work with such renowned partners and serve them with our powerful monetization tool that will most certainly boost their revenues to a new level”, said Janis Zech, co-founder & Managing Director of SponsorPay.
Lolapps is one of the main developers of social games and applications on Facebook, serving over 50 million active users per month. SponsorPay’s excellent localized performance and user-friendly approach have also convinced King.com, a pioneer in casual gaming with a massive user base of more than 15 million monthly active users (MAU).
Gaming portal NHN USA and social games publisher i-Jet media have partnered with SponsorPay as part of their monetization strategy for traffic outside the US – an area of fast growing importance for social game providers. “The quality of SponsorPay’s localized offers clearly stands out. They are simply the best solution for monetizing traffic from all over the world”, said Daniel Chang, Vice President of Business Development at NHN USA.
SponsorPay also becomes the only monetization platform to offer ad-funded payments for social games of the VZnet Group (former StudiVZ ltd.), a popular European social network with 16.5 million users. “We have decided on SponsorPay because it is the only company that commits to 100% transparent, user-friendly offers and renowned partners. With SponsorPay’s innovative concept we can increase the revenues of our social gaming partners while users of the VZ networks experience real added value”, commented Sebastian Kriese, Manager Strategic Partnerships at VZnet.
SponsorPay’s existing clients include Gameforge, Bigpoint, Café.com and 6waves. Based in Berlin, Germany with offices in London, Paris and San Francisco, SponsorPay is the European market leader and rapidly expanding worldwide.
Contact Information
Projjol Banerjea
SponsorPay GmbH
Ackerstr. 14/15
10115 Berlin Germany
Office: +49 30 20 21 56 60 0
Fax: +49 30 20 21 56 61 5
press@sponsorpay.com
Berlin - June 9, 2010.
SponsorPay raises $5M from Hasso Plattner Ventures and Team Europe Ventures
SponsorPay, the leading virtual currency monetization platform in Europe, announced today that it has raised $5 million in Series A funding led by Hasso Plattner Ventures. Previous investors Team Europe Ventures and Kite Ventures also participated in this round. The Berlin-based company will use the investment to accelerate growth in international markets and further expand its leadership role in Europe.
“We are very happy that Hasso Plattner Ventures have joined our team of investors. Their international network and experience will help us extend our leadership beyond Europe,” said SponsorPay’s CEO Andreas Bodczek. “We have four times the publishers, three times the staff and double the offers for most European markets than our closest competitors. Most importantly, we consistently generate up to five times more revenue from European traffic when compared with our US-based competitors. Now, it is time to use this clear value proposition to monetize publishers who are not based in Europe but have traffic here,” added Janis Zech, co-founder and Chief Revenue Officer. The company recently signed contracts with leading international publishers 6waves and Perfect World and expects to work with at least 50% of the largest US-based publishers by the end of the year.
This latest infusion of capital is testament to SponsorPay’s tremendous growth – within the past year the company has expanded to 40 employees and serves local advertising offers to over 150 million users in more than 100 countries. "We are pleased with SponsorPay's progress so far and strongly believe that the innovative concept along with the talent across the company, which has already made SponsorPay the European leader, will take it to the next level internationally. Only one year old, they convinced us with their professional management and absolute will to succeed," commented Yaron Valler, partner at Hasso Plattner Ventures. “Congratulations to the team for reaching this next milestone,” said Lukasz Gadowski, partner at Team Europe Ventures.
SponsorPay, established in 2009, has rapidly become the dominant force in virtual currency monetization in Europe. In February this year, it acquired its main European competitor GratisPay. The company works with almost all major Europe-based online game publishers such as Gameforge, Bigpoint, Gala Networks, InnoGames, Café.com and Frogster. On the advertiser side, SponsorPay is focused on building direct relations with branded advertisers to provide user-friendly and transparent offers to online gamers and users of social networks.
Berlin - March 24, 2010.
Commission Junction and SponsorPay extend existing cooperation globally
Commission Junction and SponsorPay extend their cooperation on a broad international basis: The leading global affiliate network and the leading virtual currency platform in Europe from now on work together in more than 30 countries in the EU, North and South America. The extremely strong position of Commission Junction in the USA further strengthens the US position of SponsorPay.
Commission Junction and SponsorPay focus on providing the highest payout for SponsorPay’s clients by combining the enormous reach of both partners with the advantages of performance marketing and SponsorPay’s innovative business model: Users get virtual currency in online games, social networks and social games for a certain action, e.g. participating in a survey or buying in a shop. To continue to guarantee high quality traffic and leads/sales, Berlin based SponsorPay does a quality check for every single user. A win-win-win situation for the advertiser, Commission Junction and SponsorPay’s publishers is the
result.
Last month SponsorPay took over GratisPay, one of its biggest competitors and is now European market leader in this sector reaching more than 100 million users in over 30 countries. The company is providing monetization channels for nearly all of the major gaming publishers in Europe, such as Gameforge, Bigpoint, Innogames or Café.com.
"Commission Junction is the perfect partner for our expansion in Europe and the USA. Due to our successful relationship in Germany and France it was an obvious choice for us to continue our international expansion in Affiliate Marketing with Commission Junction”, said Janis Zech, Co-founder/ Head of Business Development, SponsorPay.
Albrecht Fischer, Client Development Director, Commission Junction Germany added: “We are very happy that SponsorPay chose CJ for their international expansion. We can extend and support their strong position with our global Affiliate network internationally.”
Berlin, February 10, 2010
SponsorPay Acquires GratisPay
Industry leader in ad-based payment systems strengthens its top position in the European market.
“The acquisition of GratisPay is an important milestone for our company,” says SponsorPay GmbH’s CEO Andreas Bodczek. The consolidation of the two enterprises creates Europe’s leading provider of advertisement-based payment systems, monetizing virtually all of the major European online and social games publishers.
Both founded in the past year, SponsorPay and GratisPay have evolved into the most effective monetization platforms of the European online gaming industry in a matter of months. Among their clients are major games publishers such as Gameforge, Bigpoint, InnoGames and Frogster. “Between our two companies, we already serve the majority of Europe’s top 10 publishers of online and social games”, Andreas Bodczek states. “Bringing the two platforms together will enable us to offer both publishers and advertisers an exceedingly attractive portfolio.”
Beyond MMOGs (massively multiplayer online games), the objective is to heighten the companies’ presence in the social media games and applications market. Cafe.com, a French casual games provider and social games expert, has already achieved an effective sales growth by cooperating with SponsorPay GmbH. Baptiste Mercier, Marketing manager of cafe.com’s successful Facebook application “IS COOL”, explains: “SponsorPay has by far the most Facebook-compliant offers, perfectly translated and relevant for Europe. Since integrating SponsorPay we have experienced a very impressive and unexpected revenue increase, compared to the revenue generated by US providers.”
Operatively, both brands and the staffs of SponsorPay and GratisPay will stay in place. Jan Beckers, SponsorPay’s Managing Director & Head of Publisher Relations, explains: “While the names as well as the product and service ranges of both companies will remain unchanged, we are now substantially extending our lead on the competition by combining the advertising offerings of the two brands.”
An important constant is SponsorPay GmbH’s stringent quality requirement for advertising partners, ensuring a transparent experience for the gamers: Multi-stage quality controls guarantee the exclusion of hidden subscriptions or advertising which would result in spam. According to Beckers, “in combining the two brands, the key issue on which we have centred our expansion strategy is sustainable monetization.”
The purchase price was not disclosed.
Berlin - 18 December 2009
SponsorPay Established Around the World
Berlin company monetises users in more than 20 countries
Six months ago, SponsorPay GmbH broke into the online gaming market with its advertising-based payment system. Already the Berlin-based company’s service spans the globe, being available in more than 20 countries. Its success is built on the localised versions of the user interface, cooperation with local partners, and native- speaker country managers responsible for operations in the respective countries.
„Our publishers can now draw on a portfolio of hundreds of premium offerings from local advertisers in more than 20 countries“, as Jan Beckers, SponsorPay GmbH’s Director & Head of Publisher Relations happily remarks. „None of our competitors have implemented language localisation in more countries or provide such a diverse offering.“ Beckers attributes this lead in internationalisation primarily to the company’s early focus on working with native-language country managers. Feedback from the international partners confirms how critically important localisation is for commercial success. Pierre Alain Laur, managing director of Feerik.com GmbH, a community of more than seven million registered gamers and two million active monthly users of Facebook apps: „SponsorPay allows me to monetise Feerik’s target group far more efficiently with special advertisement offers customised for my players’ respective country of origin.“
Today, the company already works with games publishers from around the world and serves such markets as Chile, Canada, Brasil, Belarus and Turkey. „There are millions of online gamers in Turkey“, Afsin Avci, SponsorPay GmbH’s Country Manager for Turkey, explains. „However, it can be very difficult for publishers here to monetise their users. I am proud that SponsorPay has succeeded in closing this gap within a period of just a few months. More than 30 online games have already integrated our payment system in Turkey, and we offer high-grade, localised products and services from over 25 different advertising partners.“
In the coming year the Berlin-based company aims to further internationalise its business and to expand its payment platform to serve additional industries.
Berlin - August 31, 2009
Andreas Bodczek Joins SponsorPay GmbH Management Team
Former Telefónica Deutschland CEO to advance growth and internationalization of Berlin-based start-up
As SponsorPay GmbH’s new managing director, Andreas Bodczek assumes business management responsibilities which include establishing and advancing the international advertising platform to drive the company’s future development. The Berlin-based enterprise introduced its innovative payment system for the online gaming industry in 2009 and already counts such renowned companies as Gameforge AG and Frogster Online Gaming among its customers.
Free access to premium content in online games – the concept of having “sponsors” to finance virtual goods and premium content through advertising is meeting with the approval of players and the industry alike. “We have been on the market for barely a month and our client roster already includes some of the largest games companies,” Jan Beckers, SponsorPay’s co-founder and head of Publisher Relations and Marketing, happily remarks. At the leading games trade show in Europe, gamescom 2009, the Berlin-based entrepreneurs welcomed their newest customer, the world’s biggest independent publisher of browser- and client-based online games, Gameforge AG.
“We scrutinize our advertising partners thoroughly,” Jan Beckers explains. “With this kind of quality control, the users of our service can rest assured that they will find only legitimate sponsors on our platform. Games publishers, in turn, benefit from a steadily increasing number of satisfied users and long-term growth in sales through the sponsors.” And that is why portal operators are embracing the innovative advertising platform. In the future, SponsorPay will serve not only the gaming industry, but extend its reach to other domestic and international online applications, virtual worlds and e-commerce platforms.
After its successful launch in Germany the company now turns to focus on swiftly expanding the international reach of its service offering and consistently enhancing the quality of the advertising portfolio. The young team is therefore adding management staff with profound expertise in these areas. Andreas Bodczek is taking over the commercial management of the company with immediate effect as managing director, having acted as a consultant to the project over the past weeks. This puts him in charge of corporate development and the setting up and expansion of the international advertising platform. Andreas Bodczek earned a degree in business management (Diplom-Kaufmann) and most recently held the position of CEO at Telefónica Deutschland, the company which under his direction established itself as Germany’s leading wholesale provider of DSL and Voice over IP services. “Within just a few months, the SponsorPay team has turned an interesting idea into a company operating on an international scale, with highly attractive customers like Gameforge AG,” states Andreas Bodczek. “I look forward to contributing my experience to build a lasting basis for this company and to press ahead for continued, rapid growth.”.
Berlin - August 20, 2009
SponsorPay convinces Gameforge
Startup partners with market leader for online games, gives 85 million players free access to virtual goods.
The startup SponsorPay GmbH has been on the market for just a few weeks and already reaches millions of online gamers with its new payment system. The opportunity to receive virtual goods and items for free by accepting an offer from one of SponsorPay’s 1,000 advertising partners is well received by gamers. And the industry is amazed by the new possibility to generate a higher number of paying users: SponsorPay is now proud to present its new customer Gameforge, the biggest publisher of browser and client-based MMOGs worldwide.
Free access to online content that usually has to be paid for. This is made possible with the new payment method provided by Berlin-based SponsorPay GmbH. “Instead of paying with real euros a player can now complete one of our advertising offers to purchase, for instance, a virtual item for a computer game“, comments Jan Beckers, Managing Director and co-founder of SponsorPay. “In return, he’ll receive the virtual good for free.”
But not only gamers benefit from the new system. For publishers of online games, it works as an effective tool to raise revenues and increase their reach. Previously many players did not access premium content, being unwilling to pay for it. The possibility to receive it for free increases the game’s attractiveness and player activity. And the game publisher is paid a commission by the advertiser for each completed offer and thereby receives his real euros.
These arguments now have convinced one of the most important companies of the digital entertainment industry as well. „Our new customer Gameforge is one of the leading independent providers of browser and client-based online games“, Jan Beckers comments. „This cooperation means a boost in reach for our advertising partners in Europe who now have access to an additional 85 million registered users.“ And Klaas Kersting, Managing Director of Gameforge, is sure to have entered a successful cooperation with SponsorPay: „As we are pursuing a long-term growth strategy, which is based on high consumer satisfaction, we are putting a high value on the transparency of advertising offers. With SponsorPay, we are happy to have found a partner who shares our philosophy completely and already serves a large portion of our markets in Europe.
Berlin - August 13, 2009
SponsorPay grants online gamers free access to premium content
Shopping on the Internet does not always have to cost (your own) money. SponsorPay GmbH, a start-up situated in Berlin, provides an interesting alternative for online gamers who are interested in purchasing virtual goods. Instead of paying with their own money, gamers can complete one of the numerous offers from SponsorPay’s advertising partners and get virtual currency or items for free in return. At the Gamescom 2009 in Cologne, from August 19th to 23rd, the newly founded company will present itself at its own booth (hall 4.1, booth A30) and is looking forward to answering questions from interested visitors.
The market for online games is booming and publishers are increasingly earning their money through “virtual goods” that can be purchased within the game. A gamer, for example, who wants to complement his combat gear with a special sword in a fantasy game, would have to put a lot of effort into the game to do so. The alternative: He acquires it quickly and easily through the use of real money.
With SponsorPay’s innovative payment system the gamer can now have his virtual goods financed by advertising partners (“Sponsors”). In return, online gamers have to complete ad offers which cost them some time, but no real money. Such an offer can be anything, from taking part in a market survey or downloading a free software program, to ordering a trial subscription for a magazine.
For advertisers, the innovative payment method opens up a whole new method of generating customer data and new leads. Through the large international user base of SponsorPay’s partners, advertisers can increase their reach drastically. Shortly after launch, the Berlin-based company’s service is already available in localized versions for 14 different European countries. Jan Beckers, managing director and co-founder, comments on the rapid growth: „There is no other international industry that is comparable to the online game market. Our customers’ games are often played in more than 50 different countries. That is why we are focusing our technology and structure on growth right from the start. In the near future, we want to serve players in all of Europe and North America in their native languages.
The first customers of SponsorPay are online game publishers like Frogster Online Gaming GmbH („Runes of Magic“), Gamelabs GmbH („Gallendor“) and Playa Games GmbH („Shakes & Fidget“). Björn Koschin, managing director of Frogster Online Gaming GmbH, comments on his choice: „We decided to work with SponsorPay because they are serving many of our markets with local offers in native languages. Also, we were convinced by the focus on transparent advertising offers and sustainable revenues."