Offers have been a scandalous thing in the social game business. Critics have accused offer providers — which let you pay for a virtual good in a social game by filling out a special offer in lieu of a credit card payment — of running scams on consumers.
So the idea from Boomerang Networks is clever and simple: let the consumers decide which offers are best. Honor Gunday, chief executive of Boomerang, told me today that his company filters out the best offers from the best advertisers as a matter of policy. But on top of that, he lets consumers rate the best offers on an Offerwall. There, consumers can rate and review the best virtual currency offers. It’s like crowdsourcing, where the wisdom of the crowds reveals the best quality offers.
Good offers rise to the top. Bad offers are booted. Users can give offers a simple thumbs up or thumbs down, based on their experience. They can also explain their ratings with reviews and comments, which are then visible to everyone. When you accept an offer, you can see how many people accepted it in the last day or so. Gunday says that if a consumer turns down an offer, that offer isn’t shown again. That protects the consumer from being annoyed, and it also protects the advertiser from having people fill out multiple offers for the same thing just so they can get a lot of virtual currency.
Rivals include gWallet, Offerpal, Super Rewards (owned by Adknowledge), and TrialPay. Boomerang is trying to fill the holes in the market. One other way it does that is target international markets for in-game offers. It translates offers into 12 languages currently. The San Francisco company has 18 people here and in the Ukraine. It was founded in 2009 and has raised angel funding.