Mother’s Day promotions paid off in spades for makers of social games on Facebook, boosting revenue by five-fold, according to offer firm TrialPay.
The research showed that Mother’s Day promo offers drove $1 million per day for game publishers. These gifts for Mom such as offers from online flower merchants generated a big increase in revenue. Moreover, about 40 percent of the purchasers were first-time buyers in the social games; the holiday in general boosted visitor conversion rates — or the percentage of players making a purchase — by more than double.
I guess I wasn’t the only one to buy flowers online in exchange for cash to spend on tractor gas in FarmVille, the popular Facebook game. If it weren’t for the offer, I wouldn’t have paid that money. But in this case, I was already going to spend money on flowers. Clearly, social games have a big opportunity to expand their audience with every holiday or special occasion.
TrialPay is one of a number of companies that create special ads known as offers. The users can accept the offers, such as subscribing to Netflix or sending flowers, in order to earn virtual currency in games. Normally, that virtual currency costs real money and can be used to buy virtual goods in games such as a new tractor in FarmVille. But the offers let players get virtual currency as long as they participate in the offers.
Offers generally perform well because they can be tailored to the audience — as is the case with the Mother’s Day promotions. About 40 percent of the top 50 social games on Facebook ran Mother’s Day specials this year, with close to 80 million daily users presented with offers in the run-up to the holiday.
TrialPay, founded three years ago, has 60 million registered users. It competes with firms such as AdKnowledge, Offerpal Media, gWallet and others.