By Christopher Hamilton
Spil Games’ CEO Erik Goossens unveiled the Spil Games Platform, a new solution designed drive revenue and engagement for developers at Casual Connect Europe in Amsterdam today. Capitalizing on the surge in 30-second video ads around the world, the Spil Games Platform offers developers a revenue share from mid-roll video ads that are typically placed at cliffhangers in video games.
“We saw a huge shift in advertising away from TV over to online 30-second video ads in the second half of last year. Games are the perfect vehicle for these ads. In TV, there are usually 12 to 18 minutes of advertising per hour that both viewers and advertisers are used to and we’re achieving great success with this type of advertising in games,” Goossens explained.
The service offers a number of features, including access to Spil Games’ 180 million MAU, with access to millions more through their publishing partners, a cross-platform monetization via Spil Games’ global advertising platform, analytics to monitor and track game performance to better place ads, a portal where developers can track their earnings, and an easy to use API to trigger ads at optimal times.
“We designed the Spil Games Platform to appeal to indie developers wanting an alternative, and lucrative, way to make money and find huge and engaged audiences,” Goossens continued. “It takes the strengths we’ve built up over the years – from deep insights into our audience of 180 million MAUs, to state-of-the-art advertising technology – and combines that with a business model that makes indie developers thrive. We think this will be a highly profitable new revenue source for developers.”
A number of developers who participated in the platform’s pilot program are pleased with the results. Hunter Hamster Studio founder Andrey Kovalishin said, “Through the Spil Games Platform, we got a great additional revenue stream that allowed us much more freedom to be creative, experimental, and polish new titles. This ongoing additional revenue is something that really helps indie developers to hold on to their IP and work on new games with an element of financial security.”
Hunter Hamster’s Snail Bob game has had more than 600 million gameplays and was selected to participate in the pilot program. A number of participants expressed that the advertising platform is a great alternative to struggling with the high costs involved with self-publishing on various app stores. “We were able to make 20,000 EUR monthly revenue for the Snail Bob franchise,” Goossens declared enthusiastically.
“Being cross-platform is key today,” Goossens said. “People are playing on their computer, their phone, and their tablets. For this reason, we are really promoting developers to work in HTML5…. the program is open to anyone who develops in Flash, Unity, or native browser games, but HTML5 provides a better cross-platform experience and that is the direction where the platform will grow.”
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