What if there was a way that you didn’t have to choose between monetizing and staying loyal to an audience of kids? Eldad Ben Tora, CRO and Co-founder of KIDOZ explained how at Casual Connect USA. Among other insights, Eldad shared, “You would be amazed at how many apps out there are not giving any thought about the type of ads they show.” Developers need to know their audience and make sure the ads are appropriate. To learn more, see the full session below.
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Eldad Ben Tora is the CRO and Co-Founder of KIDOZ. In this role, he is in charge of company’s revenues, marketing & business development. Prior to this, he was GM at Bluesnap, which was sold to Great Hill Partners. It didn’t take long after that for Eldad to get the entrepreneurial urge again.
“I have always been involved in Israel’s vibrant start-up scene,” noted Eldad. “Three years ago, I joined my friend Gai Havkin who founded KIDOZ, and together we built a team of nearly 20 people and raised the required funds to build a leading company in a very challenging space.”
Serial Entrepreneur
Eldad obviously loves the apps developers make for kids, but it’s more than that which made him get into the industry: he saw many games for kids that hadn’t surfaced to a large audience and he saw an opportunity. Eldad wanted to help kids and families better discover the great content that’s out there.
What pushed Eldad into the startup space was a combination of friendship and the gratifying nature of controlling startups. “While I was studying in Rome 16 years ago a friend called and asked me to join his dating site called Cupid,” Eldad described. “It became the number 1 dating site in Israel and was sold to its competitor JDate. Once you are part of a product from the beginning and take part in the exit, it’s hard to stop.”
“Since then I have been managing internet and mobile companies and what drives me most is to build a service that is truly necessary for its audience, not simply something that is a nice addition,” Eldad added.
Photo by Lera Polska Photography
Investing, Recruiting and Networking a Start-Up
Running a startup can be a huge challenge in just staying solvent. “Finding investors and recruiting your first few clients is not easy,” says Eldad. “It took us a while, but remember you only need one to start with. One investor or big client …and finding one is a reasonable goal. If you work well, the rest will follow.”
“Receiving our first million dollars in funding was definitely a great moment,” he added. “We had received several painful rejections and the first investment reaffirmed we were heading in the right direction and that our product had a market.”
After funding, a company has to see where it fits into the marketplace. While KIDOZ was originally designed to be a kid-mode B2C product, they eventually saw the need of device makers and developers, so they pivoted to be a distribution and monetization service.
Eldad also stressed the importance of networking opportunities (like Casual Connect USA.) “Conferences and meet-ups are a MUST for B2B businesses looking to meet partners and clients,” emphasized Eldad. “In a world where everyone receives hundreds of emails a day, nothing compares to a quality face-to-face meeting.”
Staying on the Right Side of COPPA
KIDOZ has a “Kid-Mode” which is designed to help device makers (OEM’s) and carriers who wanted to sell compatible devices for kids, who were becoming enthusiastic users. There was a need for a pre-loaded app to aggregate content out there into a safe place, allowing parents to monitor their kids’ activity.
“In the last 3 years we signed over 50 preloading deals with OEMs including ACER, Hisense, KURIO, T-Mobile, US cellular and more,” noted Eldad. “Helping them not only answer the growing concerns coming from parents, but to actually monetize the space in a kid-friendly way.”
Being successful in this market also means being COPPA compliant. Designed to protect children’s privacy online, the regulation should be heavily considered if a product is aimed at children. The InMobi ad network was fined nearly $1 million U.S. dollars by the FTC for violating COPPA regulations. Eldad says that KIDOZ is COPPA compliant, has the KidSafe seal demonstrating they work under the highest standards; they don’t collect or share any private information belonging to kids without parental consent.
“I think it is important for any companies working with a large segment of kids to understand that they are at risk by failing to tailor the experience to children,” says Eldad. “Burying your head in the sand by integrating with a generic ad network or service and saying you are not specifically targeting kids is not a healthy strategy for any game company with children using your apps.”
Making Content for Kids Easy to Find
Eldad loves the opportunities in the kids space, and the potential to let them grow personally. KIDOZ was designed to help kids find the right content safely; that sort of ecosystem hadn’t really been around in the past.
“Through working with our Kid-Mode we saw that the mobile industry was not ready for kids, and developers were struggling to generate revenue from their apps,” described Eldad. “Our main focus right now is providing a solution for discoverability, while providing developers with a monetization solution in a safe and truly kid-friendly way.”
KIDOZ is designed to try and match kids up with content based on age, location and interest, listing as an example kids interacting with science related content will be offered games and apps related to science.
Another important factor is the freshness of content. “Kids are bored easily and it is necessary to provide them with new suggestions and activities every day,” noted Eldad.
Safety First with Kids Online
Eldad says that the mobile industry for kids is still in a nascent phase. While it’s growing at a rapid clip, there’s still some gray areas of conduct. Regulations like COPPA are just beginning to catch up with the reality of kids usage.
“We are seeing more companies taking kid-safety and privacy seriously, and I think this will become a big focus in the space. We are building on our foundation to bring kid-safe monetization and distribution tools to this maturing market,” said Eldad. “I truly believe there are opportunities for developers to generate revenue while building great products for kids. The mobile space also offers great opportunities for kids’ brands to engage with kids on a more personalized level.”
“The mobile space creates an incredible opportunity for kids to discover content and grow, which I think is extremely important for kids today. However the booming industry was missing a proper ecosystem for kids,” he added. “We founded KIDOZ to connect kids to content in a safe way. I am excited to see how the kids’ game space will mature in coming years.”
Encouraging Enthusiastic Creators
KIDOZ has seen its user base increase by a few million users each month since releasing their SDK solution. In July, they saw 20 million active monthly users. With more distribution deals for the service coming soon, KIDOZ is expected to expand even more.
“We have a remarkable team that I’m proud of and love working with, and I also love the fact that our partners and clients are not the typical app developers. So while they work with us to get compensated and monetize, they are not only after the money. They care more about safety, educational benefits and added value for their users, which translates to meaningful and long lasting partnerships with KIDOZ,” concluded Eldad.
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