Join host Sean Case, Senior Vice President of Peanut Labs, along with guest speakers: Katie Drewel, Workplace Program Educator, The American Red Cross; Cathy Allin, President & CEO, Decision Insight; Erika Harriford-McLaren, External Relations, ESOMAR; Brandie Conforti, Director of Corporate Relations, Partners In Health; and Stacy Howard, Community Relations Director, The Salvation Army.
Sponsored by the ARF, ESOMAR and the MRGA, this live session will cover:
• detailed information regarding Haiti relief efforts of the American Red Cross, Partners In Health and The Salvation Army;
• how one market research firm is utilizing their resources to help support orphanages in both Romania and Haiti;
• tips on how to use market research as a vehicle to support social causes;
• and ideas of how your firm can get involved with the different aid and relief efforts established by companies and NGOs worldwide.
Register today to find out more about how your organization can help those affected by the recent earthquake in Haiti.
Title: Take a Stand for Haiti: 60 Minutes on How Your Organization Can Get Involved
Date: Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Time: 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM PST
If history is truly written by the winners, then last Thursday will likely go down in history as a pivotal discussion between a handful of social media giants. As we mentioned on Monday’s blog, our COO Ali Moiz roped in a panel of of 2009’s biggest “winners” into an engaging discourse on the future of the social gaming platform for 2010 at the Google headquarters in Mountain View. Included in the panel is the shrewd wisdom of well -seasoned editor Eric Eldon of Inside Social Games .
If you’re anything like me during the State of the Union address, then you appreciate highlights in a blog to serve as a useful companion to the videotaped event. Look no further. You don’t want to miss out on the insight of these power players.
The backbone of the discussion, of course, rested on the future of monetization in the social gaming space. Here’s a round-up of some of my favorite dismal, riveting, and sometimes optimistic insight from our panelists.
Daniel James fired up the symposium, immediately reiterating his position about the future of social gaming and monetizaton. James’ recent post on his blog, The Flogging Will Continue seeded the topic of the discussion. James denotes, “Customer acquisition is cheaper on Facebook than it is on the Internet …so you look at that and you say, well Facebook isn’t making any money off of this and that is absurd. From their point of view I think it’s perfectly legitimate for them to say, ‘Okay, we’d like to take some of the money here, how can we do that?’”.
He concedes,”Why shouldn’t we as game developers have to pay to access a user base?”
But all is not lost for the little guys tinkering away in their developer garage with minimal VC funding. James asserts, “Revenue will increase this year. But I don’t think that that means necessarily that the same gold rush circumstances that have existed previously will continue.”
Jonathan Flesher, VP of Business Development, Zynga softens the blow: “I do think in the end, games will still continue to grow on the Facebook platform and it will be a better user experience overall.”
Lisa Marino, Chief Revenue Officer of RockYou presents an interesting model to help remedy the fear of shark tank economic trends, arguing, “In general…I think the overall trend is— especially with the Facebook changes, this seems much more of a math equation and much more of an advertising game. And I think what Facebook is doing on the credit side is an interesting alternative that really helps some of the smaller developers stay in the game and it helps to even the playing field. Because unless you’re RockYou or Zynga, where you can throw many millions of dollars at a game launch, it’s very difficult for a smaller developer to get a game off the ground. And by participating, I think, on the payments platform, you’ve got an opportunity as a smaller developer to leverage some of the distribution that Facebook’s bringing to the table as part of that overall program.”
As Daniel James strongly argues on his blog that “there just aren’t many more people left who havn’t made a FB account,” Mark Rose, Director of Product, Payments and Platform, Playspan, counters ” Facebook has let’s say 300 to 350 million users it’s still at the end of the day it hasn’t gone completely mainstream yet.” Rose fights with indisputable numbers as much as James sways with gut hunch.
Wilson Kriegel, VP of Business Development and Ad Sales, Outspark shares some of James’ self-dubbed “slightly apocalyptic” outlook when he warns, ” quite frankly, the cost of direct marketing will go up. The cost of operating a business will go up. The cost of development per game and game production development needs to increase in quality. Ultimately it comes to the LTV is going to be the big buzz word of 2010, which is one of my predictions I guess. LTV is how you’re going to run your business…you don’t own your users. So, reality check, Facebook owns the users. You [...] are just able to monetize them”.
And the little guys?
“VCs are going to stop funding a lot of the small players because they won’t be able to compete and they won’t see the ROI.”
Kriegel’s prediction isn’t completely dismal, however. He offers valuable insight and ups the ante on the 2010 social gaming platform. 2007’s enchantment of short-lived “distractions” of super pokes will give way to the longer embrace of deeper connections through social gaming. “Right now … I believe they’re really scratching the surface on what it means to be social. I think we’ll see something that is much, much more social in social games next year that will have a huge effect on the industry.”
Quite possibly, 2010 will see gaming developers concentrate on long-term goals by evolving the quality over quickfire ways to bloat viral growth spurts. Imagine a harmonious marriage between a user-centric approach and stronger long-term relationships with investors.
Eric Eldon predicts, “I think we’re going to see another company, at least, it might not get quite as big as Zynga but it will come out of nowhere and surprise the industry”. All ears perk up in the room. Sure. Every rep there has been a part of that. The surprise contender from out of left field is what every developer strives for, is inspired by, or is wary of. Usually all of the above.
Eldon also touches upon the very important topic of mobile apps: “I think, a lot of mobile app developers who are building social cell games on the iPhone, Android, et cetera…I think they’ve been experimenting with virtual goods now that Apple is letting them do that more within their games.. [and] come out with the next generation of mobile games that monetizes much better with virtual goods and social features. “
And Lisa Marino agrees. She ends this portion of the discussion with what I believe to be the most riveting and perhaps inspiring note: “Brands are now really coming online to embrace, and want to participate in, social gaming in a very big way and they want to sponsor premium experiences inside of games.”
Who’s right? Who’s wrong?
Only history will reveal.
Our very own Ali Moiz shares his own 2010 forecast on Eldon’s blog Inside Social Games.
1. Non-premium apps that generate “viral” traffic and make money largely off display ads will take a big hit as a category. There will be individual apps who figure out how to go viral, but in aggregate this category will decline at least 25% in terms of MAUs.
2. Social games will be affected as well, though not as much as 1 since they can compensate through ad-spending and a higher % of returning users. Competition will heat up since there are less free/viral users to go around. Ad spending and user acquisition rates will increase, rewarding those developers with deeper content that monetizes better.
3. Friend app invites/requests will become largely ineffective. Their proposed placement according to current FB screenshots means they will be checked as frequently by users as “Updates” currently are in the Inbox, i.e. almost never. Expect this viral channel to become ineffective compared to today.
4. Developers will spam email en-masse in desperation, resulting in that channel becoming useless and ignored. Relevant email updates will likely get drowned out by email spam generated by other apps. Already there are email providers offering to “sell” Facebook emails collected from apps. I’ve been pitched rates of $150 per 1 million verified FB emails by 3rd-party vendors. At those rates, there will be massive spam flooding the system next month via email.
5. The newsfeed will be the main viral channel left for most apps. Apps will genuinely have to push out more relevant and highly engaging content to get exposure. Current newsfeed spam methods will become less effective when everyone starts spamming the newsfeed next month.
Surveys, offers, and direct payments provide flexible opportunities to monetize online games.
SAN FRANCISCO, January 26, 2010: Peanut Labs Media, the only company that offers social game publishers monetization opportunities through surveys, offers, and direct payments, today announced a partnership with ten publishers across the social gaming industry.
The companies — Aeria Games; Backstage Technologies; Blue Frog Gaming; Challenge Online Games, Inc.; CyberStep; Gamepot USA, Inc.; Large Animal LLC; Ray Flame Entertainment, Inc.; SmallWorlds; Vogster Entertainment; and Zeevex — will join over 200 other partners who use the Peanut Labs Media Monetization Platform. Over 80 million social game users on Facebook and other social networks and destination sites use Peanut Labs Media technology to purchase virtual goods, earn credits, and participate in market research surveys.
Using the Peanut Labs Media Monetization Platform, game publishers can custom-tailor which direct payment options, offers, and market research surveys are available to players of each game title. The turnkey platform handles all billing and sales logistics, customer support, currency conversions, optimizations, and inquiry resolutions.
The opportunity to earn virtual goods by participating in Peanut Labs market research surveys has proven popular with users and lucrative for game publishers.
“Our platform gives publishers the greatest flexibility possible to earn the greatest revenue possible per title,” said Ali Moiz, Peanut Labs Media founder and Chief Operating Officer. “Our ongoing end-user resaearch reveals vital information, like the fact that gamers prefer surveys to other offers by a margin of nearly five-to-one.”
“The surveys provided by Peanut Labs perfectly augment our customers’ options to earn more of our games’ virtual currency,” said Russell Ovans, CEO of Backstage Technologies, publisher of Scratch and Win, the first lottery-style collecting game for Facebook. Backstage is currently monetizing four Facebook and three MySpace games with Peanut Labs surveys.
“PeanutLabs market research surveys are a unique and valuable option for SmallWorlds users wishing to earn, rather than pay for, virtual currency in our virtual world,” said Mitch Olson, co-founder of SmallWorlds, a browser-based 3D world.
“Our customers love Peanut Labs Media surveys for their high payouts and reliability,” said Matt Maroon, CEO of Blue Frog Gaming, publisher of Starfleet Commander and Football Tycoon. “No other source of free credits even comes close.”
About Peanut Labs Media
Peanut Labs Media is a social monetization company that helps publishers maximize their earning potential via virtual goods and currencies offered through the proper mix of global payments, surveys and offers. Headquartered in San Francisco, CA, with offices in Seattle and New York, the company currently manages monetization for more than 200 million monthly website visitors. The company has won numerous awards, including the FAST Top 50 2008 Ranking and the Advertising Research Foundation’s 2008 Silver Innovation Award. To learn more, visit www.peanutlabsmedia.com.
Contact
Jonathan E Cowperthwait
jonathanc@spiralgroup.com
415-869-8579 x.712
One-Day Conference Will Focus on Using Data to Understand, Retain and Win Customers
SAN FRANCISCO – January 26, 2010 – Peanut Labs, leading provider of social media sample for market research, today announced that Senior Vice President Sean Case will be the keynote speaker at this year’s Data Matters Conference taking place at the Mayfair Conference Centre in London on Wednesday, February 17. His presentation, “Social Networking and Market Research,” will commence at 9:10 a.m.
Case, who has an extensive background in online market research, will join fellow executives and experts in a discussion regarding the ever-changing market research industry and the incredible opportunities that have grown from the surge in popularity of social media.
The upcoming conference, organized by Research Conferences in association with MRS, will showcase an expert panel drawn from across the market research industry that will explore methods on how to gain useful data for insight into consumer behavior, disclose how to create customer segmentation that works using web data, reveal solutions that help the customer to provide better quality data and demonstrate how to effectively use data to improve customer retention rates as well as identify and reward high-potential customers.
This year’s Data Matters program highlights will include: a presentation on how to apply analytical insight to inform branding decisions and business results by Graham Hales, managing director of Interbrand UK; and a presentation on how loyalty enables effective data usage to impact customer retention by Natalie Kouzeleas, senior director of marketing and loyalty solutions at Oracle.
Other speakers include: Andy Wells, senior lecturer in psychology at the Institute of Social Psychology at the London School of Economics and Political Science; Larry Ryan, director of Behaviour and Attitudes; Chris Dubreuil, head of client development at Research Now UK; Anna Cliffe, head of insight at Brahm; Dr. Angela Karlsberg, head of analytics at McCallum Layton; Matthew Dodd, vice president of research and analytics at EMEA, The Nielsen Company; and Charles Humphreys of Nectar.
To find out more about the company’s presentation or to schedule a meeting at the conference, please email social@peanutlabs.com.
About Research Conferences
Research Conferences is the leading provider of high-level, quality events for the research and insight industry – combining MRS excellence and market expertise drawn from Research magazine.
Research Conferences, organized in association with MRS, take place throughout the year and offer a series of leading-edge one-day conferences, seminars, workshops and the flagship Annual Conference. Aimed at researchers from agency and client-side, these events offer timely and innovative programs addressing hot topics and emerging trends, the latest research techniques and showcase speaker panels consisting of leading experts in their field.
Delegates at these events will be able to network with others with backgrounds in agencies, client-side in-house teams, planning, advertising, marketing, brand management and academia.
About Peanut Labs
Peanut Labs is changing the way the world conducts online market research. With its social media sample, Peanut Labs enables online market researchers to make informed decisions based on quality data obtained through its advanced recruiting methodology and partnerships with over 200 leading online social networking applications and communities. Peanut Labs is based in San Francisco with offices in Seattle and New York City. The company was founded in July 2007 and is privately held. For more information, visit www.peanutlabs.com.
At Peanut Labs, we’ve decided a great new metric to gauge the success of an event is n, where n = the number of pizzas consumed during the affair. Number of pizzas consumed during our social gaming panel on Thursday: forty-seven. We were very pleased with the number of industry people who were willing to drive down (or up) to Mountain View, in the pouring rain, to attend our panel at Google last Thursday.
Google’s Rahul Kulkarni opened the evening with an informative presentation on the status of Orkut and the potential opportunities for game publishers that exist on the site. The panel discussion followed, moderated by Peanut Lab’s co-founder and COO Ali Moiz. The debate format was utilized for the discussion, which featured: Daniel James, Co-founder and CEO, Three Rings; Wilson Kriegel, VP of Business Development and Ad Sales, Outspark; Lisa Marino, Chief Revenue Officer, RockYou; Mark Rose, Director of Product, Payments and Platform, Playspan; Eric Eldon, Editor, Inside Social Games; and Jonathan Flesher, VP of Business Development, Zynga.
The topic of discussion was partly inspired by Daniel James’ recent post on his blog, The Flogging Will Continue, which lists his twelve predictions for the direction of social gaming in 2010. After James set the dialogue in motion with three of those predictions, a lively panel discussion ensued. The five industry heavy-weights seated in Google branded director’s chairs, took turns at the mic to communicate their views.
Sometimes the panelists agreed with one another, sometimes quite the opposite occurred, but they all took turns articulating their positions. The illustrious panel closed with questions from the audience followed by the second installment of pizzas.
In the ever-changing environment of social gaming, we found it invaluable to spend an evening together sharing ideas and discussing the things that matter to us. In case we didn’t have the opportunity to speak with you personally, Peanut Labs would like to express our gratitude to those of you who came and participated, and invite anyone who missed it to view the video by clicking here.
To read Eric Eldon’s thoughts about the event on Inside Social Games, click here.
New Initiative, ‘Sample for Haiti,’ Aims to Reach $25,000 in Disaster Relief Funds
SAN FRANCISCO – January 19, 2010 – Peanut Labs, leading provider of social media sample for market research, today announced a new initiative to help the victims of last Tuesday’s magnitude-7.0 earthquake just west of Port-au-Prince.
Throughout the month of February, 10 percent of all profits generated from new and existing client sales will be donated to the American Red Cross Haiti earthquake relief effort. The company hopes to raise a total of $25,000 via its new campaign, Sample for Haiti.
“We would like to think of the initiative as one similar to that of General Mills’ Pink Together campaign,” said Sean Case, senior vice president of Peanut Labs. “Over the past several years, General Mills has contributed millions of dollars to Susan G. Komen for the Cure, which features participation by several company brands including Cheerios and Yoplait. Our goal is to raise a total of $25,000 throughout the month of February for the American Red Cross by providing social media sample for market research.”
Funds raised during the month of February will be sent to the American Red Cross Haiti earthquake relief, an outreach effort to provide food, water, field hospitals, emotional support, telecommunications and sanitation facilities to the people of the capital and its surrounding cities. Additionally, the organization is helping to restore links between the families impacted by last week’s devastating earthquake. Donations will be provided on behalf of each client – new and existing non-contract – that purchases sample throughout the month of February.
“We want the market research community to know that there are ways that organizations can get involved and help out,” Case said. “Our hope is that this initiative will inspire others within the industry to take action and demonstrate that our community cares about what happens in other parts of the world, particularly those affected by this catastrophic event.”
The American Red Cross has been leveraging social media to continuously post updates about Haiti relief efforts on its Facebook page and Twitter account. A recent tweet stated that there has been over $21 million in $10 donations raised for the people of Haiti through the American Red Cross thus far.
About Peanut Labs
Peanut Labs is changing the way the world conducts online market research. With its social media sample, Peanut Labs enables online market researchers to make informed decisions based on quality data through its advanced recruiting methodology and partnerships with over 200 leading online social networking applications and communities. Peanut Labs is based in San Francisco with offices in Seattle and New York City. The company was founded in July 2007 and is privately held. For more information, visit www.peanutlabs.com.
What are the top three predictions for social gaming in 2010, according to a panel of industry leaders? Be among the first to find out, and have something cool to tweet about that day. Peanut Labs is co-hosting a panel discussion at the Google headquarters (where the magic happens) next Thursday, January 21. We’re putting together a panel of social media visionaries (see below) who will discuss the direction of social gaming in 2010. The panel will be moderated by Ali Moiz from Peanut Labs Media.
Rahul Kulkarni from Google will update us on platform changes to Orkut, their social networking site, and Google’s new developments in this area. Following what we’re convinced will be an invigorating panel discussion, the attendees are invited to participate in a Q&A session. In case you are still reading this and have yet to be convinced that this event is a can’t miss, you should know the evening will culminate with delicious refreshments.
If you can’t make it, we’ll be recording the panel for posterity. If you’d like to submit questions for the panelists and make your own predictions for 2010, check out our ubershort survey here: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/NLKRHWF
- Daniel James, Co-founder and CEO, Three Rings
- Wilson Kriegel, VP of Business Development and Ad Sales, Outspark
- Lisa Marino, Chief Revenue Officer, RockYou
- Mark Rose, Director of Product, Payments and Platform, Playspan
- Eric Eldon, Editor, Inside Social Games
- Jonathan Flesher, VP of Business Development, Zynga
Schedule:
6:00pm Meet and greet the panelists and speakers
6:15pm Orkut Platform updates from Rahul Kulkarni, Product Manager at Google
6:30pm Panel discussion “Social Gaming in 2010″
7:00pm Q&A
7:15pm Drinks, Pizza and Networking
Marketing to young children and teenagers can be quite a challenge given a majority of them do not have access to credit cards. As a result, enabling young users to purchase virtual currency has been an obstacle in social gaming. One successful solution that we at Peanut Labs stand behind is offering surveys in exchange for game specific currency. Dr Pepper and Electronic Arts announced a multi-million dollar cross-promotion yesterday that offers another solution to this challenge.
When gamers buy one of 500 million promotional bottles and cups, they can obtain a code that can be cashed in for virtual currency on the Dr. Pepper site. Several games are currently supported by this promotion with plans to expand.
In the past year, the market for offline virtual currency has seen huge growth, with many convenience stores like 7-11 carrying pre-paid gaming cards. As Inside Social Gamesperceptively points out, this particular distribution channel is a perfect fit with young kids enjoying sugary treats like those carried at 7-11 and buying them anyway.
What really struck a chord with our company is this: what young children and teenagers like and dislike has become a legitimate focus of advertising executives sitting in their offices on Madison Avenue. In the past, marketers were not trying to reach this younger demographic, but instead were targeting their parents. If a child liked something, they would ask their parents, the purchasing decision maker, to buy it for them. In the case of offline virtual currency, children are the consumers and the buying decisions are often theirs alone.
Children and teenagers have an inherent inclination to be independent and self reliant. This campaign taps into their independent spirit and their desire to have their own voice. You could say it’s both a blessing and a curse to influence trends. What will our youth do with this new found command?
Today, market researchers have access to an incredible amount of readily available consumer opinion. This is great news–right? Not so fast. Listening to the endless stream of informal chatter has become a leading trend in consumer research, but according to AdAge many marketers view “listening” as more of an added expense than a valuable tool.
According to Steve Rappaport, ARF knowledge solutions director, “tuning in to the millions of people freely sharing their experience with brands in ways that are relatively easy to track isn’t anywhere near ready to replace the old system of ‘asking’ i.e. survey research…” Although listening is an invaluable instrument for market researchers, numerous kinks have yet to be worked out.
ARF president Bob Barocci points out that listening isn’t taking off right now. In fact, market researchers list several problems: budgetary, organizational, statistical reliability, undetermined ROI and legal issues. While researchers need to spend more on the budding research technique buzz tracking, they cannot afford to spend less on the established method survey research. “So the single biggest opportunity in the history of consumer marketing lays dormant,” laments Borroci.
Although an ear to the blogosphere is undeniably valuable for the future, it is clear that companies like ours, with expertise and success in survey data collection, still have a key place in the world of market research. If researchers successfully work out the kinks in listening, how will the marketplace evolve?
In their recent online article Time Magazine asks, “Can Video Games Save the World?” Albeit the title’s a bit cliché, we at Peanut Labs are happy to see press that shines a positive light on gaming and recognizes its powerful position in our society. The enthusiasm of our 80+ million users is a testament to the significance of social gaming. For young users like ours, socially conscious games present an opportunity for exposure to real world issues that may elude them through traditional media channels. The interactive nature of gaming not only exposes us to the issues, but invites us into a world where our actions can impact social causes. Since 2006 when MTV released Darfur is Dying, the social game has inspired thousands of users to contact the White House or petition their local representatives. Stephen Friedman, general manager of MTV affirms, “No other media enables you to literally run in someone’s shoes.”
Facebook’s application Causes offers more evidence of the socially conscious potential inherent in social media. Causes now powers the Facebook Charity Gift Shop, allowing users to send gifts to their friends’ profiles with profits going to charitable organizations. According to Causes, you can “buy a Bed Net for a friend and Malaria No More will deliver one insecticide-treated net to protect a child in Africa from malaria,” or purchase “a Healthy Baby Kit Gift [which] will help the International Rescue Committee provide a baby delivery kit with a warm blanket for a child born in a crisis zone.” Social media has embraced the trendy “shop for a cause” movement, which in the past was only available at bricks and mortar and online stores. This demonstrates the adaptability of social media, which has become a reflection and extension of current, everyday life.
Here at Peanut Labs we’re proud to partner with CMO Council in the Pause to Support a Cause Campaign. This milestone program allows participants to channel funds to their favorite causes or charities, in exchange for taking online surveys. Many of us can be overwhelmed when faced with the problems of the world. What can we do to influence positive change? We’re told a good place to start is to “act locally, think globally.” Using surveys in socially beneficial ways can produce real change on a global scale. This is an excellent place to begin; where can we go from here?
Join host Sean Case, Senior Vice President of Peanut Labs, along with guest speakers: Katie Drewel, Workplace Program Educator, The American Red Cross; Cathy Allin, President & CEO, Decision Insight; Erika Harriford-McLaren, External Relations, ESOMAR; Brandie Conforti, Director of Corporate Relations, Partners In Health; and Stacy Howard, Community Relations Director, The Salvation Army.
