gWallet Brings More Than 10 Major Brands to Social Gaming With First Branded Video Engagements

SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 6 /PRNewswire/ -- gWallet, a new monetization platform for social media, today announced it has partnered with major brands to launch the industry's first integrated video offering. Brands that took part in the launch of gWallet Video included Best Buy, K-Mart, Nestle, Coke, and The History Channel.

(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20100106/AQ32970)

The 10 leading brands that participated in these video campaigns in December, provided in partnership with online video promotion company TubeMogul, received unprecedented viewer engagement and conversion, while publishers leveraging gWallet's platform saw a sizeable increase in revenue. gWallet also worked with TubeMogul to host and track the success of the videos.

In only one week, gWallet reported that its campaigns received over 480,000 views and over 1 million minutes of total viewing time; user engagement averaged more than 2 minutes per video campaign. The videos all featured major brands and included trailers from blockbuster films released over the holidays. Publishers that deployed gWallet Video noted that revenue increased up to 600 percent.

An analysis of viewership engagement (above) demonstrates the power of branded video engagements in social gaming. Viewers of a video trailer promoting the season premiere of Ax Men on The History Channel were engaged for considerably longer than viewers who saw content on comScore's 250 sites, according to TubeMogul. These performance metrics mean that the gWallet platform is providing brands with deeper consumer engagement for their dollar than the leading sites on the Internet.

"Our goals for 2009 were to bring major brands into the virtual currency and social media advertising space, and the use of video was a key component in making these goals a reality," said Gurbaksh Chahal, CEO and founder of gWallet. "This year, we will continue to drive additional innovation through a new set of products that brings brands into one of the fastest-growing sectors of digital media."

"MobScience chose to work with gWallet because gWallet is bringing integrity and innovation to this industry. By incorporating branded video engagements, we've monetized our users at a shockingly high rate. gWallet Video is a true win-win for advertisers and the consumers," says Michael Witz, CEO of MobScience, the seventh largest developer on Facebook with more than 27 million monthly active uniques.

The success of branded video engagements is driving other changes across the virtual currency landscape. gWallet reports that the allure of video content is drawing visitors to review and complete more offers. Currently, most publishers only monetize 2 to 3 percent of their users. By providing video and more attractive offerings, gWallet is helping to tap into a much larger audience.

gWallet attributes the success of gWallet Video to the ease and low time commitment of watching a video, which is driving new trust and interest in virtual offers overall. Most of these campaigns also include a viral component in which consumers can become Facebook fans of the video advertiser's brand.

gWallet worked exclusively with online video pioneer TubeMogul to power the video and analytics on its recent video campaigns. A sample of the videos that were displayed on the new offer wall are available at http://www.gwallet.com/brand_demos/.

About gWallet

gWallet is taking on the responsibility of bringing new technologies to social media that will provide transparency and standards that will allow the category to flourish and grow. It provides brands, publishers and social media platforms with new, cutting-edge technology to monetize this growth in a consumer-friendly format. The gWallet monetization platform contains three components - Alternative Online Payment, Virtual Currency and Aggregation of Virtual Products. gWallet's platform has been optimized for Facebook, OpenSocial platforms (MySpace, Hi5, Tagged, etc), and virtual worlds or websites utilizing virtual offer-based currency. For more information visit www.gWallet.com.

SOURCE gWallet