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Case Study: Sibblingz, Inc. Monetizes 'Make a Baby' Application through Offerpal Media

Overview

Sibblingz Inc. is a builder of virtual worlds and virtual experiences based in Mountain View, CA. The company's goal is to build engaging and enriching, youth-focused virtual worlds and applications that encourage creativity and collaboration in a safe environment. In late 2007, Sibblingz created the Make a Baby application, initially as a test around the inherently viral idea of "so and so on this platform wants to make a baby with you." The Make a Baby application gives users the power to combine their "genetic profiles" and "have" virtual babies. Once the virtual baby is created, players take care of them and help them grow up through numerous age levels. Following the launch on Facebook, the team’s success gained them placement among Bebo's flagship partner applications. The team also put the application on MySpace and its highly engaged user base now stands at about 4 million.

Challenge

Within the first nine months - an appropriate incubation period for this particular application - Make a Baby had become a top 100 first page application on MySpace, Facebook and Bebo. At this point, Sibblingz recognized the need to find a way to make Make a Baby profitable. Banner ads were proving to be unsuccessful, and in general none of the social networks provided an automatic sustainable advertising model for applications. At this juncture, Sibblingz made the decision to incorporate advertising offers within the application, tied to its virtual currency.

Approach

In May 2008, Sibblingz evaluated and compared a number of vendors that would allow them to create a targeted advertising model within Make a Baby. Sibblingz ultimately chose to partner with Offerpal Media to monetize their application because of its highly targeted, CPA-based advertising platform. Offerpal's full-service, turnkey "Managed Offer Platform" allows users to earn virtual currency in exchange for completing uniquely engineered offers such as free trials, online surveys, big-brand discounts and more.

Offerpal Media worked closely with Sibblingz to transform Make a Baby into the type of game atmosphere that easily and seamlessly incorporated virtual currency and goods as a new feature to the game. One of the most important aspects of the application, according to user feedback and focus groups, was the artwork used to create the Make a Baby virtual world, and Offerpal's ability to match the game's aesthetics with a seamless monetization experience turned out to be an invaluable help.

Users are now able to earn "Baby Bucks" by completing advertising offers, and then redeem those bucks by purchasing virtual toys, clothing or accessories for their babies.

Results

Offerpal has helped Make a Baby earn eCPM rates in the hundreds of dollars, as well as generating an incredibly loyal user base. The application has since become a central piece in the parent company's portfolio of virtual worlds.

"Offerpal Media has truly been our partner from day one - helping to brainstorm new virtual decorative goods for Make a Baby and working with us to most effectively incorporate "Baby Bucks" into the game," said Nicholas Talarico, Director of Operations at Sibblingz, Inc. "Since working with Offerpal to create this virtual economy, our users have become more deeply engaged with the social experience and have an emotional tie with their baby. Offerpal has truly helped us not only monetize Make a Baby, but become one of the fastest growing, highly engaging applications on any social network."

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