Osney Media, the leading UK company specialising in organising interactive, discussion-based events specifically aimed at high level strategists, today announced additional speakers for the Virtual Goods Forum, June 23-24, 2010. Sulake, WeeWorld, Social Gold, Playfish, kickflip, Scoreloop, Offerpal, Adknowledge and Viximo have all signed on to present at the Forum. Additionally, the Spanish Embassy Economic & Commercial Office (ICEX) will be bringing along a number of Spanish companies in the sector, adding more international perspective and opportunities to the show.
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Commission Junction and SponsorPay extend their cooperation on a broad international basis: The leading global affiliate network and the leading virtual currency platform in Europe from now on work together in more than 30 countries in the EU, North and South America. The extremely strong position of Commission Junction in the USA further strengthens the US position of SponsorPay.

Commission Junction and SponsorPay focus on providing the highest payout for SponsorPay’s clients by combining the enormous reach of both partners with the advantages of performance marketing and SponsorPay’s innovative business model: Users get virtual currency in online games, social networks and social games for a certain action, e.g. participating in a survey or buying in a shop. READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

The CEO @ Sponsorpay: Andreas Bodczek

- Hi Andreas, Can you tell us something about the function you currently have at SponsorPay? What does your typical day at work look like?

As SponsorPay’s CEO I am in charge of the overall development of the company. I am also heading the account management team and keep an eye on our financials.

On a typical day I get in early, work through my inbox and check the stats from the previous day. After that I will sit down with the product & account management teams to discuss current tasks, priorities and their plans for the day or the week. In the afternoon it’s meeting time: MMO and social apps publishers, advertisers, other stakeholders. Not necessarily on a typical, but on a good day we go out with the team in the evening and have some fun.
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Kwedit, a provider of alternative payment systems, recently announced the launch of Kwedit Direct and Kwedit Promise, two new services for the tens of millions of consumers who have been unable to purchase digital content or virtual goods because they lack credit or debit cards or would prefer to pay with cash.

Kwedit Promise enables consumers to receive goods immediately in exchange for Promises to “Play Now. Pay Later.” Kwedit Promises can be paid off using any of the mechanisms provided by Kwedit Direct.

Kwedit Direct allows consumers to make payments at participating retail stores— starting with 5,800 7-Eleven stores in the United States— or by mailing cash or asking a friend or family member to pay on their behalf through a unique social payment network called Pass the Duck.™
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On April 20th in San Francisco, Inside Social Apps is bringing together the world’s leading entrepreneurs all in one place to discuss the future of social applications and games monetizing through virtual goods. Justin Smith, founder and editor of the Inside Network, is hosting the event.

Here’s a list of confirmed speakers:

* Atul Bagga, VP Equity Research, Games, ThinkEquity
* Adam Caplan, VP Virtual Currency, Super Rewards / Adknowledge
* Renata Dionello, Chief of Staff to the CEO, eBay, and former Director of Consumer Business Development, PayPal
* Eric Eldon, Editor, Inside Facebook & Inside Social Games
* George Garrick, CEO, Offerpal Media
* Vikas Gupta, CEO, Jambool
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Today, Offerpal launches Offerpal Tasks, where social gamers can earn virtual currency without paying for it. Instead, they can choose from around 100,000 simple online tasks to complete via Amazon Mechanical Turk for virtual currencies in their favorite games.

Indirect payments, such as Offerpal Tasks, are playing a larger role in the growth of virtual currency. It’s been estimated that between 30-50% of virtual currency payments in social gaming come from indirect methods.

Sample tasks include rating search results, categorizing web sites or articles, and answering questions. Offerpal Tasks are now available throughout Offerpal’s network of more than 2,000 web sites and applications.

The new service will allow online gamers to select from thousands of ‘Human Intelligence Tasks,’ work whenever it’s convenient, and convert their earnings into virtual currency that can be spent in online games and virtual worlds. “We’re pleased that Offerpal has chosen to leverage Amazon Mechanical Turk for their ‘Tasks’ service,” said Steve Rabuchin, General Manager for Amazon Web Services.

SponsorPay, an European virtual currency monetization platform, has acquired its competitor GratisPay. Together the two platforms already serve the majority of Europe’s top 10 publishers of online games, such as Gameforge, Bigpoint and Frogster as well as publishers of Facebook apps and social games like Cafe.com, Feerik and Megazebra.

SponsorPay is located in Berlin, Germany and offers fully localized monetization for more than 30 countries, reaching over 40 million active users in Europe alone.

Both brands and the staffs of SponsorPay and GratisPay will stay in place. Jan Beckers, SponsorPay’s Managing Director & Head of Publisher Relations, explains: “While the names as well as the product and service ranges of both companies will remain unchanged, we are now substantially extending our lead on the competition by combining the advertising offerings of the two brands.”

Competitors include TokenAds, Deal United and SupersonicAds.

We just received news that gWallet, a fairly new virtual currency provider launched late 2009, has started an early-stage fund to invest in Social Gaming Developers. According to the press release, gWallet will invest from $100,000 to $1 million per company in exchange for a minority stake in these companies. By doing this, gWallet hopes to attract the smaller players in the field, social game developers that “have not received the attention they deserve”. According to CEO and founder of gWallet Gurbaksh Chahal, ‘gWallet Ventures is an opportunity for some of these companies to receive the funding they need in order to be successful, and in the end, we think that these funding deals will instill a virtuous cycle of growth among publishers, brands, and consumers alike”. For Gurbaksh Chahal this isn’t his first succesful venture. He has sold his previous advertising companies for $340 million in cash.
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Virtual Currency Platform Sometrics today announced that they can count 3 new big clients to their portfolio: Aeria Games, Challenge Games, and IMVU. Combined this gives Sometrics the ability to help monetize over 50M users currently playing any of their games and virtual worlds. Previously know as just a Social Ad Analytics company, Sometrics moved on and launched their own virtual currency manager in 2009, providing Rich Media Offers, Distinctive Reporting and Cross Platform support to publishers and developers worldwide. They raised $5,550,000 in 2 rounds to date; investors include Steamboat Ventures, The Mail Room Fund and Greycroft Partners.
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The Chief Product Officer @ Trialpay: Terry Angelos

- Hi Terry, Can you tell us something about the function you currently have at TrialPay? What does your typical day at work look like?

As the Chief Product Officer, I oversee TrialPay’s e-commerce platform including our social monetization platform and virtual currency solutions. Along with a fantastic product and engineering team, I help to develop our most innovative and disruptive ideas – many of them originating from our publisher and advertising partners. Since our “company DNA” is innovation centric, this usually involves rapid prototyping and fast release cycles to quickly test new concepts. If you were ask a TrialPay employee, they’d probably tell you that all I do is run from conference room to conference room all day long.
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