Interview

Should developers be using offerwalls? TrialPay fights its corner

If you want to increase revenue, the answer is yes

Should developers be using offerwalls? TrialPay fights its corner
"No one wants to hear about another offerwall. There are hundreds of offerwalls," signs Terry Angeles, co-founder and CPO of offerwall outfit TrialPay.

He's emphasising the situation to make a point, of course.

TrialPay isn't your typical offerwall company. For one thing, it prefers terms such as 'alternative payment' or 'value-exchange' platform.

For another, it pretty much invented the monetisation method back in 2006, and as Facebook's official partner for all such offers on the social platform, you could argue its move into mobile is the only 'another offerwall' anyone in the sector does want to hear about.

The past repeats

"We're late to the party when it comes to mobile," Angelos confesses.

Looking at how the mobile offerwall sector developed, TrialPay took the decision to wait and see how the various platform holders - notable Apple - were going to deal with the situation.

The early days on mobile were similar to the early days of offerwalls on Facebook, Angelos says.

"There were a lot of scammy offers then, so when it came to mobile, we paused particularly because of the issues around incentivised downloads on iOS," he says.

"Perhaps we delayed too long, but we didn't want to enter a market that was pushing the legal envelope."

Making up for lost time

For that reason, TrialPay didn't seriously to address the mobile market until late 2012.

But it's already seen great success; Q1 2013 mobile revenues were up 84 percent compared to Q4 2012.

And mobile revenues in May 2013 were up 100 percent on April 2013.

Indeed, thanks to its Facebook business, TrialPay already works with many of the big mobile publishers; a list it's quickly extended.

Mobile clients include the likes of Kabam, Storm8, King, NaturalMotion, Zynga and TinyCo.

"We're working with six of the PocketGamer.biz top 10 developers," Angelos points out.

The ten percent club

It's looking to further expand its reach too. One element of this is education.

"We want to demonstrate to developers that they should be using offerwalls, and that we have a superior product," says Angelos.

In this respect, TrialPay runs its own user surveys to provide high level data on the effectiveness of offerwalls.

"Typically, we think developers can expect to see around a 10 percent revenue boost," Angelos says.

"More interesting is we have some data that suggests around 5 percent of new payers in games with IAP were generated by an offer."

The other element is extending the entire value-exchange ecosystem.

TrialPay's latest feature allows US users to register their debit or credit card with their account, and earning in-game rewards by doing their normal shopping using those cards.

"Now you can shop in your local store and get a gift in Candy Crush Saga," Angelos says.

"We're looking to tap into the $3 trillion US retail market."
Contributing Editor

A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon is Contributing Editor at PG.biz which means he acts like a slightly confused uncle who's forgotten where he's left his glasses. As well as letters and cameras, he likes imaginary numbers and legumes.