Mobile ads startup Kiip isn't the first company to offer an incentivisation program for portable gamers.

Heck, mobile ads startup Kiip isn't even the first company to offer a real rewards system on iOS for portable gamers.

But, where Kiip - a 7-month-old team founded by Digg wunderkind Brian Wong - does break new ground is in presenting a unique take on in-game achievements, advertisements, and associated rewards.

Carrot and the stick

In a nutshell, Kiip will reward the player with free stuff, from partners including Sony Dash, popchips, and Dr Pepper, upon the completion of a certain level, challenge, or points goal.

"Achievements are the universal currency for accomplishment and every game in the world has achievments," Wong explained.

"The achievement itself isn't the cool thing, it's the moment. We realised that the moment was worth something. The natural evolution is to put something there that actually matches the achievement."

Once the boss has been successfully defeated on stage 4 on game X, a pop-up ad appears inviting the player to enter his email address and redeem the reward.

Points mean prizes

Kiip prizes are not only tailored to the game's likely demographic - ensuring that lipsticks from Sephora aren't doled out to FPS fanatics - but are also correlative to the achievement's degree of difficulty.

And much like Apple's own iAd service, Kiip's reward system, which is available for iOS and Android, doesn't toss users out of the current app when initiated. Instead, it operates as an overlay which can be easily closed at any point.

Backed by $4 million in Series A funding, the Kiip reward network claims a reach of 15 million+ active players across 15 games on iOS and Android.

Should you wish to deploy a Kiip reward in your game, you can get the SDK here.

[source: TechCrunch]