You might expect a rundown of the most innovative businesses in gaming to focus on the creatives: the studios and developers charged with serving up the weird and wonderful apps topping the charts.

Business magazine Fast Company, however, thinks the work monetisation specialist Tapjoy has done over the course of the last year is worthy of the most praise, labelling the firm as the industry's most innovative.

Free fiesta

According to the magazine, the mobile games industry owes thanks to Tapjoy for helping to cement the free-to-play model.

"Tapjoy has unlocked the Easter egg in the smartphone game: its advertising platform shifted mobile gaming from pay-to-play to a freemium model," says the magazine in its description.

"Its 280 million users select which ads to engage with in exchange for receiving virtual currency that they can later use in their favourite apps.

"Its turnkey in-app advertising platform has monetised more than 11,000 apps across Apple's iOS, Android, Windows Phone 7, and HTML5 platforms."

Game changer

Tapjoy beat out both social giant Zynga – which took third spot – and EA in the magazine's games industry countdown, which finished fourth.

In the overall chart, Tapjoy was named as the 27th most innovative company on the planet, with Apple coming out on top.

Google came in third with Amazon mopping up fourth.

"For thousands of developers around the world, their apps wouldn’t see the light of day without us," said CEO Mihir Shah.

"We're in the business of discovery. We pair user interests with great mobile apps. We changed the industry."

[source: Fast Company]