Mochi Media, the San Francisco company that offers ads that run in online casual games, and analytics services that look at game performance, is coming out with a new service. It has packaged its ads and analytics services together with its catalog of white-label games it syndicates, creating a way for web site publishers to both engage users through games and make money from that engagement.
Partners that are using the service include virtual world Gaia Online, social network application makers Slide and RockYou, and anime site Crunchyroll.
One of the target customers are the large game portals, like MSN Games or Yahoo Games, that are always looking for fresh games to offer. Mochi is a one-stop shop for finding, measuring and monetizing games. Some portals, at least, would otherwise, need to build their own ads and analytics services, or work with a variety of partners.
Revenue from ads on the publisher game network is shared between the publisher, the game's creator, and Mochi. Games are rights-free, so the publishers don't have to worry about complicated negotiations -- or lawsuits. Ads can be targeted to web domain, game category and geographical location of users.
A similar concept was recently launched by NeoEdge Networks, a company that has built an ad network around downloadable casual games. NeoEdge, whose chairman is Atari founder Nolan Bushnell and which we recently wrote about, wraps its ads into the games, which are beefier and more complex than the Flash-based games that Mochi creates. Then NeoEdge allows customers to post widgets on their sites that let players download and play the games. NeoEdge gets a cut of the ad revenue. While the company strategies are very similar, both say they are in different markets because of Mochi's Flash emphasis and NeoEdge's downloadable focus.
While Mochi isn't disclosing many numbers, it does tell me that its network is getting 60 million global unique visitors a month. Having only launched in October, this is pretty impressive -- and a growth pattern we've been covering.