PlayMob lets social games get users hooked on paid virtual goods via charity [Springboard]

Consisting of all-woman team, Caroline Howes, Daniela Neumann and Jude Ower, PlayMob is creating a marketplace allowing charities to place virtual goods and characters into social games, while allowing developers to entice users to get used to the idea of pay for virtual goods by donating to charity. It’s actually an incredibly good idea, and while creating a win for both parties, could develop further into a powerhouse brokerage business.

Charities get to reduce the costs of fundraising while increasing engagement by getting in front of mass audiences online. This is smart, since spikes in charitiable giving are not sustainable. How many requests for JustGiving handouts have you had? Exactly people have philanthropy fatigue. ‘Little and often’ is better, and it maps perfectly to the purchase of virtual goods.

Developers can nominate an virtual good within their game they wish to donate a % (minimum 50%) to a charity and select which cause or specific charity they wish to promote.

Developers give 50% of the revenue from the purchase of the virtual good to the associated charity. Playmob charges a flat fee of 10%.

The Charity then selects which types of games and objects they wish to be matched with. Brands can also pick up a sponsor package to support a charity. Playmob makes extra revenue from providing analytics on the effectiveness of the goods. Anumber of charity and game developer partners are signed up to test the platform and plan by August for the platform to work with all IoS and web- based games. They are shooting for an October launch.

Playmob is actually a sort of Trojan horse – allowing companies to upsell charitable givers into full-blow in-game purchasers of virtual goods. When Zynga sold Sweet seeds for the Haiti disaster 80% of givers were non-paying players – so they were playing but not playing, so you can educate players into playing more often and get them hooked.

Essentially it’s a game layer on top of games to allow payment for everything.