Has Tapjoy solved monetization of free apps on the iPhone and Android?
First, they aggregate ads from all the major mobile ad networks and serve the highest-paying ad for an app. This method leaves the developer with nigh an unfilled ad; Tapjoy boasts a 99.9% fill rate. Second, they enable developers to sell virtual goods within their apps (such as extra points in Mobster or extra towers in TapDefense) for real money. They do this by providing the user with the option to download an app in exchange for the virtual good. Be sure to read about this later on in the article, because it is truly the most innovative 3rd party platform I’ve seen on the iPhone all year.
First, the ad aggregation. Similar to AdWhirl (recently acquired by AdMob) and Mobclix, Tapjoy has a platform that combines ads from 10 mobile ad networks and provides your app with the one that has the highest PPC. And this platform is completely free for developers. In the nacent mobile advertising market, fill rate is crucial to developers, since the major ad networks are struggling to independently keep up with demand for advertising. Tapjoy, like AdWhirl and TechCrunch50 startup Mobclix, scours the networks for the highest paying ad and fills your ad with that advertisement. Meanwhile, they are collecting a gold mine of data about the habits of the users of the roughly 1,000 applications running the Tapjoy SDK. Co-Founder Lee Linden told me that ad networks like Tapjoy because they provide the networks with a large amount of data and increased fill rates. Furthermore, they work hard to build relationships with the networks – something that will serve them well in the long haul.
Clients such as Playdom and Papaya have taken the most advantage of the virtual goods platform, and Tapjoy is expanding its rapidly expanding its client base: Digital Chocolate, Gogii, imeem and ngmoco are all on board, along with hundreds of smaller publishers. They have worked extremely hard to build relationships with these clients as well; both co-founders Lee Linden and Ben Lewis provide all of their customers with their cell phone numbers. Lee joked about how they’ve had a few late-night wake-up calls from their clients.