Social gaming network PapayaMobile is introducing a new service today for Android developers – a cost-free and commission-free cross promotion network called AppFlood. The network had already been in testing with around 20 mobile developers in an earlier version, and today it’s being opened to all. And yes, it’s on Android where this sort of thing is allowed.
The company says that the goal with AppFlood is to lower user acquisition costs for developers, who are now being priced out of the market as rates for acquisition soar.
“The thing that makes this really different is that from the actual buying and selling of traffic, it’s 100% free and commission-free,” explains PapayaMobile’s Director of Marketing, Justin Mauldin. “There are other ad networks out there, and all of them charge some sort of cut for each transaction because that’s their business model. AppFlood takes nothing, but PapayaMobile is not in this to make any money.”
He explains that PapayaMobile sees the network as something that can help boost the traffic to its own games, including a number of first-party games and other developers on its gaming network who want to generate traffic for their own apps. The company can monetize the traffic AppFlood generates in other ways – for example, it can monetize off developers using PapayaMobile’s virtual currency in their games. Mauldin also says that PapayaMobile has no plans to rotate its own ads into the network, as other “free” competitors do today.
The other big differentiator between PapayaMobile’s cross promotion network and others is that there are not minimum requirements for developer participation. “There’s absolutely no minimum traffic requirements or deal negotiations,” Mauldin says, “it’s almost like a pool of users that people will cross-promote into.”
To participate, developers just install a lightweight SDK into their apps – a process which takes just a few hours at best. While still new, Mauldin says the plan now that the network is live is to grow it “very aggressively” and he believes that thousands of installs per day is within reach “very quickly.” Interested developers can sign up here.