Heyzap Introduces Ads To Its Mobile Gaming Network

Heyzap, a Y Combinator-incubated social platform for mobile games, is releasing a software development kit today allowing developers and publishers to introduce Heyzap ads to their games.

Basically, it’s turning Heyzap’s social network into an ad network too. Developers can use it to make more money, or to promote their games in other Heyzap games. You can see a sample ad to the left, highlighting one of Heyzap’s big advantages as an ad platform: The company knows what games users have played (since they’re sharing that information with friends on Heyzap), and it can make a reasonable guess as to other games you might be interested in.

Even though the ads program is only officially launching today, the company says that it has already run ads from Zynga, TinyCo, Storm 8, Gree, Kabam, and Com2Us as part of a “secret alpha.” Heyzap ads are already running in 350 games (out of the more than 4,000 in Heyzap’s network).

“There are three components to the life cycle of a game that developers are concerned with: user acquisition, retention, and monetization — we now have solutions for all parts of the cycle,” said co-founder Jude Gomila in the press release announcing the ads release.

The SDK should only take 10 minutes to install, the company says, and then developers should get paid at the end of every month. The ads will be monetized on a per-install basis. Developers can find out more here.

Heyzap has also been expanding its social features, for example by adding leaderboards late last year.