PlayingViral founders Steven Wongsoredjo and Michael Rendy
Millennials have been accused of possessing shorter attention spans than goldfish. Though that claim is questionable, online marketers know display ads and even sponsored content are no longer enough to attract twentysomethings. PlayingViral gives brands a new way to lure young consumers with embeddable surveys and quizzes that use machine-learning algorithms to reach the right audiences.
The second Indonesian company accepted into Y Combinator (after bill payment platform Payfazz), PlayingViral finished the accelerator program last month and is now getting ready to expand in the United States, Canada, Brazil and other markets.
PlayingViral is part of Nusantara Technology, a tech and media group that develops marketing tools for clients, including Proctor & Gamble, that want to reach young Indonesians. So far, the company has received investment from former Sequoia Capital partner Yinglan Tan through his new firm Insignia Ventures, former Indonesian Minister of Trade Mari Elka Pangestu and Y Combinator.
Both Nusantara and PlayingViral were founded by chief executive officer Steven Wongsoredjo and chief product officer Michael Rendy. About a year after launching Nusantara in 2016, the team began to realize that “the online media business has the potential to go big, but it’s hard to scale because it lacks a human touch,” Wongsoredjo told TechCrunch. PlayingViral was created to fix that problem.
PlayingViral’s personalized, interactive content is intended to attract users who are jaded by banner ads. For example, a property developer used PlayingViral to create a survey that tells users what kind of house they can afford based on their income level and location. Other customers have embedded quizzes that reward players with discount codes. There are hundreds of dialects spoken in Indonesia and PlayingViral relies on its machine-learning algorithms to adapt content to different languages and decide where they should be placed in Nusantara’s online media network. It also analyzes what keywords, graphics and colors get the most engagement, helping brands refine their marketing strategies.
An example of PlayingViral’s interactive content is embedded below, while demos on PlayingViral’s site show its other uses, including text message stories and Mad Libs-style quizzes.
Wongsoredjo says PlayingViral became profitable just two months after it launched in January. Clients include Singapore Airlines, Garuda Indonesia and Nokia. Its biggest competitor is SurveyMonkey, but PlayingViral differentiates by focusing on more informal and shorter surveys. Of course, other companies are also developing interactive embeddable content, but Wongsoredjo says PlayingViral and Nusantara plan to future-proof themselves by building more comprehensive data sets about what captures millennials’ attention than their competitors.
“If someone wants to copy us, they have to do a lot of experimenting,” says Wongsoredjo.