Offerpal Launches User Acquisition, Re-Engagement Tool

Offer-based ad network Offerpal Media announced the launch of SocialKast, a new user acquisition and re-engagement tool designed to help game developers connect with audiences across multiple social channels and platforms. The company says this new solution gives developers access to over one billion users in 150 countries through integrations with its open application platform providers like Yahoo and others. Studios can take advantage of REST messaging APIs, and Javascript calls in SocialKast to write their code just once to interact with multiple platforms. Once they've integrated SocialKast support in their titles, Offerpal says developers can distribute user-to-user and application-to-user invites, gifts, notifications, and other text-based/graphical messages to activity streams, email inboxes, and other areas of Offerpal's partner sites. Offerpal believes that its platform will help developers further extend their reach while driving viral awareness and distribution for their titles. It is offering access to SocialKast as a value-added service to select developers and platforms already using its full-service monetization platform. The platform's launch comes just a week after the firm revealed that it will lay off an unspecified amount of its staff after losing a lucrative deal for Facebook's Credits system to a rival ad network. It expressed a need to refocus its resources on areas such as "other gaming platforms, open web gaming, new Internet verticals," and mobile. Offerpal says SocialKast represents one of many new rollouts it has planned for the rest of the year to support its expansion into new ares as it shifts its gaze from Facebook to Yahoo! and mobile platforms. The company claims it is in "a position for a strong fourth quarter and continued high-growth throughout 2011." "In the current environment, it has proven both costly and difficult for game developers to find new sources of distribution," says Offerpal Media CEO and chairman George Garrick. "SocialKast solves this problem by boosting a game's K-factor to accelerate viral growth and lower the developer's cost of acquisition." He adds, "It also enables gamers to exchange detailed and timely notifications with each other regardless of which platform they're on, while benefiting publishers, platforms, networks and advertisers by attracting new users, generating more page views and broadening the social graph."