TinyCo shares 50 percent of affiliate revenue with mobile developers

Mobile game publisher TinyCo is announcing a way for developers to make money by driving users to TinyCo’s games. They can do so by embedding ads within the content of their games, and they can keep 50 percent of the proceeds.

The Tiny Partners affiliate marketing program is intended to benefit both TinyCo and developers through revenue sharing and brand integration, said Andrew Green, the director of business development, in an interview with GamesBeat. The program helps skirt the ineffectiveness and high cost of banner ads.

“Acquiring new users and discovery are big problems,” Green said. “Developers are buying banner ads huge losses and they’re pumping up the ad rates.”

TinyCo, the San Francisco-based publisher and developer of games like Tiny Monsters and Tiny Village, gives ad-like assets and art that one can embed in the heart of the game, like in the picture above. The developer embeds the ads in its game and drives users to TinyCo’s games.

“We get higher clicks and better conversion rates” because the ads are directed at gamers who are playing similar games. TinyCo will share 50 percent of the lifetime value generated by the user that comes via the advertisement, Green said. For TinyCo, this form of payment means it doesn’t have to pay upfront for ads.

“If they send us a user that generates $1,500 in revenue over time, the developer gets $750,” Green said.

TinyCo’s code tracks the conversions. Tests with developers have shown conversion rates of 12.3 percent, versus the usual ad conversion rate of banner ads at 3.5 percent. That means 12.3 percent of users are installing the apps that are shown in the affiliate ads. Average revenue per paying user and retention rates are higher on TinyCo’s games, with conversion rates on Android approaching that on iOS. That’s important, considering 1.3 million Android devices are being activated every day.

“With TinyCo, we were treated like a partner, not just a vendor. TinyCo was willing to share their revenue with us. Other companies were just interested in the cost per download,” said Dave Yonamine, the CEO of Mobility Ware, an early partner in the program.

Other developers such as Riptide Games are currently adopting the affiliate program.