GetSocial raises $2.5M to boost engagement in mobile games

GetSocial raised $2.5 million to expand its social networking platform for marketing and monetizing mobile games.

The Amsterdam-based has built a backend platform for amplifying engagement of mobile gamers as well as data analytics tools that help mobile game developers cut the cost of user acquisition.

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It’s no secret that getting noticed is a huge problem in the $30 billion mobile game market, where rivals have to compete with a few million other games for attention. Only 1.7 percent of players pay for anything in free-to-play games, which have become the norm in mobile. And the cost of acquiring users is so high that it is sometimes exceeding the revenues coming in.

GetSocial tries to encourage viral sharing through a smart invitation system. It uses deep linking and tracking between popular chat apps like WhatsApp, Kakao, Line, WeChat, Kii, and others. The company helps customers build an in-app community through activity feeds, smart invites, chat, messaging, and social targeted push notifications.

The company raised money from Dutch venture capitalists including Astor Participaties, Enabling Technology Fund, Slingshot Capital, and Novamedia.

“The entire industry has changed. It is harder to gain retainable downloads, increase in app spend, and cost per install prices are becoming more and more expensive with no greater results,” said Adam Palmer, chief product officer and founder of GetSocial, in a statement. “Furthermore, adding internal communication to engage players has never been more important to combat this; along with creating frictionless ways to increase organic installs through engaged players. We’re seeing massive growth in this area and plan to expand this feature to all developers, as it’s a free service to use. We are also very excited to offer developers greater more dynamic ways of increasing their in app revenues this year, and are seeing great results from our first pilot customers.”

The company was founded in 2012 and it has 25 employees. The company has grown its pipeline significantly over the past six months. GetSocial has raised $5 million to date.

“The market seems to be catching on to what we do. We have been approached by thousands of developers and by the end of this year, we will have more than 100 games which use our platform. At the current pace, we need to scale up our team quickly to keep up with demand,” said Palmer. “This funding will allow us to do all the things we need to implement our growth strategy and help us expand beyond Europe into Asia and the U.S.”

GetSocial said it is in sync with developers who want more channels to directly engage with their players.

“We are very happy to see our platform being validated by companies such as Hutch, MAG Interactive, Poptacular, etc. who are experiencing significant reductions in CPA, together with higher revenues from in-app purchases. With prospects of up to 100 percent increase in retention and 20 percent in organic growth. We’ve got a long list of tier 1 developers currently piloting our technology and they’re showing excellent results already. The aim is to get them live in Q1-Q2 of 2016,” said Reinout te Brake, CEO of GetSocial, in a statement.

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