Kiip offers 'rewarded video' at the right moment in mobile apps and games

Kiip, the mobile rewards company, is launching a new video ad service today dubbed Kiip Rewarded Video.

The company offers real-world rewards, such as a coupon for a cup of coffee, to people who complete a level in a game or engage with a mobile app. Kiip always offers its rewards at the right moment, when someone is on an emotional high, Kiip chief executive Brian Wong told VentureBeat.

Above: Brian Wong, center, co-founder and chief executive of Kiip, and Gregg Colvin, chief operating officer of Universal McCann, right, at VentureBeat’s Mobile Summit conference in Sausalito, Calif., on April 14.

Image Credit: Michael O'Donnell/VentureBeat

With the video ads, brand and game marketers can target ads at consumers during achievement moments. Those videos might very well be ignored, and they often are with other kinds of ads. But Kiip can attach awards to its 15-second videos. It will, for instance, reward someone with a stick of Trident chewing gum if they bookmark an ad in a recipe app where the recipe calls for garlic.

“They can choose the video if they want to, but they don’t have to in order to get the gum,” Wong said.

Other companies such as AdColony say that the world is moving toward video ads. But Wong said Kiip is moving to video ads for the sake of better storytelling that allows brands to get closer to consumers.

“If it’s done right, at the right moment, we have something very interesting on our hands,” Wong said. “It is less of a forced moment and more of a natural one.”

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Wong said there was a 77 percent completion rate for watching video ads without an additional incentive, in part because the video ad comes at the right moment in the game or app. That is far above the industry average, based on campaigns with Trident, Trolli, McDonald’s, and Hollywood studios. Developers who have used the videos have seen ad rates as high as $30 per 1,000 impressions, or nearly quadruple the $8 industry average.

“Video is a powerful mechanism that provides a win-win-win situation for ourselves, our players, and advertisers,” said Mario Wynands, managing director of leading digital publisher PikPok, makers of Into the Dead and Turbo Fast. “By bringing highly targeted and relevant branded video into our games, Kiip provides market leading returns for our titles.”

Kiip inserted video ads for AMC’s The Walking Dead television show into the Into the Dead game. That first-person zombie shooting mobile game shows the ads when a user levels up or beats a high score. The Walking Dead ad invited the user to earn virtual currency by watching a short video touting the Season 4 première.

Kiip also said that its video solution puts the user experience first and shuts out bots from producing fraudulent video views.

The company has been working on the Kiip Rewarded Video since January.

“We’ve noticed there is a lot of demand, and we want our clients to know it is available,” he said.

Kiip has 85 employees.

Introducing Kiip Rewarded Video from kiip on Vimeo.