About myYearbook
We are also dedicated to innovation, with an 80-member team, of which more than half are dedicated to the product. One of the most interesting things we are working on is a location-based, real-time stream called myYearbook Chatter, which surfaces interesting people near you, filtered by age and gender. Some of the things that differentiate Chatter – more... from the Facebook stream are that you see people near you, not just your friends; also, unlike Facebook, which only allows you to comment on posts with text, you can comment on our posts with photos as well, enabling rich photo stories. Unlike Facebook, where the primary use case is to network with your existing friends, myYearbook users come to meet new people, to flirt, and to play social games.
AB: Who is your main audience? GC: Our audience is roughly 37% high school, 27% college, and 36% age 25+; gender is roughly split down the middle. Eighty percent of our traffic is from the U.S. The other 20% comes from Canada, the U.K., and Australia.
AB: How do you monetize these users-advertisements, virtual items? GC: We have built a diversified revenue stream around both brand advertising and virtual goods. Advertising is two-thirds of our business. We work with major brands and agencies in entertainment, health and beauty, and CPGs. We drive hard for repeat brand business by providing best-in-class engagement for our brand partners. A typical campaign will include both high-impact ad units like home page take overs and a major engagement component that leverages our virtual currency Lunch Money. We've thought a great deal about productizing the delivery of custom advertising programs to provide scalable, tailored campaigns for our clients.
The other third of our revenue is from virtual currency. Just 18 months ago, we had no virtual currency product to speak of. In 2009, we launched the ability to buy the virtual currency directly with PayPal, credit card, and mobile phone. In April 2009, we also launched a VIP club that gives you enhanced Lunch Money earning capacity.
AB: Where do your users spend this virtual currency? GC: We added Lunch Money to the site back in 2007 to enhance the game play of many of our social games and provide a way for people to stand out while flirting or meeting new people. People can do a number of things with the currency, including buying gifts for other members. One of the ways you can stand out in meeting new people and flirting is to give the best gifts, and our gifts tend to be quite a bit more than just a static icon like you might give on other social networks. For example, you can build your own virtual teddy bear, choose music with your gift, and wrap your gift so that the recipient must unwrap it using a flash effect. Our users also donate their Lunch Money in our popular Causes application. The company has donated over $250,000 in the last 12 months to the causes that our members care about based on the Lunch Money giving of our members. They are also spending it in fun social games like Owned, which is an application that allows you to buy and sell the photos of other members and provides opportunities to flirt. We have over 1.5 million casual games played every day where you can earn Lunch Money as well.
AB: How do users pay for virtual currency? I'm assuming that a good percentage of your users may not have access to credit card or PayPal. GC: Credit card and PayPal are the primary payment methods, followed by payment by mobile phone, cash cards in Target and 7-Eleven stores, and we also accept cash by mail.
AB: Do you have different exchange rates for cash and credit card payment versus mobile payments? GC: We did some testing where we would offer only credit cards and then another test where we would offer both credit card and mobile. We did see a small lift in revenue by adding mobile. But mobile payment dramatically increased the total number of people paying. We see that as a positive and so that's why we chose to add it as a method.
AB: How do you see the revenue split between advertising and virtual goods-do you expect it to be about the same two-third/one-third level or do you see it changing further? GC: I don't think that split is going to change dramatically in 2010; we currently enjoy some of the highest revenue per user of any social media company. We are dedicated to building myYearbook into the best place to meet new people-that means, at our core, we are a traffic aggregator, and therefore, an advertising platform. Our virtual currency products are designed to support our primary vision of meeting new people. 2009 was the year that we built the virtual currency monetization engine; and in 2010, we're building various viral hooks into the product itself and driving the top of the funnel to increase the total audience. What we are seeing, however, is that our brand advertising is being driven more and more by the virtual currency itself. When a brand engages us for a campaign, they're often interested in (a) high-impact ad unit like a homepage takeover and (b) driving engagement using the virtual currency. For example, we have a product called social theater that allows users to watch videos in a full-page wrap branded experience and earn Lunch Money. So while it's true that a third of our revenue is coming from the currency, a lot of that two-thirds of revenue, which is advertising, wouldn't be happening if it weren't for the currency's ability to drive actions on behalf of our brand advertisers.
AB: How scalable are these immersive campaigns versus banner ads and other standard ad units? – less – More from ZoomInfo »
