gWallet's new "Brand Bar"

New product brings virtual offers and currency to front page of social gaming

It's nice to see a company experimenting in the social gaming space.  That's what gWallet seems to be all about.  The startup led by Gurbaksh Chahal has been working on creating ways to get social gamers to complete offers in exchange for virtual currency.  It even launched its own venture fund to invest in social gaming companies.  This week, it announced a new product called the "Brand bar," which is taking a slightly more obvious approach at getting users to participate in its offers.  

Let's get a little background on how gWallet's offers have worked up until now.

To start, if a gamer wants to buy more virtual cash for new items in a given social game, they have to shell out real cash.  gWallet offers an alternative to actually paying for this virtual currency- it tries to coax gamers into particapting in surveys or watching movie trailers in exchange for virtual currency.  Quite a brilliant way to get people to engage with advertisements.  The only thing a gamer is investing is a small piece of their time.

Apparently, that model hasn't been working as well as brands and gWallet would like.  gWallet said only two to four percent of users choose to pause and leave the game in order to access these offers. Why?  Well, gWallet believes there are too many unnecessary steps for the user to find an appealing offer.  I agree, I've tried these out and the offers are usually buried deep in the game.  If you can find them, they are awesome, but expect to be clicking several times to get to them.

What this new "brand bar" aims to achieve is giving the offers more visibility.  So basically, the offers are now right in your face, at the top of the games.  gWallet said with this new product, every user is exposed to the offers giving game publishers the chance to monetize on 100 percent of their users.

Currently, the "brand bar" is live on a dozen games developed by companies like Clipwire Games, Zen Gaming, FooMojo and Mobscience, naming a few.

Gurbaksh Chahal, CEO of gWallet said, "While virtual currency is clearly a thriving industry, we still think there are ways that the process can be improved,” said Gurbaksh Chahal, CEO and founder of gWallet...Rather than force users to seek out offers and hunt and peck for the right one, we are bringing the offers to them. This not only streamlines the process for consumers, but also improves ad performance and publisher monetization, leaving a positive end result for everyone involved."

We interviewed Chahal a few weeks ago, check out the video here.