Adknowledge, the largest privately-owned online ad network, today announced a new release of its self-service auction marketplace, BidSystem 3.0 (www.bidsystem.com), which now provides advertisers the ability to bid for leads on a CPA (cost per action) basis and have their offers appear on the Super Rewards’ offer wall within Facebook and MySpace applications.

Thousands of Super Rewards’ publishers will directly benefit from this new advertising marketplace integration in a variety of ways.  The intuitive, self-service Adknowledge BidSystem interface will invite large global brands, as well as smaller more localized advertisers, to participate for the first time ever directly within this social media virtual currency channel. These new direct advertisers will provide more geo-targeted choices for consumers resulting in even higher user engagement and ROI for publishers.

Publishers will continue to have full offer transparency while maintaining complete quality control over all offers that are presented to their users by utilizing the Super Rewards robust reporting console and optimization tools.  This includes the original black-listing tool for offer or category exclusions, and the newly released industry leading white-listing tool which allows a publisher to select only offers that meet the Facebook ad policy guidelines, or an even narrower set of offer quality parameters defined by the publisher.

The launch of the Adknowledge BidSystem 3.0 marketplace is a major step forward for advertisers, publishers and consumers participating within the rapidly exploding social media space.  Check out the full press release details below or contact your account manager for more details on how this can directly benefit your business.

http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/adknowledge-becomes-fifth-largest-online,1089886.shtml

Super Rewards hosted a year-end holiday bash at the Sharks Tank in San Jose where several of the top social online game publishers enjoyed an amazing night of networking, wining and dining, while watching the current NHL #1 team,  San Jose Sharks, take on the Dallas Stars.  Both teams battled hard all night long ending the game in a 1-1 tie, followed by a 5 minute over-time, and then concluding with a wild west record-breaking shootout which lasted 14 attempts, ending the game 2-3. This was the longest shootout ever for both teams (7 was the record for the Sharks and 9 for the Stars) and a roaring good time for all who were able to attend this historical event!

The Super Rewards’ team predicted that 2010 will bring about significant M&A activity within the social media space and we are already beginning to see it come to fruition with the news this week that WebMedia Brands (NASDAQ: WEBM) has acquired SocialTimes.com.

Check out the full story here…… http://www.socialtimes.com/2009/12/weve-been-acquired/

It’s hard to believe that it is that time of year again when everyone is deciding which holiday parties to go to and how many one can possibly fit into the same night….could someone please build us a logistics application to make this holiday party planning process a little easier next year?  Last night alone, in the Bay Area, there were at least 6 different social media and gaming companies that hosted parties, and Serious Business threw one serious party!  It was the “who’s who” in the industry enjoying great food, festive drinks and late night networking…..here are just a few photos of the fun……

Happy Holidays!

A few hundred people showed up yesterday at VentureBeat’s successful industry event, DiscoveryBeat2009, focused on application discovery in an age of noise.  Some of the event highlights include presentations by Zynga and YouWeb:

Bill Mooney, general manager of Zynga’s insanely popular social game FarmVille, offered his advice for social game developers. Speed seemed to be the theme uniting his different ideas. The social game industry is changing quickly and unpredictably, he said, and companies need to keep up.

“This space is much, much faster than a traditional space,” Mooney said, later adding, “A week is a month, a month is a quarter, and a quarter is a year.”

Read the full story on VentureBeat.com:
http://digital.venturebeat.com/2009/12/08/zyngas-tips-for-social-gaming-success-move-fast-play-farmville/

Peter Relan, Founder and Chairman, YouWeb, talked about his team’s success in incubating several social and mobile gaming companies. He announced the launch of Little Monsters, similar to the cross platform play that was launched by SpyMaster at http://playspymaster.com/, it allows users to play cross platform on Facebook, iPhone and the Web.

Check it out: http://apps.facebook.com/little-monsters/

The race is on…..stay tuned in 2010…..to see who will lead with speed!

Hundreds of video game makers, including star U.S. developer Activision Blizzard Inc., gathered Thursday to unveil their latest games at South Korea’s largest electronic gaming expo, G-Star 2009. This four-day event was kicked off in Busan and coupled with one of the top global gaming conferences, ICON2009 (International Content Creator’s Conference).

Jason Bailey, founder and former CEO of Super Rewards, the largest virtual currency monetization platform for online games and virtual worlds, was invited to speak at this prestigious conference where he shared his insights on future trends in online games.

Jason Bailey

G-star divided its online game zone into four themes — massive multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), first-person shooter (FPS), action and casual games. New game technologies using devices, such as Internet-based TVs and smartphones, were also showcased at the event. One of the event highlights was Blizzard’s unveiling of their playable version of Starcraft II, the industry-leading strategy game.

Over 200,000 people were expected to attend, with 199 companies from 21 different countries participating in the show.

Korea Gaming Market Statistics:

• Korea’s Game Market in Y2008 – 5.6T (Won) = CAD 5.181B.
• Korea’s  Game Export overseas reached $10B
• Korea’s Online Game Export: $1.9B. (40%  higher than Y2007)

Adknowledge, the largest privately-held advertising network, announced today that it has obtained the advertising business of SocialMedia.com. The move strengthens Adknowledge’s position as the leading monetization platform for publishers of social apps and social games.

In the past two years, Adknowledge has made four acquisitions in the social media space. Cubics, an Adknowledge company, delivers more than 700 million banner impressions daily to consumers using Facebook, MySpace, and other social networking sites. Super Rewards, another Adknowledge company, is the leading virtual currency platform. Together, they deliver over 10% of total daily page impressions on Facebook.

SocialMedia.com has been a pioneer in social advertising since 2007, building a Facebook ad platform that has allowed app developers to manage, market, and monetize their inventory. By adding the ad network business of SocialMedia.com, Adknowledge is providing publishers with increased monetization opportunities.

For more information about how this acquisition can benefit your company, contact your account manager or info@srpoints.com

Read the official Press Release:

http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/Adknowledge-1079016.html

Industry Leading Technology Enhances Offer Management Console to Ensure High Quality Offer Control

A critical component in developing a successful virtual currency system is effectively managing the user experience. In May, Super Rewards launched a tool to allow publishers to adjust on a five point scale the type of offers being displayed to their consumers (http://www.virtualgoodsnews.com/2009/05/super-rewards-announces-offer-management-console.html). We are glad to see other companies following in our footsteps.

Today, we set the next standard in offer control by releasing a new proprietary offer white listing tool embedded within the existing Super Rewards’ Offer Management Console for Publishers.  This provides publishers an unprecedented level of transparency and control to choose exactly what offers are shown to their unique user base.

Upon request, publishers can now enable white listing. This functionality allows a publisher to work with the Super Rewards account team to establish a set of specific offers that they choose to run on their offer wall.

Offers Whitelist

Once enabled, publishers will have two sets of offers they can review:

1) An initial offer set that includes advertising offers that are reviewed, scrubbed, and tagged by Super Rewards to be in compliance with the Facebook and MySpace advertising guidelines.

2) A second broader set of optional advertising offers for a publisher to run IF their offer wall is running outside of Facebook or MySpace.

These offers can be searched, sorted and selected based on attributes like specific title, brand, category, geography and timeframe which are all ranked based on proprietary algorithms with an emphasis on estimated earnings potential, making it easy for publishers to identify and build a white list of offers that meet their specific user’s needs.

When a publisher enables this tool, only the offers that are put on their unique white list will be run on their specific games and applications.

“With more than 4,000 offers within the Super Rewards advertising inventory database and new offers being added every day, it is critical that we continue to build tools that provide our publishers with flexible options and greater control over the offers that are presented to their unique user base,” said Jason Bailey, Founder of Super Rewards. “We are proud to lead the efforts in raising the bar for online advertising protocol to ensure publishers and consumers continue to enjoy the best possible social and online gaming experience.”

Julie Craft, VP at Super Rewards, was an invited guest on MashChat to discuss innovation in Social Media with host Ben Parr.  Marsha Collier, well-known author, radio personality and educator specializing in technology and e-commerce, was also an invited guest and together they wowed the influential online community with tips and trends happening real-time in social media.

Super Rewards continues to strengthen its industry leadership position within the social media and virtual currency monetization space.  Super Rewards announced its deeper partnership with PayPal last week at PayPal’s Innovate09 event through the integration of PayPal’s platform X API, the world’s first truly global open payments platform. This integration will enrich the Super Rewards’ leading virtual currency offer platform to provide an even better user experience.

Julie Craft, Vice President of Public Relations and Marketing at Super Rewards, was invited to speak at Innovate09 on a panel discussing the progression of innovation in Social Media, along with the following esteemed industry leaders:  Andrew Shepard, VP of Hi5, Edwin Aoki, fellow and head of AOL Developer Network, Marsha Collier, author of eBay for Dummies, and Robert Goldberg, SVP and Business Operations at Zynga.

Read the press release about Super Rewards and PayPal partnership online:

http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/Super-Rewards-1070286.html

Visit PayPalX online:

https://www.x.com/index.jspa