Future Ads
Company: Future Ads, Irvine, CA
Entry Submitted By: mWEBB Communications
Company Description: Future Ads is one of the most rapidly growing interactive marketing firms. The company enables advertisers to target the fast growing, highly desirable, and responsive casual gaming audience through its top 5 game site, Gamevance.com, which attracts 12 million monthly UVs, and is one of the fastest-growing game and Web properties.
Nomination Category: Company Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Fastest-Growing Company of the Year
Nomination Title: Future Ads
Tell the story about what this nominated company achieved since January 1 2008 (up to 500 words). Focus on specific accomplishments, and relate these accomplishments to past performance or industry norms. Be sure to mention obstacles overcome, innovations or discoveries made, and outcomes:
Future Ads’ most significant growth occurred in economically-challenging 2008.
Against this severe backdrop, Future Ads’ gaming website (www.gamevance.com)
ranked in the company of media giants such as Yahoo! Games and Electronic Arts -
and ahead of powerhouses such as AOL and MSN – all with a fraction of their
capital and budgets, and without taking on any debt or venture capital.
Future Ads Growth Data:
• Revenue grew nearly 300% in 2008 (from 4.2 million in ’07 to 15.8 million in
‘08). Net income more than doubled.
• In July 2008, Gamevance.com ranked as ninth fastest-growing website overall;
by January ‘09, it ranked as the sixth fastest-growing website overall,
attracting 12 million visitors monthly. From Jan. ’08 to Jan. ’09, visitors
surged roughly 200%.
• In April 2008, Gamevance booked third highest percentage growth in Hispanic
visitors across all Web properties.
• Ad impressions grew 2000% in 2008; number of active advertisers grew over 150%.
• Average number of players online/per day jumped over 400% in 2008.
When Future Ads entered the online gaming sector, it meant going head-to-head
with some of the biggest media players in the world, who have very deep pockets.
The company knew it needed a unique, efficient business model in this
highly-competitive space—one that would remain free for consumers, while still
profitable for the company. The team invented a model that allowed consumers to
play in a tournament style/social media environment and win prizes, and to build
games at 1/100th the cost of its competitors. Through strategic marketing
relationships, the company built traffic at the
risk of very few of its precious marketing dollars.
While the casual gaming sector has tens of millions of users, monetizing this
highly desirable traffic remains elusive across the industry. Future Ads
developed an ad-supported model that enabled consumers to play as many games as
they liked for free, and Gamevance began to generate profits. Initial growth was
steady but slow, but by mid-2008, in spite of huge economic challenges and a
softening online ad market, Gamevance was generating record profits, becoming
the ninth-fastest-growing Internet property overall, and ranking in the top-200
among ALL Internet properties-- attracting a steady 8 million unique visitors a month.
In early 2008, knowing that under-performing online ad inventory and the
industry’s lack of effective ways of monetizing content on the ‘long tail of the
web’ represented a huge, untapped, opportunity, Future Ads developed its own
in-text advertising platform, a new form of contextual advertising that’s
publisher- and performance-based, and user-driven. The new product,
Resultlinks™, which is pro-consumer, 100% user-initiated contextual advertising,
included an ingredient that no one else had, a
self-serve platform that provided far more campaign control and higher
conversion rates for advertisers and unprecedented cost-efficiencies and easy
monetization for publishers. Introduced in June 2008, Resultlinks has quickly
become the fastest-growing in-text ad product--with impressions growing from
500,000 to 3,000,000+ per day.
List hyperlinks to any online news stories, press releases, or other documents that support the claims made in the section above. IMPORTANT: Begin each link with http://, and enclose each link in square brackets; for example, [http://www.youraddress.com]:
http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=2399
http://ir.comscore.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=366591
http://www.portada-online.com/html/website/paid/2008/jun18Int/Ten-Things.aspx
http://sev.prnewswire.com/advertising/20090428/LA0627328042009-1.html
http://news.prnewswire.com/DisplayReleaseContent.aspx?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/04-27-2009/0005013624&EDATE=
http://www.gamevance.com
http://www.playsushi.com
http://www.futureads.com
Provide a brief (up to 100 words) biography about the leader of this nominated company:
Jared Pobre founded Future Ads, one of the country’s fastest-growing interactive
firms, with $500. Since then, his company has become a dynamic force in casual
gaming, with its flagship site, Gamevance.com, ranking as a top-5—and the
fastest-growing - casual gaming site. In 2008, Pobre launched Resultlinks, with
a focus on advertiser ROI and control that has made it the fastest-growing
in-text ad network. In April 2009, Pobre launched casual game hub:
PlaySushi.com. A native of Orange County, Pobre graduated from USC. Previously,
he served as Business Development Director for Epilot/Local.com, and Senior
Media Buyer for Autobytel.com.