Tapjoy Making Progress in Asia with Partnerships in China and Korea

With offices in Beijing, Tokyo, and Seoul, mobile advertising and publishing platform Tapjoy definitely has intentions of making progress in the Asia region. Today the company is announcing an alliance (via a MOU) with SK Planet (a subsidiary of SK Telecom) in the area of mobile advertising.

This cooperation helps Tapjoy immensely in Korea by way of SK Planet’s T Store which has more than 15 million subscribers and 300,000 content offerings according to the announcement. Conversely, Tapjoy helps Korean developers reach more users globally.

Tapjoy’s CEO, Mihir Shah, pointed out that his company is “the first global advertising platform to collaborate with T-Store,” which puts it on the ground early, so to speak, in one of the world’s most mature mobile markets where smartphone penetration already sits at 50 percent. In addition, Tapjoy will be allocating part of its $5 million Tapjoy Asia Fund to T-Store developers for both Android and iOS platforms.

Meanwhile in China…

Besides Korea, Tapjoy has been active in China recently too, and just last week the company made its strategic partnerships with Cocoa China and Android app store Gfan (one of many Android app stores in China). This comes after the company got started establishing its Beijing office late last year, and now we’re starting to see some of the fruits of its efforts. We spoke to Tapjoy’s managing director in Greater China, David Chun, to find out a little bit more about their activity in the country. He explains:

Gfan really gives Android developers a large install base in China. They can help them reach many new users in [the country]. And Cocoa China as well has had great success themselves, for example with Fishing Joy which has reached tens or hundreds of millions of users [1].

But of course many companies are helping Western companies localize. Why would developers, aside from the fact that they are likely already familiar with the company, work with Tapjoy in China? David explains that the partnerships with Gfan and Cocoa China will help them stand out from the crowd:

So [Gfan and Cocoa China] understand the local market and local consumers, and not only help Western developers how to localize for China but also help them see what customer segments they should look at or what changes to make to game mechanics to suit Chinese tastes.

He adds that the company’s growth in Korea and Japan has been “phenomenal,” so that’s certainly promising. And similarly, it’s promising news for Western developers looking for a way to crack those markets, especially for China — which has always been an attractive but problematic region for outsiders looking in.